Since Congress reinstated the legislative process known as “earmarking” in 2022, few lawmakers have had more success securing funding for their own districts than Rep. Ken Calvert.

Calvert, California's longest-serving Republican in Congress, has since pumped more than $100 million into projects in his Riverside County district.

The appropriations, which lawmakers included in a federal spending bill, include $9 million to decongest and add toll lanes on Interstate 15, $2 million to widen a bridge in Corona, a traffic-plagued area, and $5 million for a rail project linking Los Angeles and Palm Springs.

The planned $16 million renovations are within a few miles of rental properties owned by Calvert, raising questions about the extent to which he is personally benefiting from the specific budget he has set aside.

Calvert's real estate portfolio includes 10 commercial rental properties in the Corona area, a 20-acre estate in Riverside County, two properties in Arizona and homes in Corona and Washington, D.C. The California properties are worth as much as $26 million, according to his financial disclosures, and brought him rental income ranging from $320,000 to $805,000 last year.

Calvert and his business partners own a majority of the real estate, including auto repair centers, self-storage facilities and shopping malls in downtown Corona and the nearby light industrial district.

Calvert, 71, said the projects he funds through earmarked budgets are based on requests from local governments, and he doesn't take into account his rental properties or how he personally benefits when choosing which projects to support with federal taxpayer dollars.

“If I wanted to make money, I wouldn't be running for Congress,” Calvert said.

Calvert, a veteran real estate investor, was first elected to the House in 1992. He has not reported any property sales since Congress reinstated the earmarked budget process.

“I enjoy investing,” Calvert said. “It's not illegal. Real estate is something I know and I make a little bit of money from it. … I don't see anything wrong with it.”

Questions about the real estate deal have resurfaced as Calvert runs for reelection against Democrat Will Rollins, a former federal prosecutor who Calvert defeated two years ago. But the race has turned out to be closer than expected, in part because of redistricting that replaced some reliably conservative areas of the 41st Congressional District in 2022 with more liberal areas such as Palm Springs.

Rollins, who previously worked on national security cases at the Justice Department, has criticized Calvert's real estate history in his home district, saying he demonstrates “the widely held perception that people go to Congress to get rich.”

An investigation of Calvert's financial records also found he failed to report the purchase of a commercial rental property in Corona in 2016.

But since 2021, Calvert has reported earning between $15,000 and $50,000 in annual rental income from a property on East 6th Street that houses an auto repair shop and an emissions testing station. The property is about a mile from the Corona bridge and has $2 million in earmarked funds provided through Calvert's office.

Calvert spokesman Jason Gagnon said the building was purchased in September 2016 for $2.25 million and Calvert's 11 percent investment stake is valued at $247,000.

Calvert said he and his siblings bought the building in 2016 after selling property left to them by their late mother. The building was in “pretty bad shape” and needed a new roof and car park, he said, making it unsuitable for renting for several years.

In response to questions from The Times, Calvert said he would file an amended financial disclosure statement.

Calvert defends use of earmarked funds

Experts say while investment properties are relatively common in parliament, having a property portfolio within a local constituency can raise a number of ethical quandaries.

Lawmakers are prohibited from using their office to enrich themselves, but Brett Kappel, a lawyer who has advised Republicans and Democrats on government ethics and campaign finance, said lawmakers are generally allowed to push for budget allocations that “benefit society as a whole, even if they may benefit personally.”

Noah Bookbinder, president of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics, a government watchdog group in Washington, said it was “highly unlikely” that Calvert violated Congress' “fairly loose, fairly permissive” conflict-of-interest laws.

“It gets even more difficult when you consider the conflict aspect,” Bookbinder said. “When you have a lot of income coming from rental properties that could be affected by your decision, it raises the question of what is the motivation?”

Calvert said earmarked funds are an important way for the Inland Empire to secure funding because it is “kind of a stepchild” compared to California's larger urban areas.

Rollins said she also supports the appropriations bill but worries the system could be abused. She said she would support legislation requiring lawmakers to put their assets in blind trusts and would also support jail time for lawmakers who don't disclose their assets.

Similar bills have not made any progress in Congress in recent years, a sign that the lack of appetite for ethics reform is a “bipartisan issue,” Rollins said.

Congress banned earmarked funds in 2011 after a series of high-profile scandals, including Alaska's infamous “Bridge to Nowhere” project and several lawmakers who found themselves in legal trouble after steering funds to their own districts.

They include former Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham (R-Rancho Santa Fe), who pleaded guilty in 2005 to accepting $2.4 million in bribes from military contractors in exchange for steering contracts and funds to projects.

Around the same time, Calvert, along with Inland Empire Rep. Gary Miller and former House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.), were investigated for reported profits on real estate deals near projects funded with congressional appropriations.

Calvert and a business partner bought 4.3 acres of vacant land near the air base in Riverside County for $550,000 in 2005. In August 2005, President George W. Bush signed a highway bill that included $8 million to build an interchange with Interstate 15 and $1.5 million to support commercial development around the airfield.

Calvert and his partners sold the property a few months later for $985,000, a 79 percent profit. Calvert told The Times at the time that people were “trying to create a controversy where there isn't one” and that he had done nothing illegal.

After President Obama He said he would veto the move. After a bill was introduced to ban legislation involving earmarked budgets, the Legislature passed a resolution to temporarily ban the practice in 2011. Calvert supported that ban and passed a resolution to lift the moratorium 10 years later.

Appropriations rules have been tightened, lawmakers must post requests online to demonstrate they have community support, and Republicans in the House of Representatives have limited each lawmaker to 15 appropriations requests.

Kedrick Payne, senior director of ethics at the Campaign Legal Center and a former deputy chief counsel for the Office of Congressional Ethics, said it's too early to tell whether the reforms have helped clean up the appropriations process. The question, he said, is whether Congress is “back on a path that leads to the same problems we tried to avoid last time.”

Proposals for building bridges or toll roads near investment properties

Calvert remains one of the most successful appropriators in the House. He secured about $44 million for his congressional district last fiscal year, the 24th-highest total of any congressional district, according to a Times analysis of federal spending bills. Calvert was outspent by three other members of California's delegation: Reps. Darrell Issa (R-Vista), David Valadao (R-Hanford) and Zoe Lofgren (D-San Jose).

Calvert said he meets annually with cities in his jurisdiction to encourage them to apply for specific budgets with the agency. Gagnon said his office has received 35 applications for fiscal year 2024 and 37 for fiscal year 2025.

Calvert has prioritized projects that primarily address traffic congestion.

That includes $2 million to widen the bridge along Magnolia Avenue, which connects downtown Corona with light industrial areas to the east. A city-commissioned study found that widening the bridge from four to six lanes could prevent some of the worst traffic congestion over the next 20 years, but overall traffic congestion will continue to worsen as the city's population grows. The $17.5 million project is tentatively scheduled for completion in 2027, according to the city of Corona.

Calvert owns six properties within two miles of the bridge, including an auto repair center, a group of office buildings and a self-storage facility.

Calvert also secured $3 million to add toll lanes to the center of Interstate 15, which would be about 15 miles long through Corona, El Cerrito and Temescal Valley. The northernmost end of the project is about four miles south of Calvert's rental property.

The toll road project, which could ease the Inland Empire's notorious traffic congestion, “is probably one of the things people have been hoping for the most,” Calvert said.

The toll road construction project could cost as much as $650 million, said David Knudsen, deputy executive director of the Riverside County Transportation Commission, which requested the budget allocation.

The nearby intersection with Interstate 15 has received $6 million in earmarked funding over two years to improve traffic flow for vehicles, pedestrians and bicycles.

RCTC also received $5 million in federal funding to pay for an environmental study for a rail line connecting downtown Los Angeles to Palm Springs. The project would use existing Metrolink tracks between Los Angeles and downtown Riverside and add new tracks through the Coachella Valley, Knudsen said.

Routes and stops have yet to be determined, but one of the two Metrolink lines running between Los Angeles and Riverside will have a stop in downtown Corona, just a few blocks from several of Calvert's properties.

Calvert said one of the reasons he supports the project is its potential use for freight traffic at night. He said when passenger traffic is stopped, the line could be used to transport freight from the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach to distribution centers in the Inland Empire, reducing truck traffic and emissions.

The $1.5 billion rail line is a “huge project” that's still a long way off, Knudsen said. The study alone would take five to 10 years to complete, he said.