Representative George Miller (CA-7) — the long-time congressman and California political legacy who represents Hercules in Washington — has included $3.12m for the Hercules Intermodal Station project in his FY11 appropriations request. If appropriated, the funds would be used for the “construction of the Bayfront Boulevard/Bridge and the purchase of an express bus.” The project would create create 112 jobs, most of which would presumably be temporary (construction).

The congressman warns constituents that the requests are “just the beginning of a lengthy congressional process that will not be decided until later this year.”

Anti-tax groups routinely refer to these earmark requests as “pet projects” — or worse, “pork” — and the press instinctively takes the bait. (Pork sells newspapers, I guess.)

Any which way you slice it, all public projects are pork, so Hercules receiving funds for the development of an alternative transportation hub is an example of good pork, and our representative in Congress fighting for those funds is all part of the process and the same pool of money that is is being spread as thin as possible to districts across the country to the politicians with most weight. (It’s either an intermodal facility in Hercules, or one in Iowa.)

Unless the arguably broken system is changed — say, to some lottery-based system with a complex algorithm that accounts for jobs created, population effected, long-term regional needs met, lack of other funding means exhibited, etc. — we have to work with the current system, and until that change happens, Hercules needs this earmark, pork or not.

The Intermodal Station was recently overlooked for a TIGER grant, and Miller included a request of $9m in the 2010 WRDA for the dredging of San Pablo Bay for a future ferry terminal in Hercules (which would be part of the Intermodal Station).