Good evening, Honorary Chairwoman Norat, Chairman Macchiarola, and members of the Charter Revision Commission. Thank you for the opportunity to testify today.

For months, this commission has been deliberating over major revisions to New York City's Charter, namely the elimination of electoral primaries through the adoption of a non-partisan election system, and reform of the City's procurement system. In May, I testified before this Commission regarding both issues.

Since then, the Commission's staff has put forward a series of recommendations covering both topics. I have deep reservations regarding their recommendations because if implemented, they would do a great disservice to this City and its citizens.

I would first like to discuss procurement reform. The system by which the City does business with vendors is a critical cog in the process by which it serves its citizens. Sound, efficient procurement practices are important tools in the delivery of vital services to people, communities and businesses, and we must be vigilant in finding and correcting flaws to the system. It is not, however, a perfect system. Indeed, as I testified in May, it contains critical flaws.

To that end, my staff has been working with the Mayor's Office of Contracts to develop administrative improvements to the contract system. I also joined with the City Council leadership in forming a Joint Advisory Committee on Procurement Reform to address the need for better procurement procedures.

The group, which included leaders from the not-for-profit and for-profit communities, identified a series of ways that the City can easily improve access to information and how contracts are processed. Our recommendations include specific technology improvements and measures such as the inclusion of milestone tracking statistics in the Mayor's Management report to help identify contract delays.

I look forward to continuing this type of effort, and I remain committed to improving the procurement process through administrative measures and legislative recommendations.

However, I am deeply troubled by several of the recommendations for revisions to the Charter that the staff included in the report released June 26.

In particular, I take issue with the staff's recommendation regarding the registration of contracts. Specifically, the staff is recommending "adding to the Comptroller's registration powers the ability to make a one-time request for additional information from a procuring agency. The staff also proposes amending the Charter's registration section so that if the Comptroller fails to act within the specified time frames, the Mayor may take the necessary payment steps."

Despite this innocuous-sounding language, what the staff is proposing would actually devastate the intricate and carefully calibrated system of checks and balances between the Mayor's office and the Comptroller's office in the review and approval of the City's contracts. The system is meant to safeguard the integrity of the bidding process and the awarding of contracts. As proposed, these changes would gut that system.

Allow me to explain. The Charter specifies that a contract may not implemented until it is registered by the Comptroller. The Charter requires the Comptroller to register, refuse to register, or object to the registration of a contract within 30 days of its being filed
The Commission's staff stated that the Comptroller's Office occasionally returns contracts for reasons not covered under the refusal to register section of the Charter. However, the Commission's staff is confusing the issues.

Contracts are returned to agencies when they are incomplete or lack documentation required by various contracting statutes and rules. Therefore, the decision to register, or not, does not have to be made. For example, contracts are often submitted to the Comptroller's Office without a current VENDEX filing, or with serious integrity problems concerning a contractor that have not been addressed by the agency. At other times, contractually required insurance is not in place or the Mayor's Office of Management and Budget has not given approval to the agency to expend funds. There are other examples as well, but the point I am making is that in those scenarios, the Comptroller's office only recourse is to "return" the contract to the agency. The return of the contract prevents an incomplete contract from becoming legal by being "deemed registered" after 30 days.

The Commission staff is proposing a reform that would empower City Hall to do an end-run around this important checkpoint. According to its report, the staff recommends that, should the Comptroller's office return the contract to the Mayor's office without registering it, the Mayor's office would have the power to essentially bypass the Comptroller's office and register the contract. This would simply be a terrible idea, with potentially disastrous consequences for the City.

A recent example makes the case. In 1999, the Comptroller's Office requested that the Administration for Children's Services (ACS) provide performance evaluations of foster care contractors whose contract extensions or renewals had been submitted for registration. The request was made following a number of serious instances of abuse and mismanagement in the foster care system.

The Comptroller's office was seeking to ensure that contracts with poor-performing foster care providers would not be renewed without appropriate safeguards in place,
as required by the Procurement Policy Board Rules.

However, ACS initially refused to provide the evaluations, arguing that the Charter and Procurement Policy Board rules did not require their submission. The agency also argued that the Comptroller's office had no authority to refuse to register unsatisfactory contractors.

When the documents were finally made available, they revealed numerous problems involving the people and organizations entrusted by the City to care for one of the city's most fragile populations.

Without the perseverance of the Comptroller's office, the problems would not have come to light. The fact that the Comptroller's staff had to fight to gain access to the documents is simply unacceptable.

As part of the process of properly registering a contract, it is only logical that the Comptroller's office should have access to all necessary information and documentation about the process by which the contract was awarded to a given vendor. This is simply a matter of common sense.

To rectify this problem, a Charter revision should formally empower the Comptroller's office to request documentation, and then reject contracts if it is not provided. This would codify into law an authority that would provide a critical service to the City. And it would be not be without precedent. As I said in my May testimony, this is a power that the New York State Comptroller already possesses.

Unfortunately, while the staff recommendation appears, at least on the surface, to rectify this problem, that is not actually the case. The report recommends that the Comptroller's office be given the power to make a one-time request for additional "information" -- but it also would give the agency in question the ability to simply reject that request. This would clearly be a step backwards.

Two other recommendations in the staff report are troubling. The staff proposes that Section 310 of Chapter 13 of the charter be amended. The new language states that the Mayor has ultimate responsibility and power to procure and administer the contract. That language could form the basis for an argument that the City Council no longer has the authority to pass legislation impacting contracts and procurement in the City. While I do not believe that such an argument would ultimately prevail in the courts, it should be removed so that there is no question about the Council's authority in this area. Likewise, the proposed language removing VENDEX and its detailed requirements from the Administrative Code is unnecessary, as the Council has always worked with both the Administration and the Comptroller's Office on reform initiatives we have proposed to them. There is no reason for that balance of power to be changed through this commission's work.

In other words, time and again, the staff, using this false promise of greater "efficiency" and "flexibility", is proposing so-called reforms that would actually gut the Charter's system of checks and balances by centralizing far too much power in the Mayor's office. This would be a gross violation of the spirit of the Charter, and I call on this commission to reject the recommendations of the staff.

Now let me briefly turn to non-partisan elections. The Commission's staff has also recommended that the City end the role of political parties in City-wide elections, a recommendation that was as pre-ordained as it is poor public policy. As I testified in May, I am opposed to the elimination of primaries and the imposition of a non-partisan election system.

My reasoning is fairly straightforward. The New York City Charter is an immensely important document; it is the blue print by which the City governs itself. Any changes to that blue print must not be undertaken lightly or for the sake of political expediency. And any contemplated changes must, by their nature, possess both an inherent logic and the support of the people of this City. Non-partisan elections possess neither.

New Yorkers are not clamoring for the elimination of our present primary system - not the public, not the press, not our city's diverse and respected civic organizations. Indeed, the silence on this topic has been deafening.

And the proponents of non-partisan elections have not made a convincing case that this is a debate worth having, given the numerous other, more important civic issues that this City must address, such as education and the ongoing fiscal challenges.

I continue to call on this Commission to put the public's most pressing needs first.

Thank you.