Security guards at city migrant shelters are being paid upwards of $117 an hour — more than four times the prevailing wage — under rushed, no-bid contracts being doled out by Mayor Eric Adams’ administration to deal with the crisis, a new audit shows.
The deals, inked under the city’s emergency contracting system, have allowed various for-profit companies to charge “exorbitant rates” for migrant shelter staffing with very little oversight and vetting – leading to taxpayers being fleeced out of millions of dollars, according to the report.
“The city’s haphazard approach to entering these contracts – and their subsequent failure to compare or control prices across them – underscores the pitfalls of inadequate management of emergency procurement,” said City Comptroller Brad Lander of his office’s audit.
“The result is that City agencies likely spent millions of dollars more than necessary for the same services.”
The comptroller’s review of the city’s four highest-cost deals found that supervisors and security staff at various asylum seeker shelters were being paid “wildly different rates” — despite delivering the exact same services.
The hourly rate the city is paying private security guards ranged from $50 to $117 across the four contracts — significantly higher than the prevailing wage base requirement of $27.58 per hour, according to the report.
A comparison of similar job descriptions showed that under contracts inked by companies Garner, SLSCO and DocGo, security staffers were being paid roughly $117, $90 and $50 per hour, respectively.
In one “particularly egregious instance,” SLSCO, was charging hourly rates that were 237% more than Essey for a similar contract role, while DocGo charged 146% more than Essey, the audit found.
The no-bid deals pushed through by the Adams administration were also “radically more expensive” than just hiring new city employees to provide staffing at the shelters, according to the report.
“Annualized, the savings would total approximately $50 million if certain staffing had been provided by hiring city employees rather than through the emergency contract,” the report said. --->READ MORE HERE
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| Barry Williams for NY Daily News via Getty Images / Getty Images |
New York City taxpayers have been fleeced for millions of dollars with emergency no-bid contracts awarded by Mayor Eric Adams' administration to buy services for illegal immigrants, an audit finds.
A report released Tuesday by NYC Comptroller Brad Lander analyzed four emergency asylum-seeker-related contracts held by different city agencies and found that prices paid "varied wildly" for similar services across the four contracts. The Adams administration also paid "significantly higher" rates to outside contractors than what the city would usually pay to existing shelter vendors and public sector employees, according to the audit.
"The City agencies charged with serving asylum seekers entered into these costly, no-bid, contracts at the same time that they are facing budget cuts and hiring freezes," Lander said. "The analysis of just one site found that hiring new City employees instead of staffers supplied by the vendor would deliver as much as $50 million in savings in a single year, even when factoring in the costs of fringe benefits for City employees."
"The current practice is a recipe for fiscal waste," he added.
The audit was first reported by the New York Post.
According to the comptroller, as of November 2023, the city has awarded 340 unique asylum-seeker contracts held across 14 different city agencies, representing an estimated contract value of $5.7 billion. Most of these contracts were awarded on an emergency basis, with little or no oversight.
The audit examined four emergency contracts, each held by a different city agency, to supply staffing at commercial hotels, welcome centers and Humanitarian Emergency Response and Relief Centers. Three of the contracts were "selected without any competitive bidding," the report said.
More than 150,000 migrants have arrived in New York City since 2022, overwhelming city resources as officials have struggled to find housing, food and clothing for them. Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott has bused asylum-seekers to New York and other cities in an effort to assist them in traveling to sanctuary jurisdictions and also highlight the crisis that border communities face on a daily basis.
Adams, a Democrat, declared a state of emergency in October 2022 to ramp up shelter operations and house migrants under the city's Right-to-Shelter laws. That process involved awarding emergency contracts to different vendors for meals, medical care and site staffing to meet migrants' needs. --->READ MORE HERE
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