Chair raises staffing, first procurement, and Hire NYC history
Won questions whether OCH has enough staff to follow up on reporting, asks what happened to the first $1.2 billion security and fire safety procurement, and warns against repeating Hire NYC's pending referrals. She states the hearing goals: real hire counts, a publication date for required data, and a vendor accountability plan.
So today I want to understand what's behind these numbers, where nothing has been reported, has the work already started, and vendors just aren't reporting, or is it that OCH doesn't have the staff or the systems to follow up?
In February, New York City Talent told us,
that it has 37 staff in total.
I want to know how many of them are working on community hiring and whether that's enough to keep up with the program that's nearly triple in size in a single quarter.
I also want to know what happened to the program's very first procurement.
In June 2024, the city announced $1.2 billion in procurement for security guard and fire safety services as its first community hiring effort, and the city expected those contracts to be placed by 2025.
They still don't appear in any of OCH's reports.
This isn't the city's first try at this.
Back in 2019, under Hire New York City, about 80% of job referrals were marked as pending for years because employers never told the city whether anyone was hired.
We can't afford to repeat that.
What we'll be looking for today is a real count of how many New Yorkers have been hired through community hiring, a date for when the city will publish the data the law requires, and a plan for holding vendors accountable when they don't meet their goals.