Mollohan: Economic development top priority

Recuses himself from some Justice Department work

11 Jan 2007 // FAIRMONT — Promising to continue to obtain federal support for projects that can diversify North Central West Virginia’s economy, U.S. Rep. Alan B. Mollohan said he welcomes the opportunity to chair a key subcommittee on the House Appropriations Committee.

“Believe me, economic development for the district and the state” is his priority, the 13-term congressman from Fairmont said Wednesday.

He’s confident the new “no-earmark” policy for the current federal fiscal year will not damage the work of the five nonprofits he has helped to get started in the 1st Congressional District.

“I have forever over the last 10 years urged them to diversify their income and broaden their base of (financial) support,” he said. “A lot of their money today comes from other sources” besides earmarks.

The goal has always been to make them as self-sufficient as possible, he said.

U.S. Rep. David Obey, D-Wis., chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, and U.S. Sen. Robert C. Byrd, D-W.Va., chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, agreed last month to strip earmarks from all but a few departments in an upcoming continuing resolution for the rest of federal 2007.

Mollohan said again Wednesday he’s never heard from federal prosecutors about a complaint filed last year with a federal prosecutor in Washington by a small conservative watchdog group.

He has always denied any wrongdoing involving claims by the National Legal and Policy Center. The group charged Mollohan with understating the value of his real estate investments on his annual financial disclosure reports.

The NLPC, which has received most of its funding from right-wing foundations, also charged Mollohan with somehow benefiting personally from the nonprofits.

Some of the executives with the nonprofits have contributed to his campaigns, but the amount of their contributions over the years has never been a substantial part of his campaign war chests, he has said.

But he has voluntarily agreed to step aside from leading the subcommittee’s oversight of parts of the budgets for the Attorney General’s office, the FBI and the Justice Department’s criminal division and its prosecuting attorneys.

“These charges are rubbish, and whatever financial success my wife and I have had is a result of my wife’s expertise and her years of experience in real estate,” Mollohan told The Associated Press.

Melanie Sloan, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, praised Mollohan and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., “for recognizing that recusal is the appropriate course of action.”

Sloan criticized Republicans for not requiring Appropriations Committee members Jerry Lewis, R-Calif., and John Doolittle, R-Calif., also under Justice Department scrutiny, for not making similar moves to recuse themselves from the Justice Department budget.

Mollohan’s rise to the chairmanship of the Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice and Science and Related Agencies was approved earlier this week by his fellow Democrats, including new House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

A member of Appropriations since 1985, Mollohan briefly chaired the subcommittee in 1994.

But later that year, Republicans led by former House Speaker Newt Gingrich took over Congress.

The subcommittee funds the departments of Commerce and Justice, as well as the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the National Science Foundation and others.