The Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool is 2,029 feet long and 167 feet wide. It holds roughly 6.7 million gallons of water. It has held the reflection of that stone president since 1922. It has also, as of the federal contract data now sitting in the public record, held the distinction of costing the American taxpayer more than $14.65 million to renovate — a figure that began life as something over $10 million and grew by more than $4 million somewhere between the signing of the paperwork and the finishing of the work.
There was no competitive bidding. The government awarded the contract without opening it to other offers. This is legal under certain conditions. The conditions are not always scrutinized as closely as the conditions deserve.
Consider the arithmetic. The Mall covers roughly 146 acres of the most watched ground in the Republic. The National Park Service oversees it on a budget that its own inspector general has called chronically short. Against that backdrop, someone decided that the right move was to hand a single contractor a job worth north of ten million dollars without asking whether another contractor might do it for nine, or eight, or seven million four hundred thousand. Then the job ran over by more than four million dollars. The overrun alone exceeds what many cities spend on parks in a year.
What was purchased for $14.65 million? Renovation of a reflecting pool. Not construction of a new one. Not the engineering of a novel water system beneath contested soil. Renovation. The pool was built the first time for a great deal less, adjusted for any inflation you care to name.
A no-bid contract is not, by itself, proof of wrongdoing. It is proof that competition was declined. When the thing that was declined produced a $4 million overrun on a $10 million estimate, the absence of competition becomes a question with a dollar sign attached to it. The question has not, as of this writing, been answered in public by anyone whose name appears on the contract.
The reflecting pool still reflects. The marble president still stares down the Mall toward a Capitol that spent $14.65 million finding out what the pool cost to fix without first finding out what it should have cost.
The lamp above the contract desk burned at the government's expense, too.