The no-bid micro contracts awarded to vendors at the center of a bribery scandal are rife with wildly inflated costs, an analysis finds.
How much does it cost NYCHA to change a lightbulb?
In one case, more than $708 per bulb.
That’s the rate the housing authority paid one vendor, who submitted a total bill of $4,250 to replace six LED bulbs and covers at Throggs Neck Houses in The Bronx, according to records reviewed by THE CITY.
Another vendor billed NYCHA $4,985 to replace one door to a compactor room. Yet another charged $4,875 to put in slip resistant rubber treads on a stairway with 15 steps — a cost of $325 per step.
When law enforcement officials arrested 70 current and former NYCHA workers on bribery charges earlier this month, they identified small no-bid contracts for apartment repairs, awarded to select vendors in exchange for cash to superintendents, as the source of corruption.
What prosecutors didn’t say was that many of the bills submitted by the vendors who win these so-called micro-purchase contracts raise serious questions about whether NYCHA wound up paying them hundreds of thousands — or even millions — of taxpayer dollars in inflated costs over the years.
All of these bills had one thing in common, a review of contract data by THE CITY found.
The vendors sought compensation as close to the maximum allowed at the time on each contract, regardless of the work performed. Micro contracts have a built-in incentive for vendors to bill for just below the maximum allowed — $5,000 until late 2019, $10,000 since — no matter what the scope and value of the task at hand is.
Retrofitting our warehouses lighting, last year estimate was 12k to retrofit 60 fixtures, this year it’s 8k to do 6. Prices for service have gone insane, and it’s unfortunate the workers aren’t seeing much/any of that money.
This seems a pretty classic hit piece on gubament bad rather than looking at the economic situation we find ourselves in.
It is a bit of both.
It is really hard to write a good contract that can handle the scrutiny of a public bidding process and it is really hard doing it when paying staff the wages that NYCHA likely pays the staff managing their contracts.
The jobs have gotten outsourced since NYC in general has found keeping staff on hand to be incredibly expensive, but the model of contractor maintenance is to make money where possible, not to serve the best interest. It is really hard to write a contract that makes serving the public good a money maker for the winning contractor.
Almost like there are A LOT of services that don’t make sense to run based on profit motive.
If the second company was safety conscious that makes sense.
Without knowing more it’s definitely possible the first company cut corners or used cheaper devices, $200 a light is very cheap for good LEDs and install. Rates are usually $100ish depending on market.
If you need a lift, that’s added costs, now you also need two guys instead of 1. Costs add up when stuff is done properly and safely.
And no, you can’t change a light while on a ladder and do it it to safety compliance requirements. So lots of companies are hand tied in how they do things unless they operate illegally or not under safety standards (small companies)
It definitely depends on the kind and location of a bulb. what kind of lift access is there? can they get away with using those pole things without breaking it. if the pole thingy doesn’t work, what’s access like for a lift? is it out side and weather dependent? Can you get a lift truck to it? Are you blocking a roadway. Is it one of those big old school gym lights that clack on and take 10 minutes to actually turn on?
2 guys, a lift, a van or something to get the lift out there; the bulb… and insurance…
750 doesn’t seem too unreasonable. it’s probably not your average interior bulb.
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Maybe I’m misreading, but it sounded like these were part of the bribery scandal.
Yeah, supervisors(?) got a kickback
In some places they are not allowed to change the light bulbs because of ‘rules’
Because of decades of politicians saying ‘the government shouldn’t be in the business of doing x’, everything gets parceled out into maintenance contracts instead of having a couple of janitors on staff.
One vendor charged $4,950 to replace 48 LED bulbs and light covers in the Robinson Houses in East Harlem. The same vendor then charged nearly the same amount ($4,980) to replace just 12 LED bulbs and covers at the Throggs Neck Houses in the Bronx. Weeks earlier that same vendor charged slightly less ($4,250) to replace just six LED bulbs and covers at Throggs Neck.
One vendor charged $4,950 to replace 48 LED bulbs and light covers in the Robinson Houses in East Harlem. The same vendor then charged nearly the same amount ($4,980) to replace just 12 LED bulbs and covers at the Throggs Neck Houses in the Bronx. Weeks earlier that same vendor charged slightly less ($4,250) to replace just six LED bulbs and covers at Throggs Neck.
They might notice, that the actual cost of the LEDs and count of LEDs is secondary to fielding an entire crew for a day. Its a cost plus model. My guess is that if you want this company to show up with a crew, price starts at 4k. Everything after that is cost plus, but the base price to get a crew on site is 4k. In other news, shit is expensive.
It’s also possible for a particular lightbulb to be expensive to replace because it’s in an awkward location, and takes hours of labor to gain access, or really specialized tools and equipment.
Not saying that happened here. But it’s certainly conceivable.
Might need a scissor lift, or a cherry picker, in which case, you are going to need fall protection.
Like yeah, super expensive, but have you tried buying bread recently?
Efficiencies with privatization, amirite?
Yeah there are many cases of big public organizations rife with corruption and many examples can be pointed to in New York. But micro-contracting is on the other extreme, and leaves so much room for overhead that the only thing it’s efficient at is having the private sector loot taxpayers as much as possible.
You need lightbulbs replaced in 5 buildings? Why do we need to go through a bidding process to get up to 5 different crews and 5 different sets of equipment to do the replacement? Seems way cheaper to just get one in-house crew to do it, who can properly be held accountable, even if the crew is twice as expensive as one contracted crew job.
Could be the other way as well. The micro bid is making up for the loses on the big one.
I got a client who is going to pay 10k more next time they put an order in. They went 10k over budget last time so it gets carried over.
In the book “Highrisers”, which is about the Cabrini-Greens housing developement in Chicago, there’s a short section talking about how certain buildings were turned over to the tennents in a management capacity. It didn’t fix all of the problems, and it didn’t save Cabrini-Greens, but it did have some measure of success over beurocratic management by CHA, which was a joke. (FWIW I read this several years ago, so take it with a grain of salt)
That model has stuck out in my mind since. Why not have a simple budget for each building and let the work of maintenance be managed by the people who live there, with resources from the appropriate housing authority. The US is so fucking paternalistic about poverty and the people living in it. We build huge beurocracies incapable of truly scaling that then result in obsene waste like shown above. With some management some of that could be put on tennents, with them keeping some of benefits as well.
