Taxpayers Funding Lawn Care and Repairs at Presidential Libraries as Trump Pushes for Reform

The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) is working to restructure the funding model for presidential libraries across the United States, aiming to reduce taxpayer burden and refocus its resources on core archival responsibilities.

Currently, NARA oversees 14 presidential libraries, with that number expected to increase to 16 once facilities for former Presidents Trump and Biden are established. Under the existing system, American taxpayers contribute significantly to maintenance costs—from lawn care to bathroom cleaning—at nearly all these institutions, with NARA spending $91 million annually from congressional appropriations.

“Despite decades of well-intentioned oversight and stewardship of America’s presidential libraries by the National Archives, reality now dictates that operational changes can and should be made to ensure the long-term health of these American treasures,” said Jim Byron, senior advisor to the archivist, in a statement Monday.

The initiative, which began this spring, involves individual negotiations with each presidential foundation to shift more operational responsibilities to these private entities. This restructuring is expected to save NARA approximately $27 million, funds that would be redirected toward the agency’s primary mission of preserving and providing access to historical records, including digitization efforts.

The current system faces several challenges beyond just costs. The federal contracting process creates inefficiencies where even minor repairs, like fixing door hinges, must go through Washington approval channels, often resulting in weeks or months of delays. Additionally, the agency reports a staggering $123 million in deferred maintenance costs across the presidential library system.

Luke Nichter, a history professor at Chapman University who regularly conducts research at these facilities, supports the initiative. “It now takes about as much money to build a presidential library as it does to run for president—about a billion dollars,” Nichter noted. “The American taxpayer should not bear that. The administration deserves credit for starting an important conversation about the future of these cherished institutions.”

The relationship between NARA and presidential foundations varies across institutions. Typically, private funds establish the library, which NARA then operates using federal funding. However, exceptions exist. The Obama Foundation, for example, chose to create a purely private presidential center rather than a traditional NARA-affiliated library. In this case, NARA digitized Obama’s presidential records and stores them at an existing NARA facility.

This isn’t the first attempt to reform the presidential library funding structure. In 2018, facing budget constraints, NARA successfully negotiated with the George W. Bush Foundation to establish a new cost-sharing arrangement that could serve as a model for current negotiations.

The shift represents part of a broader effort by NARA to streamline operations and focus on its core mission. The agency has recently prioritized other initiatives, including collaborating with federal agencies to release historically significant files related to John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr., and Amelia Earhart.

Without these reforms, Byron warns that NARA’s ability to fulfill its mission would be jeopardized. “The alternative is to do nothing and allow NARA’s appropriations to go to lawn care and toilet cleaning at the expense of FOIA processing, to close all presidential libraries when the government shuts down, to allow a deferred maintenance backlog to grow and to regret that presidential library structures were not addressed,” he said.

As presidential libraries continue to grow in scope and purpose, with construction costs now reaching into the hundreds of millions of dollars, this restructuring aims to create a more sustainable model that preserves these institutions while allowing NARA to focus on its essential work of maintaining America’s historical record.