DYCD public contract hearings lack engagement

Did you go to that public hearing last week where over $130 million dollars in New York City Department of Youth and Community Development contracts were presented?

If you had gone, you would have been the first member of the public to attend in some eight years even though contract award public hearings are designed to give people a voice on how city funds are distributed.

“(It’s) an opportunity for members of the public to testify if they have any concerns about what we’re doing,” said Renise Ferguson, deputy agency chief contracting officer for the Department of Youth and Community Development.

For years, New York City’s contract procurement process with human services providers has been under scrutiny for being slow and cumbersome. DYCD’s public hearings seem to be emblematic of parts of the process that have gone awry.  

Some attribute the low levels of public engagement to a lack of government transparency and a reluctance to utilize technology. 

All of the contract information could be made available online, said Claude Millman, a partner at Kostelanetz and Fink, who represents government contractors, including nonprofits, doing business with New York City and state, and a former director of the Mayor’s Office of Contract Services.

“If I decided I wanted to tell everyone about a proposed contract I could post it on Facebook, link to the contract, and allow online commenting I would read out at the hearing,” he said. “If you regularly make (the contracts) unavailable, you’re going to depress public interest in the hearings themselves.”

Draft contracts are made available for 10 days prior to the hearing, though only within the confines of the public review office. There are no copies for the public to take and no pictures permitted.

Millman suggests, among other things, a shift towards using social media to help create both public interest and awareness.

“They could be very interactive and accessible, but it hasn’t been that way,” said Millman. “Very few people even know the hearings exist.”

DYCD provides jobs, after-school programming and other supports for youth and families. Their most recent public hearing, held on June 29 in lower Manhattan, was to cover contracts to provide emergency shelter and services to help reunite runaway homeless youth with their families or find them long-term placements. However in the small but neat conference room with 16 chairs, a certain equation prevailed: 24, four-year contracts engaging 16 nonprofit vendors plus over $135,400,200 in city money equaled an announcement to an audience of zero.

Ferguson, the deputy agency chief contract officer with DYCD, quickly read through the contractors names, addresses and amounts. Among them were Safe Horizon, the Ali Forney Center, and SCO Family of Services. Time was provided for testimony from the public though it wasn’t necessary because no one came.

So why does DYCD hold these public contract award hearings? Because they, like other city agencies, have to, according to Ferguson. The hearings are mandated for all city agencies with contracts in excess of $100,000 and awarded by a method other than competitive sealed bidding by the Procurement Policy Board – a New York City government agency that regulates the procurement of goods, services, and construction with city money. Other procurement methods can include competitive sealed proposals – or RFPs, and emergency procurements.

Public hearings for contract awards held by other agencies, such as the Mayor’s Office of Contract Services and the Department of Buildings, are held in a more spacious, formal setting in Spector Hall located at 22 Reade Street – and are slightly better attended, officials say. “We advertise on the City Record and lots of people attend our hearings,” said Jacqueline Galory, director of the Public Hearing Unit, MOCS. “DYCD holds their own hearings, I’m not sure what they’re doing.”   

Ferguson, who worked for The Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice before coming to DYCD said she’s seen attendees at MOCJ hearings as well. 

“People will actually testify. ‘I don’t want that in my neighborhood,' or whatever it is,” Ferguson said. “It’s a bit more formal.”

However, it is often the case that by the time public hearings are held, vendors for city contracts have already been selected and expressions of public opinion are largely in vain.

“It’s just a chance for you to put your opinion on record,” said Ferguson. “It doesn’t actually change the fact that we’re doing anything.”

City agencies can oftentimes be slow or unwilling to embrace greater transparency, according to Millman, but he thinks it could make all the difference.

“Transparency is something that ultimately will make government work better,” said Millman. “But it’s a hard pill for any government official to swallow.”

DYCD also posts public ads about the hearings in the City Record, and emails elected officials to inform them of the hearings.

But in her eight years holding the hearings, Ferguson cannot recall a single member of the public ever attending a DYCD contract hearing. Other staff members host hearings as well, but Ferguson said she was not aware of the public attending any of those either.

“It’s just us with our little recorder and our documents laid out here, stumbling over numbers, and words,” Ferguson said.