Chair Lee questions consulting contracts and vacancy reductions

And then any consulting contracts, outside contracts that were reevaluated?

or IT, because I know that a bunch of different agencies have been looking at those costs as well, more on the OTPS side.

Yeah, I mean, as part of the 45-day process, we certainly looked exhaustively.

Consultants are a natural place to look.

IT is a natural place to look.

You know, over the past two or three years of the prior administration, we had rounds and rounds of pegs and budget cuts, and I think...

We did a lot of work on that front there, so there wasn't much left to do.

Okay.

But we're always looking at those areas for potential efficiencies.

Okay, thank you.

And then in terms of vacancy reductions, FY27 executive plan includes baseline savings of $6.1 million in city and state funding between FY26 through the elimination of

76 long-term vacant positions across DOHMH.

So just again, to clarify, these are positions that were never filled.

And so which program areas are impacted by the elimination of the 76 vacant positions?

Were they across multiple programs?

Yeah, thanks for the question.

So, right, I think that the top line here is certainly that, yeah, this did not target current staff.

This was all not only vacancies, but long-term vacancies.

So we've had challenges filling for years.

It's really spread across the agency, the same approach we took to

The savings initiatives we took to the vacancy, again, not easy, but looked for the things that were the hardest to fill, the longest vacant, and of course the overriding principle was no impact to the public.

or to services.

So yeah, to answer that, it's really spread across the agency.

There's not a single area where they're concentrated.