Union officials condemn bloated private contracts at OPA

(New York, N.Y.) - District Council 37 officials criticized the city for spending hundreds of millions of dollars on private contractors who work on the automation payroll functions at the Office of Payroll Administration (OPA) when city employees can do the work more cost effectively. Union officials voiced those criticisms while testifying at a public hearing held today by the Committee on Contracts, chaired by Council member Letitia James, which examined the New York City OPA's CityTime contract for automation of payroll functions in timekeeping.

DC 37 Assistant Associate Director Henry Garrido told the committee, "As the largest municipal employees union we are extremely concerned about the way the city is squandering taxpayer dollars even though we are experiencing a budget deficit." Garrido lashed out at the city for recently laying off hundreds of school aides and other civil service workers while awarding multi-million dollar contracts to over-priced private consultants.

The CityTime project which began in 1998 was supposed to cost $63 million dollars, Garrido testified. "Now we learn that the entire cost of the project, entirely managed and maintained by private out-of-state contractors, will cost over $700 million. "For $700 million the city could instead employ 10,000 computer workers," Garrido added.

"I can think of better ways to save money, and the first is by contracting in more work and letting go of the contractors who charge the city over $300,000 per year for every consultant. In the last eight years, our union has seen a parade of consultants feeding from the public trough who have constantly run over budget and consistently under performed. The CityTime system is just one example of how a consultant gets its hooks into the city and then starts leeching off the taxpayer," Garrido said.

Citing the way in which the CityTime RFP was issued and the way in which one contract was assigned, Garrido expressed the union's belief that the City "has violated Procurement Policy Board rules in implementing the CityTime project." He added that "experiences with CityTime and other computer modernization projects" makes it clear that private consultants cannot police themselves.

The ballooning cost of outside contracts is an ongoing issue for DC 37 which launched its most recent investigation of this issue in February 2009 with the publication of a study entitled "Massive Waste at a Time of Need." That report examined 10 of the of the city's 18,000 contracts and found that $9 billion of its $60 billion budget has gone to private companies for work that public employees either are doing or can do more efficiently and cost effectively.

Jon Forster, 1st Vice-President of DC 37's Civil Service Technical Guild Local 375, who testified along with Garrido, called the expenditures on the private contracts "outrageous."

District Council 37 is New York City's largest public employee union, with 125,000 members and 50,000 retirees.