The Department of Education spends approximately $20 billion each year. Roughly a quarter of that goes towards contracting. Counter to the testimonies of the city Comptroller and public advocate, our research has revealed that no city or state agency outside the Department of Education has an understanding of how much money the department is spending on no-bid contracts.

Through public records requests to the city comptroller, cooperation from the public advocate’s office and other sources, we were able to get several ostensibly “complete” lists of Department of Education no-bid contracts awarded since the beginning of mayoral control. We combed the Department of Education Web page on recent contracting activity and added all available approved no-bid contracts posted to the site to the list.

According to the city comptroller’s list, the total number of no-bid contracts awarded under mayoral control was approximately $250 million. However, another the “complete” list of contracts—this one originating from a Freedom of Information request filed directly with the Department of Education by the public advocate—put the total at nearly twice that: $496 million. And, City Comptroller William C. Thompson’s recent testimony before a panel on contracting in February estimated the number to be close to $300 million.

It turns out that all of these numbers may be incomplete or misleading. We compiled the two lists into one, entering every single vendor, date and amount of the contract into a data sheet. We then combined the “complete” list Deputy Chancellor Kathleen Grimm gave the public advocate with the list we’d received from the comptroller - and deleted the duplicate contracts for a total of more than $678 million. If Grimm’s list were truly complete, it would include every contract registered with the comptroller. In fact, there was very little overlap. The two lists were substantially different - painting a picture of more spending than either list did on its own.

This means that the department either is not disclosing or does not have a large number of the contracts registered with the comptroller. It might also mean that the “complete list of contracts” given to the public advocate by Grimm is misleading, incomplete, or both.

David N. Ross, head of contracting and purchasing at the Department of Education and the chairman of the Committee on Contracts, maintains that every department contract is registered with the city comptroller before it is executed.

“We’re sending contracts that are over $25,000 to the comptroller’s office for registration,” said Ross. “There are some contracts that the comptroller has not registered, there are some that might not get through the bureaucracy in time.”

But Thompson has testified on numerous occasions that they do not receive all no-bid contracts from the Department of Education. According to Fong Chan, director of intergovernmental communications at the City Comptroller’s Office, the Department of Education registers contracts on a voluntary basis.

“Because they are not subject to the City Charter; they will send to us the contracts they want to send to us,” said Chan. “They can sort of fudge it and say ‘We do comply.’ But they don’t completely”

In addition to approximately $300 million in no-bid contracts, the Department of Education has also given out close to $4.5 billion dollars in competitively bid contracts for which there was only one bidder since 2002.

Given that the entire annual budget for contracting is roughly $4.5 billion, this is a considerably large sum. This contrast between one-bid contracts in the education department and other city agencies is particularly stark. City contracting policy requires city agencies to solicit three bids for every contract before it can be executed.

“It’s clear: the Department of Education believes it can do whatever it pleases and not adhere to the same rules that other City agencies follow,” said Kristen McMahon, a spokesperson for the city comptroller.