Pork for Postville: Tom Harkin helped Agriprocessors stay in business

Four years ago, senator Tom Harkin - Democrat of Iowa - helped get an exemption for the Agriprocessors plant in Postville, without which they might have gone out of business. This year, that company was the subject of a major immigration raid and has subsequently been charged with over 9000 child labor law violations. And, it's not like that was much of a surprise to those in the area.

The money, nearly $8 million, came from an environmental program from which Agriprocessors normally would have been disqualified. The grant and loan were used to build a sewage-treatment plant that serves only the meatpacker.

The environmental program, run by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, is designed to help small towns improve their sewage systems. The new sewage-treatment plant is technically owned by Postville, but it doesn't serve the town's residents. Department administrators say that fact usually would have prevented it from receiving money from the program. But Harkin, an Iowa Democrat, used his influence to exempt the project from those rules in 2004.

"It was a sleight of hand on this deal," said Jerry Anderson, a Drake University law professor and Agriprocessors critic. "We thought it was a misuse of the law."

Mon, 12/29/2008 - 14:34 · · Importance: 4