In an apparent effort to speed construction of President Donald Trump’s proposed Triumphal Arch, reports the Washington Post, his administration attempted to attach the project to an unrelated contract for engineering services at the White House more than a mile away.
Experts say this action is notable for two reasons besides distance and location. First, because the arch site is on National Park Service land across the Potomac River and is not part of the White House complex. And second, because it would allow the administration to bypass a potentially lengthy public bidding process.
“Park Service acting director Jessica Bowron wrote to White House officials last month asking whether the agency could extend a contract between the White House and engineering firm AECOM Services for an environmental assessment for the proposed 250-foot arch,” reported the Post. “In her email, Bowron acknowledged that the proposed arch isn’t adjacent to the White House like Lafayette Square, another site AECOM has worked on under the same agreement, but she wrote that using the existing contract would allow work to ‘align with the Administration’s timeline.’”
“I realize it's a little further afield than Lafayette Park, but given the engagement on this project from the WH, I thought I’d check,” Bowron wrote in late April. An hour later, the reply came: “Yes of course,” wrote Heather Martin, an official in the Executive Office of the President.
At this point it’s unclear whether this plan was implemented. In any case, according to the latest administration timeline, the site testing was scheduled to begin this week, and heavy machinery arrived on Monday.
While the Department of the Interior denies the report, an administration official speaking on the condition of anonymity confirmed that it was likely the agency would use one of the White House’s “existing contracts for the environmental assessment process.”
This is just the latest among the administration’s many efforts to skirt construction norms as it rushed to proceed with Trump’s vanity projects. As the Post notes, “In just over 15 months, the Trump administration has demolished the White House’s East Wing, painted the Lincoln Memorial’s reflecting pool blue, taken over the public golf course at East Potomac Park and begun an overhaul of the Kennedy Center. Every one of the moves has triggered lawsuits alleging the projects are illegal.”
Now yet again, experts are questioning the administration’s move.
According to Stan Soloway, a former Pentagon acquisition official who is board chair at the National Academy of Public Administration, “It’s a real stretch to say that a contract for work on the White House campus, particularly the White House itself, has any relevance at all to an arch a mile away.”
