Public Employee Press

Comptroller cuts contracts by $100 million

By GREGORY N. HEIRES

New York City Comptroller John C. Liu succeeded in cutting the cost of several information technology contracts by close to $100 million in negotiations with the Bloomberg administration.

He took action after a group of DC 37 local officers and activists led by Associate Director Henry Garrido protested the administration's plan to renew the 18 IT contracts for a total of $290 million Nov. 3 at a hearing of the Mayor's Office on Contract Services.

Following six weeks of negotiations with the Dept. of Information Technology and Telecommunications, Liu announced that DoITT had agreed to chop the price of the IT contracts by $93 million and to reduce the duration of the contract extensions from two years to 18 months.

"The comptroller's action is an example of what must be done to bring more accountability into the city's contracting out," DC 37 Executive Director Lillian Roberts said.

In recent years, contracting scandals involving hundreds of millions of dollars in cost overruns and fraud have embarrassed the Bloomberg administration. For years, DC 37 has campaigned against out-of-control contracting, which threatens members' jobs and wastes the money of taxpayers, including union members. All told, the city contracts out more than $10 billion a year.

This month, a tougher version of Local Law 35 will take effect. DC 37 and other municipal unions convinced the City Council to override the mayor's veto of an amendment to the law that provides more accountability on spending and greater protections for city workers against being displaced by outside contracts.

"We will continue to closely scrutinize and, where possible, to apply the budget scalpel to city contracts with expensive outside consultants," Liu said when he announced the $93 million cost reduction. "The savings can surely be redirected to help with the significant fiscal challenges we face."

After the Nov. 3 hearing, Roberts and City Council member Letitia James wrote Liu to express their concern about the contracts.

"With the city cutting services and hiking fees, we believe these contracts are not in the best interest of the taxpayers without a comparative cost analysis," they wrote. Amended recently, Local Law 35 will now require the city to do cost analyses of contracts worth $25,000 or more and to certify whether the use of consultants will displace public employees.