Senator Eliot Shapleigh - El Paso, Texas

Tucked like lard bits into a stew, "earmarks" have so fattened the federal budget that even President Bush is objecting. "Over 90 percent of earmarks are not even part of the bill that arrives on my desk," he complained. He's called for Congress to trim them by half during this session.

With the Legislature in session, it's time for Texans to pay closer attention to our own version of earmarks: legislative riders. Most states have some form of riders, and in Texas they're far less onerous than the federal version. Thanks to a "single subject" rule, riders can't be hidden in unrelated bills, as they can in Washington. Texas riders only appear on appropriations bills.

Though they might not appear in the draft of a bill seen on the floor, riders generally perform harmless functions such as directing an agency how to spend funds, or adding money for specific programs if more money surfaces.

But riders can create havoc, because they're often voted on out of the public eye. With cunning, riders can be crafted to serve ideological agendas that a full Legislature would likely never stomach. That's what happened last session in the Senate Finance Committee— and thousands of Texas women have had to pay with their health. Taxpayers in general paid too, their health care dollars squandered on an almost incredible political picnic.

Late in a meeting of the 2005 Senate Finance Committee, Chairman Steve Ogden shepherded to success a rider proposed by Sen. Tommy Williams. In that one, little-seen legislative gesture, the committee diverted $5 million over two years in family planning funds from reputable health care providers to a nonprofit devoted not to medical care, but to programs promoting alternatives to abortion. Texas law bans any of those dollars from going to abortions, regardless of the providers. But the diversion took the money away from proven, streamlined health providers such as Planned Parenthood, effectively punishing them for providing family planning services.

In principle, the rider was illogical. In practice, according to a lengthy story in the Austin Chronicle, it's been disastrous. In one year, money diverted from the established providers robbed more than 8,000 Texas women of preventive health care. The pilot program that got the money served a grand total of 11 women. According to the Austin Chronicle, the nonprofit received $58,000 for each of those clients, though it clearly did not spend the money helping them.

Could Texas have averted this horrendous waste if riders were banned? Maybe. It's hard to imagine a full Legislature allowing an unknown, untested program to swallow millions of previously well-spent dollars.

But riders aren't really the problem. Of the hundreds present in each Appropriations Act, the great majority of them clarify the way agencies should carry out the law.

Instead, riders are like kitchen knives or fire: useful, even essential tools, rarely wielded as weapons. Last session in the Senate Finance Committee, however, that misuse took place. Government watchdogs, advocates and reporters all should take note to ensure that this malignant use of a routine tool doesn't slip by again.