The Trump administration is reportedly considering using an existing White House contract to start work on the president’s unrelated 250-foot “victory arch” project, even though the latter is more than a mile away across the Potomac River.
In an April 22 email obtained by The Washington Post, National Park Service acting director Jessica Bowron allegedly floated extending an existing contract with the firm AECOM Services for work on the White House grounds to cover environmental assessment on the arch plan.
“I realize it’s a little further afield than Lafayette Park,” she wrote of the park across from the White House, “but given the engagement on this project from the [White House], I thought I’d check,” Bowron allegedly wrote.
“Yes of course,” an individual in the Executive Office of the President reportedly replied.
Elsewhere in the correspondence, Bowron reportedly fretted that AECOM hadn’t sent its “A team” to work on the existing contracts it has for the White House grounds. The firm, the Post estimates, has some $695 million in deals for work on the White House ballroom, visitor screening center and Lafayette Park improvements.
It is unclear if the administration went through with the plan to combine the various contracts to fast-track the arch.
Survey work on the arch began on Monday, and workers and heavy machinery could be seen at the project site.
“That assertion on contract sourcing is incorrect,” the Department of the Interior, which oversees the National Park Service, told The Independent. “Any correspondence that has been leaked to the Washington Post was draft/deliberative conversations and is not the final determination.”
The Independent has contacted the White House and AECOM for comment.
Observers, meanwhile, said using an unrelated contract for work on the arch would mean avoiding the usual competitive bidding process for government deals.
“You lose the benefits of competition, pricing and transparency,” contracting expert Alan Chvotkin told the Post.
The president has moved at breakneck speed to remake Washington in his image as part of the 250th anniversary celebrations of American independence, unilaterally demolishing the White House East Wing, renaming and remodeling the Kennedy Center and giving a no-bid contract to a little-known company to resurface the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool.
Each of these efforts has triggered strong pushback and lawsuits.
A group of veterans is suing to block the arch project, arguing the planned monument blocks the “historically significant view” between Arlington National Cemetery and the Lincoln Memorial.
“The President’s planned arch will be a continuous visual affront to this principle and a personal affront to people, like me, who have fought for this Nation and devoted their careers to serving it,” Michael Lemmon, the lead plaintiff in the case and a U.S. Army veteran who served in the Vietnam War, said in a statement in February.
Last month, the Commission of Fine Arts greenlit the arch, though the commission acknowledged public comments about the project were “100 percent” negative.
