Sam Conder, his brother and his dad spent two months this fall welding about 30 steel kiosks for the federal Bureau of Land Management. Conder expected the huge, standalone steel structures to hold trail signs and land markers on BLM land across Utah.
He also expected to be paid for the work.
Instead, he got an email explaining why he won’t be — even though his tiny family business delivered the kiosks to the BLM in November. President Donald Trump’s Day 1 executive order freezing Inflation Reduction Act funds also cut off the BLM’s funding to pay its $30,457 purchase order with ARC Construction Solutions, a three-employee construction shop in Cedar City.
“It’s not huge, but it’s not insignificant,” Conder said. “We’re a really small business. $30,000 … keeps us going.”
Conder said his contacts in his local BLM office, including his contracting officer, have “tried very hard” to fix things, but until the freeze is lifted or repealed, or unless Congress authorizes new funds, there is nothing they can do.
The executive order has been challenged in court but remains in effect. Citing policy that prohibits commenting on active litigation, a spokesperson for BLM said she could not discuss how many similar letters have been sent to Utah businesses.
But Christina Judd, Utah communications director for the BLM, said the agency “values the partnerships we have with Utah contractors. We hope we can find a way to compensate them for the work they’ve done.”
(Courtesy photo) ARC Construction Solutions delivered around 30 steel sign kiosks, shown here mid-construction, to the Bureau of Land Management in November. Now the agency can't pay.
Trump issued the “Unleashing American Energy” executive order on his first day in the White House “to unleash America’s affordable and reliable energy and natural resources,” according to the order. The order included a decree that “all agencies ... immediately pause the disbursement of funds appropriated through the Inflation Reduction Act.”
Conder said he had expected to be paid in December, and received the email from the BLM last week. “This contract was funded using IRA money and per the recent executive order the funds have been frozen,” it said, according to the copy shared with The Salt Lake Tribune, “halting all payments at this time.”
The company was drawn to bid on the project because the Department of Interior, which includes the BLM, has made it a priority to work with small businesses, Conder said. The department is “committed to increasing prime contract awards and subcontract awards to the small business community,” it said in a recent memo, and noted it awarded more than half of its contracts to small businesses in 2023.
He has reached out to Utah’s federal delegation for help, he said, but he has not reached or heard back from anyone. Representatives from each office — Sens. John Curtis and Mike Lee, and Congresswoman Celeste Maloy, who represents Conder’s district — did not respond to The Tribune’s questions.
On Sunday, Curtis said Congress has failed to fix issues such as federal spending and the national debt, and Trump’s efforts now are not a crisis, but “how we test the Constitution.” Trump, Curtis said on “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan,” “is trying to fix it with the tools that he has. The courts will push back if he steps out of line. … And that’s the beauty of the system. It works.”
Conder said he is willing to bid on future federal projects. He doesn’t fault the BLM, he said, which he instead sees as caught up in a power grab from the new administration.
“At the end of the day, I would love to get paid for the work that we’ve already done and done well,” Conder said in an email to The Tribune.
But “this story isn’t about $30,000 that the federal government owes to our small business,” he said. It’s about “how the executive branch, in their zeal to dismantle our federal government, has tried to eliminate checks and balances and in the process hurt a small business in a small community.”
Shannon Sollitt is a Report for America corps member covering business accountability and sustainability for The Salt Lake Tribune. Your donation to match our RFA grant helps keep her writing stories like this one; please consider making a tax-deductible gift of any amount today by clicking here.
