Mayor Zohran Mamdani said Tuesday that the City Council will receive hundreds of NYC public school contracts it has sought for months “in the coming weeks,” offering a public timeframe in an escalating transparency dispute between lawmakers and the Department of Education (DOE).
“The City Council will have these contracts in the coming weeks,” Mamdani said when asked about Council Speaker Julie Menin’s threat to subpoena the records.
The mayor’s comments came two days before a July 16 deadline set by Menin for the DOE to provide a proposed production schedule for 579 contracts involving mandated school services and noncompetitive procurement.
Menin accused the agency last week of months of “opacity, slow-walking, and delay” after it repeatedly provided lawmakers with summaries of contracts rather than the underlying agreements.
Mamdani said DOE has historically subjected contracts to vendor review and redaction before sharing them with an outside entity. But he acknowledged that the Council has an oversight role and said the administration is working to accelerate the process.
NYC Public Schools Chancellor Kamar SamuelsPhoto by Lloyd Mitchell
“We know that the Council is an oversight body,” Mamdani said. “We’re looking to expedite that process as quickly as possible.”
He said that would include speeding up the response and sharing non-redacted portions of the contracts.
amNewYork reached out to the City Council Speaker’s office for comment, and is awaiting a response.
Pressed on why the latest timeline should be trusted after previous expected production dates were pushed back, Mamdani did not identify any operational change that would ensure the documents are released within weeks.
“I think the focus here is making sure that we’re operating in accordance with the law, and that legal review is the focus of a lot of our efforts right now,” he said.
The Council is seeking 227 contracts related to mandated programming, including assistive technology, interpretation, transcription and other services, along with 352 contracts DOE identified as not competitively bid.
Photo by Lloyd Mitchell
Menin has said the records are necessary for the Council to oversee an agency that spends $12.9 billion annually on outside contracting and to examine DOE’s compliance with mandated-service requirements and procurement rules.
The Council first requested the mandated-service contracts at a March preliminary budget hearing. DOE later provided Requests for Authorization — short public summaries containing basic information about contracts — but not the full agreements.
DOE officials have previously cited staffing constraints, limited access to the secure system where the contracts are stored and the potential need to notify vendors so they can request redactions.
Menin rejected those explanations in her July 9 letter to Schools Chancellor Kamar Samuels and warned that the Council could subpoena the documents if the dispute is not resolved.