The New York City comptroller, Brad Lander, has restricted Mayor Eric Adams’s ability to quickly spend hundreds of millions of dollars on the migrant crisis — a major blow to the mayor’s emergency powers.
Mr. Adams, like several of his predecessors, has been given broad leeway to enter emergency contracts in times of crisis, including the coronavirus pandemic and the current crush of migrants entering New York.
But Mr. Lander had warned in September that he might rein in Mr. Adams’s authority, and withdraw his office’s blanket “prior approval” of emergency contracts. He cited reporting by The New York Times and others about the city’s dealings with a migrant services contractor, DocGo, whose $432 million no-bid contract has been marked by scandal.
In a letter dated Thursday sent to all city agencies, Mr. Lander’s office revealed that he “hereby revoked” his prior approval for migrant shelter and services contracts awarded after Nov. 30, and that future migrant spending would need to be first authorized by his office on a case-by-case basis.
Such deals “will require an independent prior approval from the comptroller’s office,” his office said.
The letter was previously reported by The Daily News.
An Adams administration spokesman, Charles Kretchmer Lutvak, said on Monday that the comptroller was hamstringing the mayor’s ability to quickly respond to the needs of the many migrants still arriving in the city from the southern border.
“Thousands of new migrants are still coming to New York City every week — and the comptroller tying our hands behind our back is unfair to both new arrivals and longtime New Yorkers and will unquestionably slow down every step in the process,” Mr. Lutvak said.
He said the administration would “continue to hold our contractors to the highest standards for providing care and services.”
Mr. Lander said earlier this year that restricting the mayor’s emergency spending powers on migrants would not affect the city’s hospital system, a public benefit corporation that has numerous emergency contracts in place to handle the migrant influx. It would affect all agencies directly under the mayor, although some small contracts, such as those under $1.5 million, would still be exempt from competitive bidding rules.
The move comes after Mr. Lander and Mr. Adams, who are both Democrats, had tussled over the administration’s approval of the DocGo contract.
In early September, Mr. Lander announced that he was rejecting the deal — the first time he had done so with an emergency contract — over concerns about DocGo’s qualifications and the problems cited in news coverage.
The mayor, however, has the power to override a comptroller’s objections, and Mr. Adams said the city would continue to honor the contract.
Two weeks later, Mr. Lander said he would begin an audit to determine how the city had come to award the no-bid contract to DocGo, which describes itself as a medical services firm and had no expertise in handling migrant services.
For months, city officials had refused to release the contract, giving New Yorkers little insight into how the money was being spent.
The Times subsequently revealed some of the contract’s details with the Department of Housing Preservation and Development. DocGo, for example, is allowed to turn a tidy profit from its largest single monthly expense: the hotel rooms housing the migrants. Under the contract, the city is required to pay the company a flat $170 per room per night, so if DocGo spends less on the hotel, it can keep the difference.
The Times also reported on the company’s use of deceptive work and residency documents, threats made by security guards working under its supervision, and numerous complaints from migrants in DocGo’s care.
On Thursday Mr. Lander released a report criticizing what he called a lack of transparency and oversight as the city has used emergency spending powers to dole out $1.7 billion in fast-tracked contracts from January 2022 through Sept. 30 of this year. About 80 percent of the spending, or $1.4 billion, was for migrant services.