Kamar Samuels, the city schools chancellor, is now enmeshed in a personal scandal \u2014 and a far larger systemic one. <\/p>\n
Both were on display this week as his Department of Education minions tried the old \u201cdog ate my homework\u201d excuse as they refused to share contracting information with the City Council. <\/p>\n
The DOE spends about a quarter of its $43 billion budget on these contracts, yet chief procurement officer Elisheba Lewi testified<\/a> that it would \u201ctake months\u201d to produce the info for the council, as it\u2019s all on \u201ca secure system that very few people have access to.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n If that\u2019s not an outright lie, then the DOE has no way to monitor these outlays for fraud, waste or other abuse \u2014 which is even more damning: They can\u2019t truly explain $10 billion a year in outlays.<\/p>\n \u201cI mean, this should take like an hour of work to do,\u201d Council Speaker Julie Menin rightly summed up of the DOE\u2019s \u201cinability\u201d to cough up the info.<\/p>\n Then again, that failure is convenient at a time when Samuels is under the microscope for his part in a shady no-bid contracting scandal<\/a> centered on his role as superintendent of Manhattan\u2019s District 3.<\/p>\n \t\t\tMore From\t\t\t\t\t\t\tPost Editorial Board<\/p>\n