A funny thing happened after the City Council passed a law in March requiring all agencies funded by the city to submit justifications for issuing service contracts worth $200,000 or more — nothing.
Not a single contract has been submitted for review.
The administration says further that it doesn’t recognize the council’s right to regulate three of the largest agencies — the Health and Hospitals Corp., the Housing Authority and the Department of Education — because they operate under the aegis of the state.
So contracts from those agencies are off the table, at least for now.
“It has long been the city’s position that, for reasons of preemption, the council does not have the authority to regulate the procurement practices of HHC, NYCHA and DOE,” said mayoral spokesman Stu Loeser.
Of course, Mayor Bloomberg appoints the heads of all three agencies, they are supported financially by the city and take their directions from City Hall.
So they’re state-regulated agencies when necessary and city agencies when that fits the administration’s bill.
A council official said it was “in discussions” with the Mayor’s Office to resolve the impasse.
In the meantime, the new law — meant to address inadequacies in a measure passed in 1994 — is languishing. Among its requirements is that agencies conduct cost-benefit analyses to determine whether city employees would be displaced by private contract workers, something that’s at the top of the agenda for the municipal unions, which have lots of friends in the council.
Bloomberg vetoed the bill before it became law last year on the grounds that it would add two months of bureaucratic delays to an already cumbersome procurement process.
The council quickly overrode his veto, claiming, not very convincingly, that there should be no delays whatsoever.
One insider said hospital officials weren’t taking any chances when they were ready to sign a $363 million, nine-year contract with Johnson Controls to oversee plant maintenance of all its facilities.
The HHC board approved the contract in February.
“They wanted to push this through before the law went into effect,” said the insider. “You’re talking nine years. This is a big deal.”
HHC spokeswoman Ana Marengo denied there was an attempt to beat the clock.
“The [request for proposal] went out in September 2010, so there is no truth to the allegations that anything was rushed,” she said. “On the contrary, this was a very thorough, competitive process for which we conducted a cost-benefit analysis that was presented at a couple of public meetings and came before our board for a vote in February 2012 — which just coincided with the City Council’s action.”