Firms That Donate To Inouye Receive His Earmarks

HERBERT A. SAMPLE

HONOLULU (AP) — A team led by a small Hawaii company was competing to design a new generation of military transport ships when Navy officials dropped it from contention in late 2007. The reason: the team's entry didn't meet the Navy's criteria.

Not all was lost for Navatek Ltd., however. The Honolulu firm had a powerful ally in Washington D.C. — U.S. Sen. Daniel Inouye.

Since 1997, executives of Navatek and its parent firm, the privately owned Pacific Marine, have contributed more than $29,000 to Inouye's campaign coffers, most of it since 2003.

And now, the eight-term Hawaii Democrat is trying to direct $2.2 million in taxpayer money to the company to finance a model of an amphibious vehicle that was a vital component of the entry the Navy rejected.

It's all part of a pattern for the powerful chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, the jubilantly self-proclaimed "No. 1 earmarks guy" in the nation.

In the Senate version of the fiscal year 2010 defense appropriations bill, which Inouye was instrumental in drafting, he is sponsoring almost three-dozen provisions that would spend more than $200 million on projects in Hawaii that the Pentagon generally does not want, an Associated Press analysis of federal election reports has found.