By Peter Sachs / The Bulletin
WASHINGTON - Marti Gerdes was alarmed when a national group labeled funding for her museum's restoration project a barrel of pork in a report released this week.
Gerdes is the curator of the Kam Wah Chung & Co. Museum in John Day. And though it is hardly easy to get to for most tourists, that doesn't make it any less valuable to preserve, she said.
The museum received a $400,000 grant last year for restoration efforts that Gerdes said are badly needed. But since the grant was inserted in a congressional appropriations bill without any debate, the watchdog group Citizens Against Government Waste labeled it, along with 83 others in Oregon, a pork barrel project.
"That's not pork barrel, it's totally legitimate," Gerdes said.
Filled with several thousand artifacts dating to the mid-1800s, Kam Wah Chung started out as a general store and medical clinic for Chinese-Americans who came to the area in search of gold.
When immigrants Lung On and Doc Hay bought the building in 1888, they turned it into an active mercantile and apothecary for herbal medicine.
It was named a National Historic Landmark in 2005 and is managed in conjunction with the Oregon Parks and Recreation Department, the city of John Day and Friends of Kam Wah Chung.
"Kam Wah Chung is one of the most unique resources of its type in the United States," said James Hamrick, the Oregon State Parks Heritage Program director. In September, the museum was named a National Historic Landmark, only the 16th in Oregon.
The money Kam Wah Chung received came from the Save America's Treasures grant program, which awards $30 million nationally each year. The request for the money was made by U.S. Rep. Greg Walden's office.
The grant was apparently hefty enough and obscure enough to make it onto Citizens Against Government Waste's list of highlights that it considered most egregious. But a spokesman for the group said that it does not do extensive research on the nearly 10,000 projects it lists for 2005. The group said it uses a set of seven criteria, such as whether a bill was debated or not, to determine whether a given allocation is a pork project.
Gerdes said the grant is fully justified and is only a portion of the $1.5 million her museum plans to spend in the next few years. The rest of the money has already been raised through a combination of private donations and grants from state and regional organizations.
But others disagree that the federal government should provide funding for museums when state and local governments could better fill the role.
"There's little justification for pushing up federal spending and the budget deficit in order to subsidize museums that have shown the ability to raise private money," said Brian Riedl, an analyst at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank in Washington, D.C.
The museum sees about 5,000 visitors annually and has received the support of Gov. Ted Kulongoski's wife, Mary Oberst, who spearheaded its fundraising campaign.
Work on inventorying artifacts will start this year, Gerdes said, with the rest of the restoration done by 2010.
"It's an incredible amount of long-term, long-range foresight in how to care for a building that's 140 years old," she said.
That care will include adding new fire suppression and security systems, restoring masonry, creating a master plan and eventually building an adjacent interpretive center for visitors, Gerdes said.
But the fact remains, even with those improvements, John Day is a three-hour drive from Bend and about six hours away from Portland. With the town so hard to get to for most people, who would the updated museum serve?
"There is a lot of local and regional pride about this resource," Hamrick said. "I think you will find that people will come if you have something for them to see."