Procurement Reform
State Agency Procurements
The Comptroller’s office reviews and approves most state contracts greater than $15,000. In State fiscal year 2004-05, this office reviewed 41,298 contracts and contract amendments valued at more than $28 billion.
- The Comptroller’s office reviews the contracts state agencies make with outside vendors to ensure that taxpayers receive the highest quality goods at the lowest price and from vendors who are above reproach.
- This Office also reviews the competitive bidding procedures conducted to ensure that no vendor has received preferential treatment.
Public Authority Procurements
With just two exceptions, the Comptroller’s office has no authority to review contracts issued by public authorities. In 2004-05, just 46 of the 215 public authorities that have statewide or regional significance, along with their subsidiaries, entered into 10,404 contracts valued at $5.5 billion.
- The Comptroller's Office has issued dozens of audits of public authorities detailing waste, fraud and abuse resulting from too little oversight of these purchases
State Agency Procurement Reform
The State Comptroller’s Office is instituting major reforms that will help ensure that State contracts are awarded only to responsible vendors who have the integrity and capacity to deliver the goods and services they promise.
- These reforms include ensuring that State agencies conduct and document thorough vendor responsibility determinations, as well as giving them the tools to perform those determinations in a more consistent, standardized manner.
- By the end of 2006, this office will create a new centralized database of vendor information to make contract review more efficient and effective.
- The Comptroller's Office also has submitted legislation to increase the threshold for formal competitive bidding and review by this office to allow State agencies and the Office to focus limited resources on higher value, higher risk contract awards. Reforms consistent with the Comptroller’s proposals were included in the 2006-07 Executive Budget and are being considered by the Legislature.
- Other reforms would:
- Enhance current incentives to contract with M/WBEs and New York State small businesses and to purchase recycled or remanufactured products
- Provide similar threshold changes to allow local governments to focus their contract resources on higher value purchases,
- Ensure that agencies don’t avoid competition and oversight by entering into multiple contracts below the threshold,
- Ensure that vendors submitting unsuccessful proposals are debriefed by agencies awarding contracts,
- Encourage competition by requiring agencies to document benefits of “piggybacking” off an existing contract of another agency as opposed to engaging in a new competitive procurement.
- Click here for a copy of the Comptroller’s report:
Public Authority Contract Reform
The Comptroller's Office has proposed legislation providing for oversight of public authority contracts similar to that required for State agencies.
- Since January 2003, this office has completed more than 50 audits of public authorities dealing with procurement and contracting. These demonstrate a consistent disregard for procurement rules and competitive bidding and involve poor quality purchases resulting in waste or inefficiency as well as abuse of procurement authority such as misuse of credit cards.
- Click here for a report on Public Authority Contracting Reform