Public Employee Press

Stringer nixes Bloomberg contract-out deals, tightens regs on IT consultants

Recent actions by new Comptroller Scott Stringer have encouraged District Council 37 leaders pressing City Hall to reverse former Mayor Michael Bloomberg's policy of contracting out billions of dollars in computer work.

Declaring that "taxpayer dollars have been spent improperly," Stringer rejected three contracting deals the Bloomberg administration left behind and on April 3 announced tough new rules requiring strict oversight and accountability of all work by information technology consultants.

Executive Director Lillian Roberts and other DC 37 leaders have brought the union's concerns to the new top city officials.

"We are finding a sympathetic ear to our message," DC 37 Associate Director Henry Garrido said. "The contracting scandals of the Bloomberg years left behind a bitter taste, and I believe good government advocates genuinely feel the city must address the huge waste and corruption associated with doling out taxpayer dollars to consultants."

"From what we have seen, there seems to be a growing consensus among the city's new political leadership to look seriously at how work can be brought in house," said Robert Ajaye, president of Electronic Data Processing Personnel Local 2627, which represents computer workers in DC 37.

Ajaye is a member of a union team headed by Garrido that has spent years studying city procurement practices and sounding the alarm about wasteful outsourcing. Since Mayor Bill de Blasio and Stringer took office in January, the team has quietly stepped up its effort to build greater support for curbing wasteful contracting out.

De Blasio recently canceled plans left over from the previous administration to contract out four more public hospital dialysis clinics, and Stringer has taken these actions:

Rejected: $10 million contract for CGI, the company that bungled the launching of the Obamacare website, to overhaul the city's 311 hotline. Stringer said the cost of the deal, pushed through in the final hours of the Bloomberg administration, could balloon to $100 million.

Rejected: $30 million deal for consultant Computer Aid, Inc., to choose and oversee all other information technology contractors. Under the rejected agreement to let one consultant oversee others, the Bloomberg administration would have given up the city's power to enforce its contracts with the subcontractors.

Rejected: $6 million settlement negotiated by Bloomberg officials with Hewlett-Packard in December. The deal would have let HP repay only a small fraction of the $160 million that former Comptroller John Liu uncovered in "possibly fraudulent" overcharges for modernizing the city's 911 system. In the earlier CityTime payroll project scandal, the contractor was forced to repay $500 million.

Stringer's April 3 directive setting rigorous procedures for verifying work done by computer consultants before they are paid came as he took a sharp look at more than $200 million in proposed IT outsourcing contracts.

Senior Analyst David Moog of the DC 37 Research and Negotiations Dept. testified at a March 27 hearing that a union analysis found that under the contracts, private consultants would cost the city 22 percent more than doing the work in house.

In its outreach effort, Garrido's team has met with City Council committee chairs Ben Kallos (Government Operations), Helen Rosenthal (Contracts) and Julissa Ferreras (Finance). The union seeks local legislation modeled after a state law that tightens procurement rules on IT contracting and encourages in-house work.