Monitors Bill NYC Agencies Over $111M to Oversee City’s Epic Failures

By: Hadassa Kalatizadeh

Monitors have already billed New York City agencies over $111 million to oversee some of the city’s epic failures.

As reported by the NY Post, there are at least 11 ongoing cases being monitored by costly outside overseers who were appointed by judges and other government entities to help city entities fix cases of ongoing mismanagement. Among the expenditures is a $36.9 million bill over 10 years for a lawyer appointed to help the FDNY hire more black and Hispanic firefighters. In another case, in 2015, a Manhattan Federal Judge appointed an overseer, who has already billed over $10 million, to resolve claims about excessive force being used by correction agents at Rikers jail complex.

About $28.5 million in fees have been paid to a former prosecutor appointed to help the NYC Housing Authority to spend $2.2 billion on repairs and improvements to public housing over five years. Another $12.8 million was forked out to monitors to help the NYPD move past the infamous stop-and-frisk practices. A special master was paid $8 million to oversee the city’s largest ever payout of up to $1.3 billion to teachers who failed a state-required certification test which has since been deemed as bias. An independent monitor was paid $1.4 million in city funds since 2017 to check on the Administration for Children’s Services to make sure there is proper training to help the agency lessen abuse.

The job of the monitors— or special masters as they are sometimes called— is to scour through records, conduct interviews, pinpoint where the problems are, and issue progress reports periodically with recommendations.

Former City Comptroller Scott Stringer said monitors and special masters play “critical roles” in overseeing city agencies and holding them accountable — but added that a review process is needed to decide if they are worth the costs. “The work of monitors is very opaque,” said Stringer. “The public is paying them a lot of money to make sure there’s fairness in government, but [taxpayers] also deserve a better accounting of the bills.”

Despite all the hefty payouts to the overseers, critics say the city has yet to make substantial progress in correcting the slew of problems. Nicholas Paolucci, a Law Department spokesman, noted that monitors and special masters “should be working towards making themselves obsolete,” as part of their bid to correct mismanagement. “Unfortunately, there is a tension between accomplishing their mission and their own financial interest in continuing the monitorship,” Paolucci added.