We found a lead at the Mayor’s Office on Contracts

For the investigative journalist, the city’s VENDEX system is a good place to see who’s doing business with New York City.

VENDEX is a database that contains information for every city contract and information regarding ownership, financial capacity, business structure, affiliations and involvement in government investigations on the vendors that do business with the city. Last week, we combed through hundreds of Department of Education VENDEX files at the Mayor’s Office on Contracts.

The filings were wildly incomplete, missing hundreds of vendors and contracts. Never mind that the VENDEX database for the Department of Education only went back to 2006. But we managed to walk away with one lead.

Supreme Evaluation, Inc., a company that conducts assessments and evaluations for the New York City public school system, had a “caution” assigned to it. According to this document, in 2006, the Office of Special Investigation looked into allegations of “improper recruitment and enrollment of students in supplemental educational services.”

We requested the investigation report from the Special Commissioner of Investigation for the New York City School District, but have yet to receive it.

We did, however, obtain the VENDEX questionnaire, along with a letter written by the chief administrator for the Department of Education’s Division of Contracts and Purchasing, Jay Miller, to the president of Supreme, Neil Maron.

In his letter, Miller wrote, “the DOE believes you now understand the importance of training your employees on policies and procedures as well as the need for strict observance of the DOE’s code of ethics.”

Yet, even while apparently contesting the findings of the investigation for ethics violations, Supreme lobbied the DOE and the Mayor’s office, and was subsequently awarded a contract worth over $11.7 million, as well as two contracts worth a little under $1 million each.

And that’s not all.

According to our database—compiled through records we obtained from the Comptroller’s office and from the Department of Education Web site—since 2002, the Department of Education has awarded Supreme over $17 million in contracts. Additionally, in 2002, Supreme was awarded a no-bid contract for $187,200 for “supplemental educational services.” By the end of the three-year contract, though, the Department of Education paid Supreme nearly $4 million.

We’ve called Supreme several times, but no one was either available to comment or willing to comment.

We’ll keep you updated with what we learn when we receive the investigation report and any other information.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 10th, 2009 at 10:12 pm and is filed under Companies. The entry is tagged under no-bid contract, Supreme Evaluation, VENDEX. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.