According to NBC News, Burgum announced Sunday that the government will contract Atlantic Industrial Coatings again. The same firm received a multimillion-dollar no-bid contract to paint the Reflecting Pool's base. Now it will repair sections where paint has peeled or failed. Burgum defended the choice, citing the contractor's performance and attributing the damage to vandalism, despite ongoing scrutiny over the contract's ballooning cost and the firm's prior work on Trump properties.
Awarding a second contract to the same no-bid contractor after the first one required repairs sends a clear signal: political relationships trump cost discipline. When federal agencies respond to accountability questions by handing out more work to the questioned vendor, they're telling every contractor that winning once means winning again, regardless of performance or price.
The administration is treating accountability like a PR problem: declare victory, blame critics, move forward. But if the work already failed and the public still has unanswered questions about why a no-bid deal ballooned 6–9 times past the president's own estimate, the burden is not on skeptics to accept the explanation. It's on the government to explain why Atlantic Industrial Coatings keeps getting the contract.
Filed to the Politics desk · Jul 5