The stink from Ducey’s $200 million shipping container border wall just got a little stinkier

It’s bad enough that former Gov. Doug Ducey’s silly container wall on the border – the one on which migrants posed as they hopped over it and slipped through it – cost the state more than $100 million to build.

Bad enough that it’s costing us another $130 million or more, just a few months later, to take the thing down and haul it away.

But you know what’s just plain sad? Ducey apparently couldn’t find any Arizona company capable of doing the work.

Instead, the Ducey administration brought in a Florida disaster management company to do the work – one that donated (illegally) to a pro-Trump super PAC.

One that snagged the job in a no-bid contract.

After eight years in office – and with just four months to go – Ducey in August suddenly deemed it an emergency to buy and drag thousands of 3,000-pound steel shipping containers to the border and stack them with the approximate skill of a toddler playing with blocks.

In other words, a giant mess.

“Arizona has had enough,” Ducey said, at the time. “We can’t wait any longer. The Biden administration’s lack of urgency on border security is a dereliction of duty.”

No word on why it took until Ducey’s final few months in office for Arizona to have had enough, given Biden’s longstanding inability to manage the border.

Or why a governor, renowned for offering up no-bid contracts and other goodies to those who have advanced his political career, chose a politically connected Florida company to do the work.

Or how the lame-duck governor’s container wall would stop anyone from crossing the border, given that migrants could squeeze between some of them or climb over any of them.

In mid-December, the Biden administration sued the state for trespassing on federal land and damaging the environment, prompting Ducey to quickly declare victory – noting Biden’s plan to fence part of the border – and announce that he would dismantle the wall.

As publicity stunts go for a politically ambitious governor about to leave office, it was golden.

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Golden, too, for the politically connected Florida company brought in to do the work.

AshBritt Management & Logistics illegally contributed $500,000 to the pro-Trump America First Action PAC in 2018. The money eventually was refunded and the company fined $125,000, as the law bars federal contractors like AshBritt – the company at the time had a $40 million contract with the Department of Defense – from contributing to political committees. Meanwhile, the AshBritt Foundation made a $10,000 charitable contribution to The Mar-a-Lago Club in 2019.

So how, you might wonder, would a Trump-connected Florida firm land a no-bid contract worth more than $200 million to build and then dismantle a leaky “wall” of shipping containers in Arizona?

Beats me.

Megan Rose, spokeswoman for the Arizona Department of Administration, told The Arizona Republic’s José Ignacio Castañeda Perez that AshBritt got the contract because their solution was the “most expeditious due to the emergency nature of the work.”

She told Capitol Media Services’ Howard Fischer that the company was chosen because it has “demonstrated turnkey rapid response solutions since 1992” and that no other firm was considered “based on the time constraints.”

Rose said AshBritt was recommended to the Arizona Department of Emergency and Military Affairs by their emergency management partners.

Rose hasn’t replied to my question asking who, exactly, steered the contract to AshBritt.

Had she done so, I also would have asked her why such a lucrative contract was a no-bid affair. Or how it is that not so much as a single Arizona company could have done the work.

It all seems rather curious.

In the waning days of his administration, Ducey decides to launch a quick political stunt to boost his profile with his political base and because there’s apparently no time to waste, he hires a company with connections to Trump to build a wall that is up and then gone in less than five months.

The public, meanwhile, is stuck with the $200 million tab and questions.

Soooo many questions.

Reach Roberts at laurie.roberts@arizonarepublic.com. Follow her on Twitter at @LaurieRoberts.

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This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: The stench from Gov. Doug Ducey’s $200 million border stunt is growing