By Sharon Zhang
This article was originally published by Truthout
“They just took the cover page of my estimate and just added a bunch of money,” the original cost estimator said.
The Trump administration has covertly granted the private company building President Donald Trump’s ballroom project a no-bid federal contract for a project near the White House, and then quintupled its value from its original price estimate, new reporting shows.
The New York Times reports that, in January, the Trump administration granted Clark Construction a contract to repair two fountains in Lafayette Park, which sits across from the White House, and they did so without posting the grant on public databases.
The National Park Service (NPS) project, which will be paid for with federal money, was originally estimated to cost $3.3 million, according to calculations done in 2022 under the Biden administration. But the Trump administration inflated that to $11.9 million, and then later tacked on provisions to raise the value to $17.4 million, internal NPS documents showed.
The agency undertook numerous unusual measures both to ensure that Clark would be granted the project without competition, and that it would be given over quintuple the original cost estimate to complete it.
For instance, the administration used inflation as a reason to tack on another $2 million to the project. Officials also invoked an exception, citing “urgency,” to bypass the part of the typical federal contracting process requiring the government to consider multiple bids for the project in order to save money. This exception has not been used in 99 percent of NPS contracts in the past decade, according to the Times.
The consultant who did the estimate for the Biden administration, Stephen J. Kirk, told the Times that the additions to the budget were completely arbitrary.
“They just took the cover page of my estimate and just added a bunch of money onto it,” said Kirk. “I didn’t add those extra millions on there.”
The administration said that the project was urgent because of the nation’s 250th birthday celebration coming up this July. But one expert, contracting law expert Steven L. Schooner, said that this excuse is frivolous.
“No one will die. No one’s quality of life will be diminished. There is nothing urgent about this,” he said. “Self-imposed deadlines aren’t urgency. And lack of planning isn’t urgency.”
Clark Construction was tapped by the Trump administration last year to build his $400 million ballroom — a privately-funded project that has already sparked a mountain of corruption concerns, with corporations using donations to potentially gain Trump’s favor. Trump has repeatedly sung Clark Construction’s praises, and has previously said that he wants to grant it numerous contracts for various projects around Washington, D.C.
Trump posted an 11-second video showing one of the repaired fountains on Truth Social on Saturday. The video shows an oval shaped pool with two lit-up fountains spraying water. The fountain lights change color in sync.
“The first time Lafayette Park Fountains, opposite the White House, have worked in decades. My Great Honor to have funded this project (and many others!), and helped,” Trump wrote.
After the Times article was published, Trump posted a screed against the publication, claiming that he made “a multimillion contribution to the effort,” without evidence of that claim.
“Once again, The Failing New York Times has attempted to grossly mischaracterize what should be hailed as the restoration of Beauty and Grandeur to our Nation’s Capital as something else completely,” Trump wrote. “The New York Times should congratulate us, instead of trying to make us look bad.”
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