State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli, with Mayor Bloomberg's control over the city's schools under fire in Albany, has released an audit report finding that Mayor Bloomberg's Department of Education has a no-bid contract habit.Critics have long railed against the DOB's no-bid contracts. Now, as the state legislature looks at whether the DOE needs more checks and balances, the critics have got fresh ammo.
DiNapoli's audit, requested by Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum, found that between July 2005 and June 2008, the department let 291 no-bid contracts, each valued at $100,000 or more, worth a total of $342.5 million.
Schools Chancellor Joel Klein has called the no-bid contract issue“an urban myth".
In testimony earlier this year, City Comptroller and mayoral candidate William Thompson criticized the DOE for going over-budget by at least 25% in about 20% of its contracts. One Xerox contract for copying machines, worth $1 million, ended up costing $68 million.
School officials said the Comptroller's figures were wrong.
A key point of the mayoral control debate is that, even though the Mayor says the DOE is just another city agency, the DOE refuses to run its procurement function under the city's procurement rules, choosing instead to operate under state rules.
According to Thompson, Bloomberg and Klein have exploited a "gray area" in the law that lets the DOE flip between treating itself as a city agency and a state agency -- depending on what is most convenient at the time. And the fact that the DOE refuses to operate under the procurement rules governing all other city agencies makes its process far less transparent and accountable.
Thompson and the City Council Working Group on School Governance would treat the DOE as any other city agency -- in all respects, including procurement.
The article from Gotham Gazette:
http://www.gothamgazette.com/blogs/wonkster/2009/05/19/a-lesson-in-school-contracts/
