Claim Sanit 'Making Garbage' To Justify Lot-Cleaning;
Comptroller Sees Phantom Work
By TOMMY HALLISSEY

As if there were not enough trash to pick up, City Comptroller William C. Thompson Jr. has uncovered a Department of Sanitation practice of misusing equipment and personnel clean vacant lots of nonexistent trash.

WILLIAM C. THOMPSON Jr.: Lots of wasted effort.

Mr. Thompson released the findings of an audit July 14 that showed the department's Lot Cleaning Division had poor control over the identification and cleaning of properties in its Vacant Lot Clean-up Program. "My auditors found such weak monitoring that there was the potential for fraud," Mr. Thompson said. "I demand that the Department of Sanitation strengthen its oversight so that New Yorkers can trust that its clean-up crews aren't cleaning up themselves."

Phantom Garbage

Mr. Thompson produced "before" pictures of a clean vacant lot in the Bronx, where DSNY later said it cleaned 16 tons of trash. Of 76 lots examined by the Comptroller's Office, 41 percent were already clean. On 13 of the clean lots, dumping fees were paid for the phantom garbage.

"We have reviewed the audit's findings and will strengthen our reporting procedures, where necessary," DSNY said in a statement. "Resources have been deployed as needed to correct conditions, and when adjoining lots and areas have also been found to have suffered, we have taken the appropriate corrective action to clean them up."

Mr. Thompson found improper supervision in the Field Operations Unit, which is responsible for generating work orders in the field after identifying a vacant lot in need of cleaning. Auditors also found scant oversight of field supervisors' lot selections.

"These weak controls resulted in a number of lots that were allegedly being cleaned even when my auditors determined no such actions were warranted," Mr. Thompson said.

Resource Overkill?

The Lot Cleaning Division supervisors occasionally assigned more labor and equipment than necessary to clean vacant lots, his auditors found. A DSNY crew billed 246 work hours to clean a Brooklyn lot when lots of similar size were cleaned in an average of 22.5 work hours.

DSNY did not address the specifics of the audit, but said, "Vacant lot cleaning is an important and visible service provided by the Department of Sanitation, particularly in communities where acts of illegal dumping have left a devastating toll."

The Comptroller's Office also found 1,800 work orders open in the DSNY computer program for an average of more than three years. Most of them were for privately owned lots to which DSNY could not gain access. Mr. Thompson suggested issuing a notice of violation and obtaining a warrant from the court.

"There are clear procedures for gaining access to a privately owned lot, and the Sanitation Department has been lax in its ability to obtain and provide the necessary information," he said. "Omissions of necessary information such as incomplete addresses and misidentification of property owners are obstructing the process.

Mr. Thompson made nine recommendations. DSNY agreed with eight of them and took the ninth under advisement.