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WASHINGTON — Sen. Lisa Murkowski and Rep. Don Young said Thursday they would join Sen. Ted Stevens in posting appropriation requests on their official Web sites.

“I am joining Sen. Stevens and Congressman Young in taking this step to highlight the appropriations process that the delegation goes through each year,” Murkowski said in a prepared statement.

Young said he too would make public the earmark requests sent to his office by the state and municipal governments and other organizations.

Earmarking, the process by which lawmakers direct a portion of the federal budget to a specific project or recipient, has become a major battlefield in Congress. The struggle is pitting Republicans determined to reclaim the banner of fiscal conservatism against GOP members who view earmarking as an efficient way to fund worthy projects back home.

Gov. Sarah Palin, a Republican, has called on the state to wean itself from federal pork, a suggestion that has upset her fellow Republicans on Alaska’s congressional delegation.

“It’s ironic,” Young said in a telephone interview on Thursday. “I’m a little bit at a loss when the governor has asked for 31 earmarks of her own.”

In December, Palin directed her administration to ask for no more than 12 earmarks annually, excluding ongoing appropriations and earmarks for the Alaska National Guard. Sharon Leighow, spokeswoman for the governor, said the nearly $200 million requested for fiscal year 2009 adheres to that policy.

Murkowski’s office received about 500 requests for specific projects this year.

Anne Johnson, a spokeswoman for Murkowski, said making the earmarks public will shed more light on how the delegation evaluates requests and determines which ones to pursue. Murkowski usually tries to win funding for the top 20, Johnson said.

Young, a staunch defender of lawmaker-directed earmarks, has received about 300 requests for the 2009 fiscal year.

“If I can, I’m going to try to get every one of them,” he said. “I probably won’t succeed, but I’m going to do everything I can to meet the needs of my constituents.”

Young and Stevens, both of whom face tough re-election bids this year, have bristled at the governor’s criticism. Palin said she did not mean her comments as a rebuke of the delegation.

“If the state wants to do the whole thing on their own, have at it,” Young said. “But these are requests from communities that feel they are not being served.”

Murkowski has added an earmarks section to her senate Web site, though as of Thursday no requests had been listed. Johnson said the site should be updated sometime late next week.

A spokeswoman for Young said they would have the requests up by the end of next week.

Stevens’ Web site would have hundreds of requests from dozens of entities posted to it today, Stevens’ spokesman Aaron Saunders said.

“It takes awhile to go through them and scan them all in,” Saunders said.

What began as a tiff with the widely popular Palin, though, has been turned into an opportunity for the delegation to defend the role of Congress in determining how taxpayer dollars are spend.

“By posting appropriations requests on our Web site we can demonstrate the real needs that local communities and organizations have identified across the state,” Murkowski said.

Opponents of earmarking don’t appear to care what prompted the delegation’s move toward more transparency.

The nonprofit watchdog group Citizens Against Government Waste, which has blasted the delegation for bringing home more pork per capita than any other state since 2000, issued a statement praising the decision to post the requests.

“This is a positive step,” said Tom Schatz, the group’s president. “It would be preferable if the state requested no earmarks, but we hope that these are signs that Alaska is becoming more transparent and responsible.”

Last month, Young fired off a letter to the group — which had just nominated him for the “Porker of the Year” award; he came in second — defending the earmark process.

Young said the 18 earmarks he inserted in appropriation bills last year for a total of $10.3 million were “hardly even a blip on the radar of a multi-billion dollar budget, especially when other members have earmarked hundreds of millions.”

Lawmaker-directed spending represents a fraction of 1 percent of the total federal budget and impacts whether the president or Congress makes the decision on various projects, not how much is spent, Young said.

“Every earmark secured was requested, more likely than not, by an Alaskan community or nonprofit organization that needed federal assistance,” Young wrote.

In response to Young’s letter, Schatz said earmarks “distort the normal budget process and encourage corrupt behavior.”

Young, who is under federal investigation related to his use of earmarks, complained the group was only interested in using the issue to raise money.

Democrats in both chambers of Congress have pushed through new rules requiring lawmakers to sign their names to earmarks, though critics, including many Republicans, complain the changes don’t go far enough.