When Michael R. Bloomberg won the mayoral race in 2001, one of his campaign promises was to bring accountability to a broken school system by taking control of New York City public schools. To this day, Bloomberg asserts that following through on these promises are central to his administration’s successes.

“Transparency and accountability, those have been the hallmarks of our administration at City Hall,” Bloomberg said in a weekly radio address in February. “Over the past seven years we’ve swung open the doors of city government, and given the public the essential information it needs to make sure that we our living up to our obligations and responsibilities to New Yorkers.”

Seven years later, contracting policy within the Department of Education is one of the least transparent of any city agency in New York City, with no outside oversight and little public access.

Particularly troubling is the area of no-bid contracting. According to City Comptroller William C. Thompson, Jr., “The use of noncompetitive bids have soared out of proportion” since Bloomberg took control of schools.

When the State Legislature gave the mayor power over schools in 2002, the chancellor was given the task of writing the education department’s policy on contracting and procurement. The mayor could easily have adopted the procurement policies created by the Procurement Policy Board governing all other mayoral agencies. It is a system with outside checks on power and requisite public access.

Instead, Bloomberg and Schools Chancellor Joel I. Klein chose to maintain a distinct policy for the Department of Education—an internal process that allows awarding millions of dollars of taxpayer money without any outside oversight or accountability.

The heart of our investigation is why a city administration that touts mayoral control of schools as its highest achievement has refused to require its education department to comply with the procurement rules that apply to all other mayoral agencies. We are also examining one specific example of the result of the Department of education’s exemption from these purchasing practices – the increased use of no-bid contracts.