As the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts prepares for major renovations, former project managers there have sent Congress internal documents that they say show how the institution bypassed government contracting norms in work carried out under President Donald Trump.
The documents — sent to a Senate and a House committee last month by lawyers for unidentified clients referred to as whistleblowers — detail how vendors were selected for work without competitive bidding under rationales that are depicted as flawed.
In one case, a center official described a company chosen for flooring work as the “only identified firm on the mid-Atlantic seaboard that maintains a fully vertically integrated model, vital for acoustic continuity, architectural uniformity, and operational agility.”
In a letter to the committees, lawyers for the former project managers say their clients question whether the business, located in South Carolina, was the only one available that was qualified to do the flooring work.
The letter says the center’s decision to skip bidding in another case was designed to help meet deadlines important to the president, such as the Kennedy Center Honors in December, which he hosted.
“Renovations were rushed to meet the deadlines driven by the president’s desire to host official events at the center,” the letter says. “Federal contracting laws and regulations were ignored.”
A statement from the Kennedy Center defended its practices, saying that the institution operates with rigorous financial oversight and that the assertions by the whistleblowers that contracting standards had been bypassed were incorrect.
“As America’s cultural center, the institution makes every decision guided by responsible stewardship and an unwavering commitment to its patrons and the nation it proudly serves,” Roma Daravi, a spokesperson, said in a statement. “We remain fully committed to transparency and to delivering the critical improvements that will preserve this institution for generations to come.”
Liz Huston, a White House spokesperson, responded to the allegations by accusing past management of allowing the center to fall into disrepair.
“President Trump did what Democrats wouldn’t,” she said in a statement. “After decades of neglect, he committed the bold leadership and proper resources to fix the Kennedy Center and start the renovations of the finest performing arts facility in the world.”
Trump, a developer by trade, has taken an intense interest in remaking the center, helping to secure $257 million from Congress last year for renovations. In one case cited in the letter, a new bathroom floor in one of the center’s three presidential boxes was ordered torn up last year and redone after the White House complained about the beige color of the tiles. (The email’s subject line was “tile emergency,” alongside a red siren emoji.)
“This is a big undertaking for my department to remove the floor tile that was just installed,” the Kennedy Center’s operations and maintenance director replied in a March 2025 email, noting that the beige tiles had been approved by a White House designer.
In a response email, a White House official confirmed the directive to replace the beige tile with white. (The work was unrelated to the South Carolina flooring company.)
The center said in a statement that the changes were a standard design adjustment that caused “zero unnecessary burden on the taxpayer.”
The White House decided to remodel the presidential boxes days after Trump took over as chairperson of the center’s board, according to the documents sent to Congress. The plans included gold plumbing fixtures in the bathrooms, gold covers for electric outlets, marble baseboards, and the tile flooring paid for by the White House, with much of the labor provided by the center.
The 82-page submission to Congress was made under a law designed to protect federal employees who disclose allegations of wrongdoing from retaliation. The lawyers who sent it, David Seide and Dana Gold, work for a nonprofit that represents government whistleblowers.
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D., R.I.), the top Democrat on the Environment and Public Works Committee, which received the submission, wrote to the Kennedy Center on Thursday demanding information related to the renovations. Whitehouse, an ex officio member of the center’s board, said the submission raised “serious questions” about whether public funds were being spent properly.
Nothing in the submission suggests that the firms selected without bidding have any personal ties to Trump or his family, or that the vendors played any role in the decision-making process under which work was awarded.
Reached by phone, Kent Rogerson, who runs the South Carolina flooring company, declined to comment, citing a nondisclosure agreement.
Although the Kennedy Center is run as a nonprofit, it has, like Smithsonian museums, traditionally followed federal contracting rules because its building is federal property. But the documents include a new policy, adopted in November, that states the center was exempt from federal rules and replaces them with new procedures.
Compared with federal contracting regulations, the new policy relaxes the requirements under which sole-source contracts can be awarded, according to several government procurement experts, by adding to the rationales for when it is permissible. Under the policy, contracts can be awarded without bidding when “circumstances beyond the center’s control require an immediate award” or “the requirement is unique or has a compelling business interest.”
The center said in its statement that it had confirmed with the Office of Management and Budget that, as an independent entity, it was not bound by federal contracting regulations and that it had updated its procurement policy to be both fair and agile when making renovations.
Trump announced that the center would be shuttered for two years for the project, starting around Independence Day. But a federal judge temporarily blocked the closure after finding that the center’s board, composed largely of the president’s aides and allies, had not properly scrutinized his plan before approving it. The White House statement on Friday accused the judge of being “radical” and allowing the center to remain in disrepair.
Kennedy Center officials have described renovations to address problems such as water leaks and outdated equipment as urgently needed. The president has said the work would elevate a “dilapidated” building to the “highest level of Success, Beauty, and Grandeur.”
The administration’s contracting practices have been under scrutiny. The Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool project, for example, has been carried out through multiple no-bid contracts. To exempt the project from competitive bidding, administration officials said it needed to be finished in time for the country’s 250th birthday celebrations.
One contract cited by the former Kennedy Center managers was valued at $4.4 million and awarded last fall for work that included painting the building’s exterior gold columns. Trump has taken issue with their “fake gold color,” and internal documents said they should be repainted white before the Kennedy Center Honors.
The painting was done by Cypress Painting Systems, a company in Maryland that has done work under prior administrations. But lawyers for the former project managers reported that the work began before any contract had been awarded.
The contract was later awarded, they said, to a company that primarily works as a furniture dealership, Washington Office Interiors, which used Cypress as its subcontractor.
The interiors company had been hired through a Small Business Administration program that enables “socially and economically disadvantaged” companies to receive sole-source contracts in some settings. Whitehouse, in his letter, said it appeared that the contract was configured this way because Cypress did not have the same certification that would enable it to receive a sole-source contract through that program.
In its statement, the Kennedy Center said the contractual arrangement had fully complied with all Small Business Administration guidelines.
Barbara Barry, who runs Washington Office Interiors, said in an email that she was not authorized to discuss the contract but that her company had been providing construction and furniture services to federal agencies since long before Trump was elected.
Robin Mertz, president of Cypress Painting, deferred questions to the Kennedy Center.
Cypress Painting also installed Trump’s name on the building’s marble facade, under a separate arrangement. The name was removed in June by order of a federal judge, and the center is in the process of appealing.
Matt Floca, the center’s executive director, has denied that the columns were painted simply to satisfy the president. He has said that the center’s leaders had long wanted to address structural degradation and “mismatched paint jobs,” and that hiring subcontractors is standard practice.
“This is not just a random action,” Floca testified at a court hearing this year. “It was something that we had been planning for before this leadership was in place.”
Floca has also attested to the special qualifications of Low Country Flooring of Pawleys Island, S.C., the flooring company that was selected without competition to provide services to the Kennedy Center for five years, according to the documents provided to the committees.
The purchase agreement, not a formal contract, outlined work worth up to $8 million in restoring and replacing hardwood flooring.
The business has assisted on high-profile projects in Washington, including work on the Supreme Court and the Andrew W. Mellon Auditorium near the National Mall, a federal building used for galas and conferences.
The center said that the company was selected after what it described as exhaustive market research and that it was capable of purchasing directly from timber mills to avoid markups on materials.
Last year, on a trip to Washington before the company was selected, its representatives posted photos of themselves and Trump at the Kennedy Center on Facebook.
In one photo, Jamie Lambert, who helps run the company, is shown praying with Trump inside the center’s concert hall. His colleague, Rogerson, commented on the image online.
“He asked,” Rogerson wrote, “and the president said of course.”
This article originally appeared in the New York Times.
