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CONTACT: Judy Feldman, 301-340-3938

Illegal Contract Sullies National Icon, Coalition Says

Washington, D.C., March 17, 2004 — The Inspector General at the Department of the Interior has been asked to investigate "flagrantly illegal" contracts being performed at the Washington Monument Grounds. Attorney Joseph West of Arnold and Porter LLP, writing on behalf of the National Coalition to Save Our Mall, charged that the National Park Service avoided government procurement regulations when it modified a 1998 contract so it could take on new, unrelated security work, and in the process raised the cost cap on the contract by 700%.

Read Attorney Joseph West's letter to the Inspector General (PDF format, 24k)

At issue is a 1998 Park Service contract to Grunley-Walsh Joint Venture to "stabilize and preserve the Washington Monument" (the Michael Graves scaffolding project). That work was substantially completed by June 2000. Then in June 2001 the Park Service modified the contract with task orders for an unrelated security screening facility at the base of the Monument. Months later, the Park Service raised the cost limitation on the contract from the original 1998 $5 million to now $40 million, to cover design-build costs of a distinctly different project involving a new visitor center, tunnel, and security barrier walls, parts of which are now under construction.

"Taxpayers pay a price for all those ugly fences, and the construction equipment digging up the Monument grounds to build barrier walls in the middle of our open public space." says Judy Scott Feldman, president of the Mall coalition. "Who is monitoring the mounting costs and the damage to the National Mall?" Feldman contends that the National Park Service, as stewards of the Mall, has been exploiting security fears and misusing no-bid contracts to evade laws meant to protect the public interest.

Rejecting as hollow, government justifications that the project is a response to the 9/11 "national emergency," attorney West points out that the Park Service has proceeded "at what can best be called a glacial pace." He points out that security barriers were already in place in 1998, years before 9/11, and that the improper modifications to an unrelated contract had begun in June 2001, well before the state of emergency existed.

According to West, a specialist in government contract law, rarely are sole-source contracts allowed, even in a true emergency. Otherwise, that "would exempt (among other things) every procurement of military supplies or services related to anticipated or current combat."

The Coalition, whose mission is to preserve the democratic ideal of the National Mall, argues that such illegal contracts are an affront to the very meaning of the Washington Monument and Mall itself. "Yes, the need for security is a new fact of life," says Feldman "But ramming through projects destructive of the Mall’s openness, and doing so under cover of security, at the expense of our laws, is wrong. Once again, NPS is trying to bend the rules to escape public scrutiny. It’s time for some transparency and accountability."

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