Rhode Island senator Sheldon Whitehouse announced on Saturday that he had received a letter from a group of whistleblowers alleging that the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts had improperly rushed its recent renovation efforts in service of the president’s aesthetic impulses.
“The Center’s subservience to the President’s desires and its corner-cutting contracting practices have resulted in steel columns that are rusting through fresh paint, a reflecting pool that may have to be torn out and rebuilt, and a brand-new bathroom floor torn out over an offending tile color,” Whitehouse said. “This is waste, and it treats a national memorial to President Kennedy as if it were a private renovation project.”
The whistleblowers, who are former project managers at the Kennedy Center, alleged in their communications with Whitehouse that there was a questionable process by which vendors for the renovations were chosen. Per the New York Times, a Small Business Administration program allowed a furniture dealership, Washington Office Interiors to be awarded a $4.4 million sole-course contract for painting the Center’s gold columns white, the whistleblowers said.
Washington Office Interiors hired the company Cypress Painting Systems as its subcontractor in order to get the column painting job done, but lawyers for the whistleblowers noted that Cypress Painting Systems would not have qualified for the Small Business Administration contract and that the painting work began on...
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