Whistleblowers say work on the John F. Kennedy Center For The Performing Arts exterior was rushed and done poorly so cosmetic improvements could be finished in time for events featuring President Trump. The result, they allege, is that the center now has to redo some of the same work, including exterior columns that will cost an estimated $1.8 million to repaint.
The allegations landed as Congress scrutinizes how the center used $257 million in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, a sum that is six times what it typically receives in a year. A report sent to the Government Accountability Project and provided to Sen. Whitehouse says the center, under Floca, bypassed procurement rules, used a cheaper and shorter-lasting primer than the contract required, and moved ahead with no-bid contracts that should have triggered a FAR deviation but did not.
What makes the complaint more than a routine contracting dispute is the claim that the spending priorities were reversed. Whitehouse said the center had made specific funding promises to Congress and was supposed to prudently and efficiently use the money to prioritize life-safety, accessibility and building infrastructure improvements, while reducing the backlog of deferred repairs. Instead, the whistleblower account says money went to visible finish work first, including repainting the center's exterior columns, resanding and painting a reflecting pool, replacing tile in the presidential box bathrooms with a different color, and installing a new floor in the concert hall without accounting for acoustical requirements.
That sets up the central friction in the case. The Kennedy Center was supposed to use the federal money on structural needs, yet the whistleblower report says cosmetic work got ahead of the repairs that actually keep the building functioning. Floca, who had been the center's facilities director before Trump named him executive director in March, prepared a report that found the structural work was so extensive it could require closing the facility for two years. He said work on the structural steel and concrete deck defects would render the primary public access points unusable.
Whitehouse has now directed Floca to give the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee a detailed accounting of how the $257 million is being spent and to explain how much has gone to life-safety, accessibility and structural-infrastructure work, and how much to cosmetic or aesthetic work. He also wants a rationale for the center's decision to stop following FAR standards. If the allegations hold up, the question is no longer whether the repairs were ugly or expensive; it is whether the center spent a rare burst of federal money on improvements that may have to be torn out and done again.
