City Audit Finds Flaws In Agency

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The New York Sun

The city’s Department of Environmental Protection is behind schedule on more than half of its repair, maintenance, and small-scale construction projects, a new audit by the city comptroller found.

“The Department of Environmental Protection’s insufficient planning and the inability to complete projects in a timely manner calls into question its administration of the job order contracting program,” Comptroller William Thompson Jr. said in a statement.

The audit said the DEP delayed issuing 72 of 94 sampled job orders beyond the acceptable time frame. For projects that had already been commissioned, 67 of 83 were behind expected completion dates, the audit found.

The department is in charge of 14 water pollution control plants and delivers water to more than 9 million city residents.

Flaws in the department’s pricing system also led it to pay thousands more than necessary to its contractors, according to the audit.

For job orders, the department is supposed to estimate costs using catalogs that list specific prices for each service. For a job order in Brooklyn, the audit found that the department paid almost $87,000 too much because it did not use preapproved prices.

The department responded to the audit that it was trying to expedite the job by skipping the usual pricing process.

The first deputy commissioner of the DEP, Steven Lewitts, said in a statement yesterday that the job order contracts examined in the audit make up only 2% of the department’s annual capital commitment, but said he agreed with almost all of the audit’s recommendations.


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