{"id":300746,"date":"2026-07-20T16:15:24","date_gmt":"2026-07-20T16:15:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/300746\/"},"modified":"2026-07-20T16:15:24","modified_gmt":"2026-07-20T16:15:24","slug":"heres-an-easy-way-for-cash-squeezed-mamdani-to-trim-does-monster-budget","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/300746\/","title":{"rendered":"Here’s an easy way for cash-squeezed Mamdani to trim DOE’s monster budget"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mayor Zohran Mamdani campaigned on cleaning up<\/a> the Department of Education\u2019s bloated contracting \u2014 promising to audit its biggest vendors and root out deals built on who you know<\/a> instead of what you do.<\/p>\n

So, it\u2019s odd that four months after the City Council asked to see DOE\u2019s contracts, it still hasn\u2019t gotten them all.<\/p>\n

This month, Speaker\u00a0Julie Menin threatened subpoenas<\/a>\u00a0over the hundreds of missing contracts.<\/p>\n

\"MayorMayor Zohran Mamdani announced the \u201cclick to cancel\u201d policy to the media on July 10, 2026, at the Asser Levy Recreation Center. James Messerschmidt for NY Post<\/p>\n

Mamdani says the council will have them \u201cin the coming weeks.<\/a>\u201d<\/p>\n

For a mayor who ran on following the money, it\u2019s a strange thing to slow-walk.<\/p>\n

Much of the school system runs on outside vendors. The DOE spends\u00a0nearly $13 billion a year\u00a0contracting out busing, cleaning, food, technology and special-education services.<\/p>\n

It buys the same services year after year. When a contract expires, the city can rebid it or renew with the same vendor. It usually renews.<\/p>\n

The problem is the billions of taxpayer dollars flowing through decades-old contracts that get renewed, extended and expanded without ever being tested against a competitor.<\/p>\n

Last year,\u00a0only about 13%\u00a0of the DOE\u2019s newly registered contract dollars were competitively awarded; 57% of that \u2014 about $1.06 billion of $1.87 billion \u2014 consisted of renewals or other awards whose terms had already been established under earlier contracts.<\/p>\n

These deals are perfectly legal. And that is exactly the problem.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The city reviews whether contracts meet legal and procedural requirements \u2014 not whether another vendor can provide the same or better service for less.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Unlike nearly every other city agency,\u00a0the DOE doesn\u2019t have\u00a0to follow the Procurement Policy Board rules \u2014 the citywide standards that promote competition and help ensure taxpayers get the best value.\u00a0<\/p>\n

State law exempts it.<\/p>\n

Contracts over $1 million\u00a0still go before the Panel for Educational Policy, and the\u00a0comptroller registers them.<\/p>\n

But none of those steps asks whether another vendor could deliver the same or better services at a lower cost.<\/p>\n

The school-bus system is the clearest example.<\/p>\n

After labor protections adopted\u00a0following the 1979 bus strike\u00a0made rebidding politically difficult, the city repeatedly extended contracts with the same companies.<\/p>\n

In 2013, after the state\u2019s highest court ruled contract protections could not be required in new competitively bid deals, the Bloomberg administration rebid\u00a0school-bus routes for the first time in more than three decades.<\/p>\n

Drivers struck for a month, disrupting transportation for more than 100,000 students.<\/p>\n

Then Mayor Bill de Blasio undid it \u2013\u2013 canceling the next round of bids,\u00a0spending $42 million to subsidize winning companies\u2019 wages and returning to the practice of extending contracts.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The routes haven\u2019t faced a real bid since. Last November,\u00a0the Adams administration\u00a0extended the contracts again.<\/p>\n

In more than 40 years, the city\u2019s school-bus contracts have faced real competition only once.<\/p>\n

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The custodial system followed a similar path.<\/p>\n

In 2016, rather than competitively rebidding custodial services,\u00a0the de Blasio administration created<\/a>\u00a0NYC School Support Services, a DOE-affiliated nonprofit employing roughly 8,000 workers.<\/p>\n

A 2022 state comptroller audit\u00a0found the DOE awarded the $6.4 billion custodial contract noncompetitively, without meeting its own procurement rules.<\/p>\n

Auditors found no detailed cost breakdown, no measurable performance standards and only a five-business-day opportunity for other vendors to respond.<\/p>\n

Universal Pre-K was also expanded\u00a0in the same way.<\/p>\n

It launched in 2014 with hundreds of community providers; many are still paid today under contracts that were never rebid.<\/p>\n

And school food shows how expensive no-bid gets: A\u00a02021 city comptroller report\u00a0found that over four years \u2014 all under de Blasio \u2014 the DOE spent more than half a billion dollars on \u201capproved brand\u201d food products with \u201cno competitive bids or proposals.\u201d<\/p>\n

Federal prosecutors charged the DOE\u2019s former food chief and three food executives with felonies. And when the city finally bid out just five of those products, it saved $7.8 million.<\/p>\n

Other agencies show that\u00a0regular competition is both possible and routine.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Environmental Protection competitively awarded 72% of its contract dollars. Sanitation nearly matched it, at 68%. Parks hit 61%; Transportation, 53%.<\/p>\n

Yet, the nation\u2019s largest school system? 13%.<\/p>\n

That is what the council is trying to expose. And what Mamdani campaigned on fixing.<\/p>\n

When the council finally gets the contracts, it should look at not only the no-bid awards but also the ones that haven\u2019t been competed for in years.<\/p>\n

But fixing the process falls to City Hall.<\/p>\n

As each contract comes up, the city decides: Solicit competitive bids or extend it.<\/p>\n

Mamdani\u2019s budget pushed DOE spending to a record $38.6 billion \u2014 nearly $4 billion more than last year.<\/p>\n

But his plan banks on procurement savings.<\/p>\n

Those savings materialize only if the city makes vendors compete.<\/p>\n

Mamdani\u00a0campaigned<\/a>\u00a0on reform. Now comes the test.<\/p>\n

Jennifer Weber is a fellow at the Manhattan Institute.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mayor Zohran Mamdani campaigned on cleaning up the Department of Education\u2019s bloated contracting \u2014 promising to audit its…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":300747,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[7739,301,982,4337,19077,9,11,10,299,209,5271,985,82],"class_list":["post-300746","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-budget","tag-city-council","tag-contracts","tag-department-of-education","tag-julie-menin","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news","tag-opinion","tag-public-schools","tag-schools","tag-taxpayers","tag-zohran-mamdani"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/300746","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=300746"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/300746\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/300747"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=300746"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=300746"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=300746"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}