Speaker Menon questions OMB on DOE contract transparency
Menon raises concerns about DOE's failure to provide contract information, noting DOE blamed technical issues and staff capacity. Solomon highlights $30 million in DOE contract savings ramping to $200 million by FY30, and a summary of $1.25 billion in non-competitively bid contracts provided to the council.
Okay, moving along to DOE contracts, which is something I know we've asked a lot of questions about.
So in both our preliminary budget follow-up to DOE and to OMB, we requested additional information on DOE contracts.
Neither DOE or OMB provided this information in your responses, and then we received a partial response from DOE late last week that was unclear.
Yesterday's executive budget hearing on education, DOE blamed technical issues and staff capacity for not being able to provide responses to the council.
I do want to
I want to note DOE has the largest agency budget of any agency, so the idea that there's not staff to address what are literally rudimentary questions about providing contracts I find not credible.
We appreciate the fact that the council has surfaced and raised DOE contracts and contracts writ large as an opportunity for the city to realize savings.
That is why the chief savings officers and in our savings plan, we begin with $30 million in savings from DOE contracts in fiscal 27, ramping up to $200 million in fiscal year 2030.
It's a start.
We know there's more to do.
We want to partner with the council to be able to do that.
With respect to the information that was provided, there was a summary of contracts that was provided.
We know you want the actual contracts, and we'll work with you and the Department of Education.
The summary, I would note as well, has about $1.25 billion in contracts, which is what requested in terms of what are the contracts that haven't been competitively bid.
There are a couple in there like the custodial services and the New York City school bus.
So I think that we're willing to obviously take a deeper look with you.
On that, as we perceive our shared goal of being able to find contract services without
Contract savings without slashing services.
So when can we expect to receive the contracts?
We will work with you and the DOE.
We know that they answered yesterday that it'll take a certain amount of staff time.
We'll look to see how quickly we can work together.