by Chris Marquette and Pavan Acharya at Politico
A POLITICO report shows the price tag is ballooning and the target completion date is slipping.
Some Republican lawmakers are becoming unsettled about surging cost estimates to replace the Francis Scott Key in Baltimore, for which the federal government has agreed to pay 100 percent of the repair costs.
POLITICO reporting shows that the price tag for rebuilding has ballooned from an initial $1.9 billion to more than $5 billion. The projected completion date has also been pushed out from 2028 to 2030, according to a person with direct knowledge of the estimates, granted anonymity to speak candidly.
Senate Environment and Public Works Chair Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) Thursday said she is “open to looking at” scaling back the federal government’s statutory obligation to pay 100 percent of rebuilding costs (minus anything recovered from insurance claims or court judgments).
Capito noted that when she read POLITICO’s reporting about the skyrocketing cost of the rebuild, she thought “I was right. There’s no constraints” on the spending because, she suggested, the state knows they don’t have to come up with the money.
“I can almost guarantee you it would not be over $5 billion if Maryland had to pay 10 percent of that,” Capito said.
Maryland Gov. Wes Moore’s office did not immediately respond…
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