Kennedy Center Whistleblowers Say Leaders Deferred Roof Repairs

Former Kennedy Center employees have told Congress that officials at the Washington, DC institution declined to repair leaks in the building's roof overhangs months ago — the same leaks officials now cite as the reason the center must temporarily close.

The anonymous former employees shared internal documents with Congress on Thursday, the New York Times reports. In a letter to Congress, they argue the disclosure shows the infrastructure problems are being exaggerated.

The Kennedy Center rejected that claim in a Friday statement quoted by the Times, saying the severity of the problems came to light only recently.

"The Kennedy Center has known for years that the roof overhang leaked," executive director Matt Floca said. "What we did not know until this summer was how far the damage had spread inside it."

Congress has set aside $257 million for repairs to the building. President Donald Trump, who has assumed the position of chairman of the board of trustees and who appointed Floca, has called for a two-year closure, describing the building as dangerously dilapidated. A federal court blocked that plan, but management announced last week that it would temporarily close anyway to address what it called "acute risks to public safety."

David Seide, an attorney for the whistleblowers, said in the letter that for years the leaks "were not treated as priorities nor as acute risks to public safety." He maintains that six months ago Floca canceled a $295,000 project to design a replacement for the roof overhangs. Floca told the Times the project was canceled after the contractor's bid came in too high, and that the work has been folded into a more comprehensive plan addressing climate control systems, problematic elevators, an outdated electrical system, and infrastructure in the facility's theater.

The dispute now extends to the building's very survival. Trump recently said that if he could not be credited for renovations, the center would be demolished. A photographer then captured him on Air Force One looking at a placard that appears to read "Kennedy Center demolished." Ohio Representative Joyce Beatty filed an appeal to a district court judge to make it "crystal clear" that Trump cannot demolish the building. Her fears are not unfounded: Trump razed the East Building of the White House without warning, saying he was making way for a ballroom-cum-security complex.

The whistleblowers' letter also alleges financial misdirection. It says management diverted $1.4 million that had been allocated for waterproofing repairs to a $4.4 million project repainting exterior columns whose color Trump disliked.

Trump and the center's management have blamed past leadership for the institution's financial problems. But documents sent to Senator Sheldon Whitehouse and reported by the Times show that ticket sales plummeted after Trump took over — and dropped further after he affixed his own name to the building.

With Congress now holding internal documents from the whistleblowers, a federal court already blocking the two-year closure plan, and Beatty's appeal pending, the question of whether the Kennedy Center reopens on management's timeline or survives at all now rests with legislators and judges rather than its chairman.