.jpg)
Cost to taxpayers for Obama Center keep piling up
Illinois taxpayers may be on the hook for millions in unpaid contractor fees for the Obama Presidential Center as the foundation's promised $420 million "safety net" fund to prevent a taxpayer bailout has yet to materialize and many black-owned contractors are being left unpaid.
Meanwhile, multiple contractors are now saying that the Obama Center hasn't paid them for millions of dollars for their work. And some are wondering if taxpayers will be forced to pay up, according to Fox News.
Some of these subcontractors say they are locked in payment disputes and if they aren't paid, they face closing their businesses.
The City of Chicago approved the Obama Center under the requirement the foundation would raise a $470 million backup fund to pay for expenses that slipped under the radar so taxpayers would not have to pony. The fund is part of the 99-year deal to use the 19.3-acre Jackson Park in exchange for a token payment of $10.
But so far, that $470 million fund has only been bankrolled to the rune of a mere $1 million.
Illinois GOP Chair Robert Grogan blasted the Barack Obama Foundation, saying:
"One of their core promises was they were supposed to create an endowment as basically an insurance policy so the taxpayers wouldn’t get stuck with the bill. They promised hundreds of millions of dollars for it. It’s still sitting at the $1 million mark when they opened it up. So, I don’t believe that they’ve kept that promise."
Grogan also says the empty backup fund and the contractor disputes is a major problem.
"The fact that they have created this probably unsustainable edifice to an ego and then, eventually, if it goes under, who’s going to be caught with the bill time and time again? It’s the taxpayers of the city, citizens of Chicago and the state of Illinois," he said.
New York University law professor Richard Epstein warns the reason the endowment fund was envisioned was to make sure there is a backup if funds fall short. Now, money has fallen short and the backup fund is nonexistent. But more than that, Epstein says the lack of an endowment find could make the Center unsafe to visitors.
"If the endowment hasn’t been filled, the building [could] fall into neglect, it then becomes a safety risk, and it turns out that nobody’s going to pay the bill," Epstein explained. "The city, therefore, is going to have to assume additional obligations to make sure that thing is kept in place.
Indeed, several black-owned businesses are now in financial distress because they have not been paid for their work on the Center.
Crain's notes minority contractors are saying the Center has been "holy hell" for them, according to African American Contractors Association President Omar Shareef.
Shareef added that many of these minority contractors are on the edge of insolvency and "It’s to the point that they wished they never had done" the work for Obama.
The foundation claims everything is just fine.
"On the eve of our Grand Opening celebrations, we are pleased to reiterate that the Obama Presidential Center is fully funded with generous private contributions," the Foundation said in a statement. "$470M of our fundraising goal will go toward seeding an endowment that will sustain Obama Foundation activities and the operations of the OPC for generations to come."
Epstein scoffed at the claims.
"On their view, putting a penny in an endowment fund covers all the risks," he said.
President Donald Trump also recently took aim at the Center's cost overruns.
"Ask him how he’s doing on his museum library. He’s got hundreds of millions of dollars of cost overruns. It’s come to a dead halt. He built it in not a particularly good location. He’s not into real estate, you know, he doesn’t know about location," Trump said last week.
"The beautiful Obama building that he’s building in Chicago for the museum, which is now shuttered up, and they couldn’t finish it, what did you say, about five years behind schedule and about 2,000 percent over budget, then he tells us how to run Medicaid," he added.
Indeed, the project has already zoomed past the initial $350 million estimate back in 2021 and is now sitting at $830 million.
Obama and his cohorts have claimed taxpayers would never be on the hook for the Obama Presidential Center. Now that promise is on the verge of evaporating.
Follow Warner Todd Huston on Facebook at: Warner Todd Huston | Facebook, X at @WTHuston, or Truth Social at @WarnerToddHuston.
Photo by Claire Fridkin CC BY-SA 4.0
