Not everyone is happy about the Alaska statehood celebration.

Almost $1 million for the project came thanks to provisions Sen. Ted Stevens tucked deep inside federal appropriations bills. President Mark Hamilton has called those earmarks "important appropriations," but critics say they're standard pork.

"This is, in our eyes, a particularly egregious earmark," said David Williams, a spokesperson for Citizens Against Government Waste, a national taxpayer watchdog group. "I mean, just look at what it's for -- a statehood celebration."

UA had sought at least $1.3 million for the project from the national government, a document highlighting the university's 2005 federal initiatives shows. By December 2004, celebration organizers had received three federal grants totaling $944,095.

Williams said money for the event should be coming from state coffers rather than from the federal government, adding that if earmark reform ever went through, a project like this would be "gone in a heartbeat."

Courtney Boone, a spokesperson for Stevens, said the senator does not consider the projects pork. Rather, Stevens believes the funds are important to meeting constituent needs, she said.

"Just as other states have had their history preserved, this is an opportunity for Alaska to do the same," Boone said.

In November 2004, the celebration received $248,375 to research Alaska statehood thanks to an earmark Stevens placed in the omnibus spending bill. The General Services Administration, the federal procurement agency, distributed the grant.

Citizens Against Government Waste included the earmark in its 2005 Congressional Pig Book, a collection of assorted of pork barrel spending.

Statehood celebration organizers used the money to complete an oral history project and to develop museum displays, a March 2005 newsletter says.

But that wasn't the most the project had received. In 2003, it received $447,345 from the same agency thanks again to a Stevens earmark. Those funds went to oral history and documentary programs for public television, according to a project newsletter.

Event planners also got $248,375 in 2002 from the GSA. The Chronicle for Higher Education included that earmark in a 2003 article about academic pork.

For his support, Stevens received "sincere thanks" from project organizers. Hamilton gave him props in letter accompanying a project report.

Funding didn't come only from federal appropriations. The University of Alaska Foundation contributed $330,000, and private groups gave $64,000 for the Conference of Young Alaskans.

Grant funds have gone to several projects, including a KUAC documentary that debuted Saturday; finding historic materials related to the constitutional convention and statehood movement; and creating Alaska history high school curricula.

Kate Ripley, a university spokesperson, said the grants also paid for a full-time coordinator, a student worker, and a part-time public relations official. Other individuals involved in the project, including Ripley, work part-time and do not receive payment out of project funds, she said.

Another grant, which Ripley characterized as "small," could come through in time for the 2009 statehood celebration. Ripley said the request isn't very far along, and she wasn't sure what the money's source would be.