Imagine for a minute you award a contract to a general contractor promising to pay the GC to build your house. The GC submits a bill for work authorized by you and preformed to specification, but the bill is unpaid. The GC never hears from you, but reads on the internet that you are not planning to pay for at least 90 days. The GC is left to figure out how to pay the workers and subs that worked on the good faith assurance that the authorizing contract meant something.
The GC in this example is APCC. Despite having valid contracts for over $18 million in environmental restoration work awarded by the federal government, APCC can no longer expect payment for work legally authorized to be done for at least 90 days. APCC is not alone, as we and countless thousands of other nonprofits, for profit corporations, state, county and municipal governments, and who knows who else, have to figure out how to pay our bills and staff. While APCC will continue to honor its obligations to our workers and contractors, the reality is this unilateral act by the federal government has real implications.
The ecosystems that were slated to be restored with the NOAA funds now being withheld may just remain impaired and degraded. This is a direct impact on the people of Mashpee, Falmouth, Harwich and Dennis in which the six projects are located. Sometimes it is hard to translate these grand federal pronouncements down to what they actually mean to specific people in specific locations. Well, here is a clear example of specific towns that suffer specific harms in the form of having to live with degraded resources for longer when the prospect of improvement was contractually committed to and imminent.
I am not even making the case that the delay of these projects is the worst of the implications of the federal government’s decision to no longer honor valid contracts. As an example, I think the people in medical trials, now suspended or who lose their jobs because their employers lack the available cash to pay them because the feds won’t, have it worse. The broader implications of this action on the underpinnings of society are profound. How exactly do we proceed with anything if contractual commitments no longer must be honored or, perhaps even more chilling, are predicated on compliance with a forced ideology.
America, 2025.
