Dear John,

Today I unveiled a 4-step plan to guard against corruption and strengthen oversight in City government contracting. These reforms will protect public integrity, prevent waste, and improve City services for all New Yorkers.

The City must immediately:

• Strengthen oversight and accountability of subcontractors.
• Reduce over-reliance on emergency procurement and mitigate risks for corruption in non-competitive procurement.
• Close corruption vulnerabilities in the City’s oversight of not-for-profit human service contracts
• Increase transparency to promote accountability (including the Adams Administration’s unmet promise of ContractStat)

NYC’s procurement process is how the City purchases goods, services, or construction on behalf of New Yorkers – from garbage containers and street lights, meals for home-bound seniors, child-care, construction projects, parks and road maintenance, homeless shelters, and much more.

New York City registers over 12,000 new procurement contracts annually, valued in fiscal year (FY) 2023 at over $38 billion. That’s more than the budget of 30 states. A competitive bidding process intended to promote fair and open competition should ensure that the City gets the goods or services at the best possible price, while minimizing exposure to corruption.

This week, with questions swirling around the Adams Administration’s abuse of City contracts, it's clear that we have work to do to root out fraud and corruption in New York City’s procurement process.

Look, public integrity is the linchpin of City government. City agencies must conduct fair and transparent bidding, without favoritism. But under this Administration, we increasingly rely on no-bid contracts, and much of the time we don’t even know which subcontractors we’re paying.

New Yorkers deserve an honest, trustworthy, well-managed city government that safeguards our taxpayer dollars against waste, fraud, and abuse. We should use this moment of crisis to make real change — so people can wake up every day trusting that their government is working for them.

Read our Preventing Corruption in Procurement plan.

Thanks,

Brad

Office of the New York City Comptroller

Our mailing address is:
Office of New York City Comptroller Brad Lander
1 Centre Street
New York, NY 10007
United States

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