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To those on the outside, the congressional budget process seems murky and mysterious, a sausage grinder of policy and politics.

But to an insider such as Congressman Mario Diaz-Balart, it’s, well, murky and mysterious, a sausage grinder of policy and politics.

Diaz-Balart, who proudly takes credit for helping to secure $81 million to widen Interstate 75 in Collier and Lee counties, says even he doesn’t know how an extra $10 million — targeted toward bringing an interchange to the I-75 Coconut Road intersection — made its way into last year’s federal transportation bill.

What’s more, he holds out little hope of ever finding out.

The $10 million was inserted into the bill late in the process whereby members of the House and Senate get together to iron out differences between their respective versions of a law, known as the conference committee.

“I think it was done exceedingly late in conference. Possibly the last second in conference,” said Diaz-Balart, a Miami Republican who represents part of Collier County.

The money likely was included at the behest of one member of the House or Senate with no debate. It hadn’t been requested by Southwest Florida transportation officials who have been asking for years for money for the broader I-75 project.

That sort of inclusion, known as an earmark, is the focus of reform efforts in Congress, where the odious practice of anonymously slipping dubious projects into massive spending bills finally may have reached a critical mass.

The 2005 transportation bill, coupled with the Randy “Duke” Cunningham and Jack Abramoff corruption scandals, brought enough attention to the practice of earmarking to force Congress to at least talk about reform, even though analysts say meaningful changes will be difficult to enact.

One theory on the $10 million Coconut Road appropriation is that Don Young, R-Alaska, chairman of the House Transportation Committee, agreed to add the item. Young visited Southwest Florida in February 2005 to see I-75 conditions first-hand. While here, he was the beneficiary of a fundraiser held at the Hyatt Coconut Point. Among the contributors was Daniel Aronoff, a part-time Naples resident who owns two 600-acre parcels just east of the proposed intersection site.

But Diaz-Balart can neither lend credence to nor refute that theory, even though he claims to have tried.

“I’ve had a lot of conversations and I’ve yet to get a defined answer,” Diaz-Balart said in an interview last week with the Naples Daily News editorial board.

He suggests the answer may be forever lost in the cacophony of the conference committee.

“Who put that in there? Try to get the answer,” he said in resigned exasperation.

Diaz-Balart describes the conference committee as a high-stakes horse-trading session, in which members strike deals with one another on favored projects, frequently leaving no paper trail. Staffers are often assigned to formalize the agreements in writing.

An item such as the Coconut Road funding could be added by a member with no obvious interest in Southwest Florida in exchange for another member’s cooperation on a different project, Diaz-Balart explained.

The passage of the 2005 transportation bill was a dicey time for Florida, Diaz-Balart said. The initial House version of the bill had Florida receiving only about 87 cents in projects for every dollar of federal gas tax collected. Eventually, Florida ended up with 92 cents on the dollar. Diaz-Balart credits Rep. Tom Delay, R-Texas, for marshaling the forces to get a better deal for Florida and other donor states.

The $10 million for Coconut Road was one of some 6,400 earmarks in the transportation bill. Those earmarks, most notoriously a $220 million bridge to a sparsely populated island in Alaska, garnered national attention.

That, along with the revelation that California Congressman Cunningham had sold earmarks to defense contractors and the fraud conviction of Abramoff, a prominent lobbyist, created a climate for reform in Washington.

Both the House and Senate are working on bills that address earmarks, lobbying, travel and other aspects of congressional ethics.

One of the more than 50 such bills introduced through April is Sen. John McCain’s “Pork Barrel Reduction Act,” which would require disclosure of the identity of the member requesting an earmark and require conference reports to be available publicly for at least 48 hours before a final vote.

Ronald Utt, an analyst with the conservative Heritage Foundation, suspects support for stringent reform does not run deep in the Senate.

“Although the Pork Barrel Reduction Act has attracted more co-sponsors than many of the other reform measures, the number was well short of the votes needed to pass it, especially since many senators view the pursuit of earmarks as an essential and legitimate part of their duties. As a result, there is a profound lack of enthusiasm for any type of earmark reform but lots of interest in figuring out how to get even more,” Utt wrote in a report on the ethics reform measures.

“For much of 2005, many in Congress responded to the public’s escalating concern over lobbyists, earmarks, and corrupt practices with the attitude that these were one-day stories and individual aberrations that will soon be forgotten. Beyond some perfunctory sense of regret and an acknowledgment that they can probably do a little bit better, some members and staff believe that nothing much needs to change and that the only priority that matters is the swift return to business as usual,” Utt continued.

For his part, Diaz-Balart admits he likes earmarks. The earmark process is, after all, what allowed him and Rep. Connie Mack to secure the $81 million for the I-75 widening.

Budget priorities set by staff are really just another form of earmark made by unaccountable bureaucrats, he argues.

He believes meaningful reform can be implemented and says disclosure is key.

“Serious earmark reform is going on. It is essential to put your name on it,” Diaz-Balart said.

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Brent Batten’s e-mail address is: bebatten@naplesnews.com.