Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/884685
Fig. 11. "Donut" netting over the Rotunda 23 railing—well before the hearings—to assure that no one would be able to displace any part of it by lean- ing on the fragile metal. This temporary measure remained in place until funding was finally appropriated to implement the master plan we had prepared more than a decade ear- lier. But although the CVC had been completed and open to the public in 2008, those funds were not eas- ily made available to Stephen Ayers, the 11th Archi- tect of the Capitol. One New York Times article, like the newspaper's report on the Dome's leaks fifteen years earlier, blamed partisan politics. To the myriad indignities suffered by Congress, including stagnant legislation, partisan warfare and popularity on a par with petty criminals, add this: the Capitol's roof is leaking, and there is no money to fix it… Like most of what the federal government is on the hook to fix—highways, bridges and airports—the dome is imperiled both by tough economic times and by a politically polarized Congress. While Senate appropriators have voted to repair the dome, which has not undergone renovations for 50 years, their House counter- parts say there is not money right now. In that way, the dome is a metaphor for the nation's decaying infrastructure. "The dome needs comprehensive rehabilita- tion," said Stephen T. Ayers, the architect of the Capitol, whose office oversees the building's physical state. "It's a public safety issue." The skirt of the dome—the section around the base of the original sandstone foundation— was fixed up recently at a cost of about $20 mil- lion, but an additional $61 million is needed to repair and restore the rest of the structure's exterior. 12 THE CAPITOL DOME