Think earmarks are a thing of the past? Think again.

The Army Corps of Engineers today released its civil works plan for fiscal 2012 that critics say continues the now-banned practice of lawmakers directing money to specific projects back home.

The plan redistributes $507 million to water projects, many of which were slated to receive no money in either President Obama's budget request or in the final spending plan that Congress approved and Obama signed in December. The total roughly corresponds to $534 million in congressional earmarks in the Army Corps' 2010 budget, ahead of the current earmark ban.

"Since Congress couldn't do their earmarks, in many cases they got the administration to do their dirty work for them," said Steve Ellis, vice president for Taxpayers for Common Sense, part of a coalition of groups opposed to earmarks. "They can claim they have an earmark ban. ... It's quite the clever end run around their own moratorium."

Rather than taking their earmark requests to appropriations committees, lawmakers now take them directly to the Army Corps, critics say, achieving the same result while avoiding public scrutiny.

To make it possible, Congress in the fiscal 2012 budget spread $507 million across 26 accounts the Army Corps controls. The civil works plan released today reveals which lawmaker-requested lock, dam, levee, port and other water projects received funding.

Congress freed up part of the $507 million by reducing funding for various projects in Obama's original budget request. What Congress ultimately approved and sent to the president for his signature was only $375 million larger than Obama's original proposal.

Lawmakers provided little direction as to how the money should be spent, leaving the door open for "bridge to nowhere" projects that are not economically justified, the coalition of critics told Jeffrey Zients, acting director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, in a Feb. 2 letter. The coalition includes Grover Norquist, the president of Americans for Tax Reform known for persuading lawmakers to sign his no-tax-increase pledge.

"These 'slush' funds must not simply be used to fund projects that were not good enough to make it into the President's budget," they wrote. "Otherwise, the Administration will be complicit in helping lawmakers obtain earmarks through the back door while Congress claims a moratorium is in place."

The Army Corps maintains that merit-based criteria determine which projects get money. In a news release today, the agency said money is going to "ongoing work," "work contributing to job creation and economic growth," "work in disaster areas," "work that reduces risks to life and property" and "priority maintenance and repairs," among other purposes.

But Ellis called the process a "black box," saying it was based on political, not economic, merit.

"The corps thinks every project has merit to differing degrees," he said. "Unless you limit the field of projects and try to prioritize funding, then it isn't truly merit. It's more like where every kid gets a ribbon for playing."

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), the chairwoman of the Senate Energy and Water Appropriations Subcommittee, which wrote and approved the bill that provided the roughly $500 million in discretionary funding for the Army Corps, said she opposed the moratorium on earmarks because it prevents lawmakers from deciding which projects deserve funding -- a basic responsibility of Congress.

"I mean, look -- this is the Senate and the House of Representatives of the United States," Feinstein said in an interview yesterday. "You can't tie people's hands to fight for their constituency."

If opponents of the current practice would "tie the ability of a member of Congress to ask the administration for something, I don't agree with that at all," Feinstein said. "I believe there's been an overreaction to earmarks."

Since the ban, some lawmakers have resorted to more drastic means to get their projects funded. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) threatened to block all Senate business last year unless the Army Corps awarded $40,000 to the Port of Charleston for a study of a proposed harbor-deepening project (E&ENews PM, April 13, 2011).

Graham, in an interview yesterday, again called for the creation of a fund separate from the Army Corps that would be transparent and allow lawmakers to make a case publicly for a why a certain project should go forward. Such a system, he said, would allow for big-picture infrastructure planning -- such as decisions about which ports should serve as hubs and which should not -- rather than the current piecemeal approach in which lawmakers are left to strong-arm funding from the agency.

"We have no vision," Graham said. "The downside of earmarking is it's so parochial. It doesn't create a national vision for infrastructure. The downside of an executive-branch-alone [system] is it creates mischief of its own."

Click here to read the Army Corps' "Work Plan (Fiscal Year 2012)."