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SHERRY HALBROOKA PEF-supported accountability bill that was passed and signed into law in 2006 is now starting to produce important information about state spending for private consultant services just when that data is needed most.
As the governor and state legislators look for ways to get the maximum benefit from state revenues in the 2008-09 budget, the Contract Disclosure Law of 2006 is providing some keen insights into an area of state spending that was previously hidden.
The law requires the state Department of Civil Service (DCS) and the Office of the State Comptroller (OSC) to begin reporting how much state agencies are spending for consultant services and how many private consultants work under those contracts. This is the first time that information has been gathered and publicly reported in New York state.
“Up until now, this has been the invisible elephant in the room at budget time. At PEF, we knew it was big, because we got glimpses of various parts by analyzing some individual contracts. Now, the whole beast is finally starting to come into focus and it is a monster,” said PEF Director of Civil Service Enforcement Tom Cetrino.
“We now know, for instance, that at least 23,000 consultants worked for the state in fiscal year 2006-07. And more than 1,000 consultants were working under private contracts at each of at least five state agencies,” Cetrino said. “We are talking about a multi-billion-dollar expense to state taxpayers, that could be cut dramatically by bringing much of that work back in house to be done by state employees.”
“That information was not collected or reported at all before the Contract Disclosure Law took effect,” Cetrino said. “We must still do a lot of analysis to get at the truth, because the DCS and OSC reports look at the same contracts from different perspectives and in different time frames, so we find many apparent anomalies.”
For instance, the DCS report deals with data for all of NYS fiscal year 2006-07, that runs from April 1, 2006, through March, 31, 2007. The OSC report looks at just the final three-quarters of SFY 2006-07.
“We are striving to get to the bottom of many questions we have about the data in these reports, and will report on what we find out as we learn it,” Cetrino said. “However, we have identified some important information to share with the public and state budget makers now.”
In terms of the numbers of consultants working under private contracts with state agencies in the 2006-07 fiscal year, the top five agencies are: the state Transportation Department (DOT); the Office of General Services (OGS); the State University of New York (SUNY); the state Health Department (DOH) and the Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC).
“Clearly, each of these agencies is handing work off to at least 1,200 consultants through private contracts,” Cetrino said, “and at one or two of these agencies those previously invisible workers total more than 5,000.”
Another area coming into sharper focus is the kind of work these private consultants are doing.
“At least 9,500 of them are providing engineering services,” Cetrino said, “and more than 5,000 provide health services. About 2,800 work in the area of information technology, according to our current analysis, but we suspect that number might climb substantially as we delve and probe more deeply into these reports.”
PEF President Ken Brynien praised state legislators for passing the Contract Disclosure Law and Gov. Eliot Spitzer for recognizing the significance of the data it is revealing.
“Gov. Spitzer has begun to turn this enormous battleship around,” Brynien said. “He has begun by hiring hundreds of new state engineers to start filling vacant jobs at DOT. (See related story) And the governor is working with PEF to look closely and fairly at the comparative costs of doing work in-house, versus contracting it out, before state agencies award contracts.
“It is just common sense, but it has taken many decades of hard work by PEF to create the will among state leaders to fundamentally change the way the state does business. It will ease the burden on state taxpayers and that will be a welcome change for all New Yorkers.