Rep. Young (R-AK) Coconut Rd. Supporters Aren't Giving Up $10 M FL Earmark

[L. Coyote]

Young Coconut Road Supporters Aren't Giving Up $10 Million
By Laura McGann - September 28, 2007, 12:05PM
http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/004315.php

Despite a reported FBI investigation and the surrounding controversy, developers in Florida really want to hang on to their hard-earned $10 million Coconut Road earmark from Rep. Don Young (R-AK). And yet everything seems to come back to Young one way or the other.

Real estate developers, led by Daniel Aronoff, who raised $40,000 in campaign contributions for Young are pushing the Metropolitan Planning Organization in Lee County to overturn a recent vote to send the money back to Congress in hopes of having it reallocated for a more popular project. The MPO vote came after it learned that the earmark had been changed after Congress voted on the bill. A new vote could take place at an MPO meeting today.

Florida consultant Joe Mazurkiewicz, a Young campaign contributor and outspoken proponent of the Coconut Road project, emailed the MPO yesterday a memo drafted by a Washington lawyer named Jack Schenendorf. The memo plays down the significance of the Coconut Road earmark change, pointing to ......