Mayor Zohran Mamdani stonewalls audit of nearly $13B in no-bid NYC education contracts

Mayor Zohran Mamdani stonewalled Tuesday on handing over details of more than $12 billion in Department of Education contracts — a day before a City Council deadline to share documents or else face a subpoena.Hizzoner contended officials needed time to redact sensitive information in the documents pointedly demanded by Council Speaker Julie Menin in a scathing letter last week.“The City Council will have these contracts in the coming weeks, and, you know, the long-standing New York City public school posture has been that when sharing contracts with an external body, that they would go through a vendor review and a redaction process,” he said during an unrelated press conference with Schools Chancellor Kamar Samuels.“We know that the Council is an oversight body.

We are looking to expedite that process as quickly as possible.”Menin, in her letter threatening to subpoena the records from the department, accused Samuels and the DOE of a “pattern of opacity, slow-walking and delay” in responding to the request.The Council’s audit in March first requested information on 579 contracts — 227 of them “related to mandated programming, including related services, assistive technology and interpretation and transcription services” and 352 “that DOE has itself identified as ‘not competitively bid.'” “As you know, DOE spends $12.9 billion on outside contracting every year,” she wrote, noting it “strains all credulity” to claim the department, which has a nearly $40 billion budget, didn’t have the staffing to pull the info together and provide it to the Council.Samuels himself faces a probe for inking a $180,000 no-bid contract with an unapproved vendor when he served as a district superintendent.Menin’s letter didn’t specifically ask for information on Samuels’ alleged chicanery, but focused on months of stymied requests.“This troubling pattern of opacity, slow-walking, and delay impedes the Council’s ability to exercise its over...