Hart said his group had supported Trump’s campaign-trail calls for more efficient government. But now, he said, the #Trump admin was moving in the opposite direction, & wrongly invoking the upcoming celebrations as an “emergency”, to justify bypassing legally required competition [+ oversight & review].
“We’ve known that this is going to be America’s 250th anniversary for 250 years,” Hart said. “It’s not like we didn’t have time to plan.”
John Hart, chief executive of the conservative watchdog group Open the Books, said that the government seemed to be flying blind, embarking on an expensive project without knowing for sure what it would cost or how well it would work.
“The first thing any rational homeowner, family or business does is they solicit competitive bids,” Hart said. “Because when you rely on sole source contracting, it opens the door to extraordinary waste.”
In #Trump’s effort to repair Washington landmarks as part of preparations for the country’s 250th birthday this summer, his admin has used the upcoming celebrations as an excuse to bypass the usual process of seeking multiple bids for the same job, & has instead given lucrative contracts directly to handpicked vendors.
The revelations about the profit margin built into the #ReflectingPool contract—& the contractor’s struggles—…illustrate the risks of the Trump admin’s use of no-bid contracts.
Now that the repair work is underway, other documents indicate that the same #contractor had—at least initially—not been able to perform one of the most critical parts of its repair job: sealing the gaps between the concrete slabs at the pool’s floor.
Water has leaked out of those gaps for decades, creating a costly problem that #Trump has vowed to fix. But the contractor’s attempts to seal those gaps failed in 2 trials earlier this month…
#ReflectingPool Contract Has ‘#Inflated’ #Profit Margin, Government Analysis Finds
Atlantic Industrial Coatings, the Virginia-based contractor, is being paid $13.1 million, which is seven times the amount that #Trump initially said the work would cost.
The firm that was given a no-bid contract to “repair” the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, is charging 20%. The typical profit margin is 6% to 12%, internal records show.
#GovernmentWaste #scam #economy
nytimes.com/2026/05/27/us/poli…
