Some companies have created non-profit organizations that are eligible for congressional earmarks. That’s what Imaging Systems Technology, a small Ohio-based defense contracting firm, did by establishing the Great Lakes Research Center, a nonprofit that specializes in the same work as the company—namely, the manufacture of parts for military body armor which the Department of Defense has shown no interest in buying. Nonetheless the research center was able to receive a $10.4 million earmark that Imaging Systems Technology could not accept under the new congressional rules.

 

Likewise, The Virtual Reality Medical Center in California, a business that sells visual simulation headgear for experimental medical therapy, started its own nonprofit—the Interactive Media Institute—in order to get nearly $6 million in earmarks.

 

Other companies, like General Electric, have used universities to act as a front man to maneuver around the earmarks ban. GE will get about 80% of a $2 million earmark because on paper Pennsylvania State University is the lead recipient in a collaborative effort to develop clean-burning GE locomotives.

-Noel Brinkerhoff

 

Companies Find Ways to Bypass Ban on Earmarks (by Eric Lipton and Ron Nixon, New York Times)