Competitive Bidding Is for the Little People

How on earth is Mayor Bloomberg supposed to get anything done? That goshdarn Thomas diNapoli is at it again. First, he went and audited the KIPP schools, finding the following:

lack of documentation of criminal background checks for seven employees at the school;

an unclear policy regarding the competitive bidding process that resulted in the awarding of four contracts totaling in $181,584 without the benefit of competition;

no written policies and procedures to determine and approve salary increases;

missing or incomplete overtime records;

no system to track employees’ sick or personal leave accruals; and

no written policies and procedures or Board approval for employee bonus and stipend pay.

With such indifference toward compensating their employees, it's no wonder they needed to send them on "vacation" (which supposedly consisted largely of work-related meetings and discussions). When this story came out, "reformers" round the net branded diNapoli as "political." I found that a very unpersuasive argument, as nowhere did they use the word "inaccurate." But it turns out that diNapoli has his eyes on public schools as well.

Apparently, the Bloomberg administration's policy of offering no-bid contracts to whomever they please does not please Mr. diNapoli. Sure, it's easier for Bloomberg to just hand out money to anyone he feels like, but is that in the public's best interest?

The city came under tough criticism in 2006 over a $15.8 million deal with Alvarez & Marsal, a consulting firm that was hired to restructure the schools’ financial operations and cut as much as $200 million from the city’s more than $15 billion budget. The consulting firm also restructured several school bus routes to save money, but the plan infuriated parents when it took effect last January.

You may remember when kids were left to freeze on the coldest days of the year last year. This led to widespread dissatisfaction with the Bloomberg regime, which came to an end only when UFT President Randi Weingarten unilaterally stopped a demonstration against reorganization number 3 (The clear implication that reorganizations 1 and 2 had failed was largely ignored by the press).

Some of the consultants charged as much as $450 an hour for their work, and were able to bill as much as $500 a day for such expenses as transportation and housing.

Perhaps competitive bidding could have saved the city money and avoided the bus fiasco, but apparently the Bloomberg administration feels doing what it wants, when it wants, however it wants is more important.

School officials have said that awarding contracts without bidding gives them more flexibility and allows them to get better and faster results...

What, exactly, are these results? Under Mr. Bloomberg's leadership, I've watched my school mushroom to 250% capacity, and by his own standards (standardized test scores) he's made no progress at all.

Is diNapoli political? Well, of course he is. In fact, that's an adjective I'd apply to virtually all politicians. After all, there's a reason they're called politicians.

Is he accurate? We'll have the results of his audit in six months. Perhaps we can't attribute the unconscionable overcrowding, or the failure to reduce class sizes or raise test scores to no-bid contracts. But kids freezing on NY streets were indeed a disgraceful spectacle, and not remotely the sort of "results" I want, particularly from someone who aspires to be President of the United States.