New York City Mayor Eric Adams has been accused of wasting millions of taxpayer dollars on no-bid contracts that pay for-profit companies “exorbitant rates” to run emergency shelters for immigrant asylum seekers.
City Comptroller Brad Lander made the claim in a audit of migrant-related contracts published on Tuesday, identifying 340 asylum seeker contracts representing an estimated contract value of $5.7 billion.
According to the audit, most of those contracts were procured on an emergency basis, allowing the city to waive typical competitive bidding requirements.
“Asylum seeker contracts show the dangers of this uncontrolled process: tremendously high staffing prices with little consistency across agencies, costing far more than traditional procurement or hiring of municipal employees,” the audit said.
In one case, a provider charged the city $185.63 per hour for shelter supervisors, which amounted to nearly $1,500 per eight-hour shift.
New York City Mayor Eric Adams has been accused of wasting millions of taxpayer dollars on no-bid contracts to run emergency shelters for immigrant asylum seekers.
In contrast, a contract that did go through competitive bidding provides the city with shift supervisors at a cost of $68.69 per hour, Lander’s office wrote.
In another example, the audit notes that the city is paying security guards $90 an hour under one of the no-bid contracts, in contrast to $29.80 an hour for a city employee or $25.07 dollars per hour for the average contracted rate.
The audit notes that the city’s immigration crisis has been ongoing since spring 2022, with Adams declaring a state of emergency in October of that year, and questions why emergency contracts continue to be procured.
‘The city allowed for-profit companies to take advantage of a nascent emergency. “These companies charged exorbitant prices for positions that the city often hires at more reasonable rates,” the audit states.
“The city has had enough time to navigate this new status quo of shelter overcrowding and incorporate asylum seekers into our proven procurement and service delivery system that minimizes risk to the city and keeps costs low,” he adds.
A spokesperson for the mayor’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment from DailyMail.com on Tuesday morning.
Last week, Adams announced that his administration will cut an additional 10 percent in immigrant spending and suspend drastic budget cuts to other departments after he came under fire for giving immigrants taxpayer-funded debit cards.
City Comptroller Brad Lander made the claim in an audit of immigrant-related contracts released Tuesday, identifying 340 asylum-seeker contracts representing an estimated contract value of $5.7 billion.
Newly arrived migrants wait at a bus stop in front of the Floyd Bennet Field shelter on February 21, 2024 in the Brooklyn borough of New York.
Adams said he will cut an additional 10 percent in spending on asylum seekers, bringing the total cut in migrant spending to 30 percent.
The Big Apple has been inundated by an influx of immigrants that cost taxpayers $12.65 billion in 2023, a sum the mayor’s office promises to reduce to $10.6 billion in fiscal year 2025.
‘When we inherited it, we were in a state of emergency. Emergency conditions cost more money. “Now we are transitioning to a stabilized state,” the mayor said. WABC-TV.
‘This is going to be here for a while. So by doing that, we can renegotiate contracts. We can consider long-term planning. We are not using this as an emergency, although we are in a state of crisis. We are treating it differently because the emergency still exists. But we are managing it differently.”
The Big Apple has been inundated by an influx of immigrants that cost taxpayers $12.65 billion in 2023, a sum the mayor’s office promises to reduce to $10.6 billion in fiscal year 2025.
Adams said the budget cuts are a direct result of his administration’s efforts to stabilize the budget that resulted in better-than-expected economic performance in 2023.
Migrants collect clothing as mutual aid groups distribute food and clothing in cold weather near the Migrant Assistance Center at St. Brigid’s Elementary School last month in New York.
They are specifically cutting an additional 10 percent cut to the immigrant budget, on top of an additional 20 percent that they said has already saved more than $1.7 billion in city spending.
More than 170,000 immigrants have arrived in the city since spring 2022, and the crisis is only deepening as they continue to be bused in from Texas, where record numbers are arriving.
In January, Adams announced the original 20 percent cut that reduced the costs of the immigration crisis over the next three years.
‘If we were to do the third round, it will affect trash collection, it will affect our services to our seniors, it will affect libraries, it will affect a number of services where you will really see the difference. We’re not going to have to make that third round, that third round of cuts to our agencies,’ Adams said.
“You won’t see some of those draconian measures that we were going to have to take that will hinder the cleanliness and safety of our city.”