When people describe the collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge as a “once-in-a-generation disaster,” they are correct. But unless federal officials intervene, the country is about to face a “once-in-a-generation boondoggle” as well—one financed entirely by U.S. taxpayers. Unlike the Woodrow Wilson Bridge reconstruction, where Maryland, Virginia, the District of Columbia, and the federal government all shared responsibility, the Key Bridge rebuild is expected to be funded 100 percent by the federal government. When Annapolis controls spending but Washington pays the bill, the incentive for cost discipline disappears.
Maryland’s history with complex infrastructure projects shows why that matters. The clearest precedent is the Woodrow Wilson Bridge reconstruction, a $2.35 billion, decade-long megaproject completed between 1999 and 2009. Although it involved a single structure across a single river, the project produced dramatically different results on each bank. The Wilson Bridge was financed collectively. The federal government ultimately absorbed the largest share of the cost, followed by Virginia, then Maryland, with the District responsible for only a small portion on its side of the river. But the distribution of funding is not what made the project memorable. What stands out today is how Maryland’s labor and procurement decisions—not engineering complexity—produced the most significant and avoidable cost spikes.¹
One contract in particular illustrates the problem. Maryland attempted to impose a union-exclusive Project Labor Agreement on its principal bridge superstructure package. Because the PLA limited eligibility to a narrow group of firms, the state received only a single bid, and that bid came in at $860 million—nearly $400 million above engineering projections.² This $860 million figure was not Maryland’s total spending on the Wilson Bridge; it was simply the price of one contract distorted by restrictive procurement rules. The Federal Highway Administration ultimately rejected the PLA in a 2001 decision letter, forcing Maryland to rebid the project, delay work, and absorb additional soft costs.³ While Maryland restarted its procurement, Virginia—using standard federal Davis–Bacon rules and open competitive bidding—advanced its portion of the project on schedule and far closer to the original estimates.⁴
Two states confronted the same engineering task. Only Maryland turned it into a fiscal crisis.
This history matters because Maryland is now proposing to manage the Key Bridge rebuild, whose projected cost has already surged from $1.7 billion to $5.2 billion in barely a year. State officials attribute the increase to “volatility,” “updated design,” and “riverbed analysis,” but Marylanders have heard this lexicon before.⁵ It often signals scope expansion, over-engineered features, higher wage premiums, and slow, cumbersome procurement processes. In the Wilson Bridge project, these exact tendencies produced Maryland’s cost explosion. The same policies exist today. And this time, because the federal government is expected to cover 100 percent of the cost, Maryland has no financial guardrails of its own. A project now estimated at $5 billion could very easily drift toward $8 or $9 billion before the first vehicles cross it.
For precisely this reason, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers should direct the rebuild. The Corps has decades of experience handling complex, water-based infrastructure with rigorous cost control and minimal political influence.⁶ Unlike Maryland’s transportation bureaucracy, the Corps does not pursue union-exclusive agreements, stack state-level wage mandates onto federal requirements, or modify project designs to satisfy political constituencies. Its mission is straightforward: build the infrastructure the nation requires, at the price it should cost, within the timeline that national commerce demands.
And the Key Bridge is unquestionably a national priority. The Port of Baltimore supports supply chains stretching from Pennsylvania to the Carolinas. Every month of delay constrains East Coast shipping capacity and reverberates through industries far beyond Maryland’s borders. Congress created the Corps’ civil works authority precisely to respond to emergencies of this nature—situations in which the economic impact is national and in which political considerations must yield to disciplined engineering and construction management.⁷
Allowing Maryland to lead the Key Bridge rebuild would recreate the conditions that produced the most troublesome elements of the Wilson Bridge project. The same contracting preferences, wage mandates, scope changes, and midstream design revisions that inflated Maryland’s Wilson Bridge spending—and generated that infamous $860 million single bid—would likely recur. But this time, with the federal government paying the entire cost, there would be even less incentive to control overruns or maintain realistic schedules.
The path forward is clear. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers should take full responsibility for the Key Bridge reconstruction, with Maryland participating in a supporting rather than directing role. The stakes for the national economy, and for American taxpayers, are too high to risk a sequel to the Wilson Bridge experience.
Let the bridge rise again without the politics weighing it down.
References
- Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), Woodrow Wilson Bridge Project Finance Plan, 2001.
- The Washington Post, “Wilson Bridge Bids Come in Far Above Estimates,” July 21, 2001.
- FHWA, Decision Letter on the Maryland PLA Requirement for the Wilson Bridge, 2001.
- U.S. Department of Transportation, Office of Inspector General, Review of Project Labor Agreement Requirements on Federally Assisted Contracts, 2001.
- The Baltimore Sun, “Key Bridge Rebuild Cost Rises to $5.2 Billion,” November 18, 2025; Maryland Transportation Authority (MDTA), Key Bridge Reconstruction Update, 2025.
- U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Emergency Infrastructure Response Capabilities, Civil Works Division Annual Report.
- Congressional Research Service, Federal Authority for Infrastructure Construction After Disasters, 2024.
Aaron Ackerman is a contributor to Direct Line News. He can be contacted at Aaron.Ackerman@mcgopclub.com
Direct Line News is a Maryland-based free-access publication committed to the Republican reform tradition.
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