Rep. John Mica (R-Fla.), the ranking member of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, expects Congress to pass a bill before the December recess that will reverse Rep. Don Young’s (R-Alaska) now notorious Coconut Road earmark.

“I believe it will get done in December,” he told The Hill before the Thanksgiving recess.

Taxpayers for Common Sense asked the ethics committee to investigate whether Young was motivated to request the change because of a $40,000 fundraiser held for him in the Southwest Florida district. One of the developers who helped organize the event, David Aronoff, owns 4,000 acres adjacent to Coconut Road, including 1,200 acres directly east of the proposed interchange.

The change in the transportation bill caught the attention of members of the Lee County Metropolitan Planning Organization, who were counting on the road-widening money and were alarmed when it was re-directed to Coconut Road. They have since voted three times to send the money back to Congress in the hope that it would be reallocated for its original intention.

In early October, Mica and House Transportation panel Chairman Jim Oberstar (D-Minn.) agreed to work on making the change in response to a request by Rep. Connie Mack (R-Fla.), who represents Lee County. But Mica became concerned that the only available vehicle, a bill making technical corrections to the massive 2005 highway measure, was held up in the Senate. Mica planned to change the Coconut Road earmark language during conference committee negotiations.

The House passed its latest version of the bill in early August, but the corrections measure has been languishing in the Senate, where two unknown senators are objecting to moving it to the floor, according to GOP Transportation aides.

Although Mica did not comment directly on those objections, he said there now “seems to be some movement in the Senate.”

The GOP Transportation aides elaborated that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) plans to “hotline” the bill, a move to approve the legislation without debate or amendment, a common tactic used by Senate leaders to smoke out opposition.

“The Senate is trying to get its House in order,” remarked one GOP Transportation staffer.

Reid’s office did not respond to a request for comment by press time.

Resistance to the corrections bill in that chamber is unrelated to the Coconut Road earmark controversy. At least one Florida senator, Republican Mel Martinez, wholeheartedly supports reversing the earmark to reflect what the local municipality believes is a real transportation need in Florida.

“We would certainly be supportive of any corrective action that the House would take,” said Martinez spokesman Ken Lundberg.

Calls to Sen. Bill Nelson’s (D-Fla.) office were not returned.

Meanwhile, Young’s spokeswoman, Meredith Kenny, has refused to comment about whether Young or his staffers requested the Coconut Road Interchange to the earmark language. But she previously told The Hill that “when the language was first inserted in the bill,” Young was responding to a need expressed by Florida Gulf Coast University and “area residents” for a “hurricane evacuation route.”

“If they no longer see a need for that evacuation route, then that is well within their right,” she said.

Taxpayers for Common Sense’s Keith Ashdown applauded Mica’s efforts to reverse the earmark by the end of this Congress.

“They’re doing the Lord’s work,” he said. “I can’t think of a better righting of a wrong that Congress could do this session.”

After the unorthodox earmark change was discovered, lawmakers on Capitol Hill tried to figure out how it occurred and what action could be taken to reverse it. A Congressional Research Service (CRS) memo written in early October outlined the constitutional violations that occur when lawmakers, staff or enrolling clerks make substantive changes to bills after they pass the House and Senate. The memo, which was requested by an unidentified congressional office, said lawmakers must pass a concurrent resolution if they want to make such a substantive change to a bill. If Congress does not pass a concurrent resolution, the law can be challenged in court.

A more recent CRS memo, dated Oct. 29 and obtained by The Hill, lists 37 concurrent resolutions introduced in the House since the 107th Congress aimed at making substantive corrections to bills.

The memo also notes that the House agreed to only one concurrent resolution to the 2005 transportation bill, which struck language that Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) inserted during conference negotiations to reopen an airfield at Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana. The action would have overturned a recommendation of the Base Realignment and Closure Commission.

When House members found out about the airfield language, they were so outraged they held up the bill until the early morning before the August recess to strike that provision.

But lawmakers did not address the Coconut Road change in the same way because they were either not aware of it or not bothered by it.

The CRS memo said the House concurrent resolution targets Baucus’s provision “but is silent on any other specific changes,” including the alteration made to provide $10 million for Coconut Road.