DHS Sprayed Over Painting Contract Amid Staff Layoffs

The Chief-Leader/Michel Friang

PAINTED INTO A CORNER: Marla Sampson, the Director of the Mayor’s Office of Contract Services, defended a Department of Homeless Services contract with a private painting company even after 14 DHS Painters were laid off. ‘The contract is a very low dollar amount, and we don’t even anticipate using that full dollar amount,’ she testified at an Oct. 14 City Council hearing. A small Department of Homeless Services contract for a New Jerseybased painting company was responsible for the layoffs of 14 unionized city workers, Council Members and union officials charged at a hearing Oct. 15.

The hearing, convened by the Contracts and Civil Service and Labor committees, examined DHS’s four-year contract with Riverdale Painting Corp., which cost $2.24 million and began March 2008, and the subsequent layoffs of 12 Painters and two Supervisor Painters by the agency last month.

Questions City’s Choice

Contracts Committee chair Letitia James said that “the city had failed the painters employed by DHS” in laying them off rather than canceling the contract, considering that the job responsibilities of both sets of employees were identical.

Ms. James framed the hearing with analysis of the law in the New York City Charter, Section 312a, that requires agencies planning to enter into certain contracts to determine whether any contract will directly displace city employees. If such displacement is discovered, a cost analysis must be submitted to the City Comptroller’s Office and the union representing the workers.

“I suspect that they are somehow averting or skirting the law,” Mr. James alleged.

But the Director of the Mayor’s Office of Contract Services, Marla Simpson, denied that anything untoward had taken place.

“The recent layoffs. . . were not tied to the procurement or renewal of any contract for similar services,” she said, noting that the contract “long predates the decision to trigger these layoffs” and that the nature of the contract does not fall under “technical, consultant or personal services,” which is the provision for the activation of Charter Section 312a.

Predicts Decline in Work

Ms. Simpson said that her analysis had shown that “DHS expects to do less painting overall in the upcoming fiscal year and beyond” and that the contracted workers would experience a decline in work, rather than an increase, even with the layoffs.

The union representing the laid-off Painters, International Union of Painters and Allied Trades Local 1969, disputed her claim. “Riverdale Painting has been painting day and night for the past two months,” said Local 1969 President Stephen Melish. “Our employees had seen increased work orders during the last year. . . there are state mandates that govern that they must paint those facilities.”

Mr. Melish noted that Riverdale was a New Jersey-based company and was probably employing mostly outof city residents, while all 14 laid-off Painters lived in the five boroughs. He also dismissed the notion that a contracted out worker would cost less. “It is always cheaper to paint with inhouse personnel,” he said. “Outside contractors mark up their costs for profit, inventory, etcetera.”

District Council 37 Executive Director Lillian Roberts also entered a statement of protest, saying the layoffs highlighted contracting-out issues the union has campaigned against.

‘Losing Accountability’

“What is at stake here is not just who is doing the work but the accountability and oversight over public service work,” she said. “In many cases contractors are not vetted and they employ people with questionable backgrounds. . . we feel that the city should have to justify each and every contract with a thorough costing out analysis.”

Other Council Members questioned why DHS had decided to retain the contract while laying off painters. Departing Queens Councilman John Liu, the Democratic nominee for City Comptroller, took issue with Ms. Simpson’s argument that the DHS didn’t want to cut off the contract because it was one that had been renewed multiple times for at least 10 years.

“These employees had also been hired before all of this fiscal difficulty,” Mr. Liu said. “Even if the amount of painting is in decline, it’s not going to be zero. We’re still going to need people to paint. Instead of keeping the Painters around, the city decided to let them go and keep the contract around.”

“When you become Comptroller, I suggest that you conduct an audit,” Ms. James told him. Mr. Liu is considered overwhelmingly likely to win in