No Bids Solicited on Council Flier Printing
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Hundreds of thousands of dollars of printing services were commissioned by the City Council last month on a brochure and four fliers that touted the work of Speaker Gifford Miller and many of his fellow Democrats on the city budget. City regulations require opening projects worth more than $5,000 to public competitive bidding, but no bids were solicited for these printing jobs, according to council documents released to The New York Sun after a request under the Freedom of Information Act.
Instead, the project was divided into 150 separate printing jobs, and the work was awarded to five printing companies. The job of making the mailing labels for all 150 jobs was done by Nicheware, a printing company outside Albany.
Individual invoices from the five printing companies to the City Council generally ranged from $2,000 to more than $4,000, and none amounted to more than $5,000.
Four of the five printing companies – Metro Graphics NY, Jon-Da Printing Company, JM Envelope Company, and Copy Photo Print – listed the same building as their address, 200 Hudson St., a large, renovated commercial building that houses dozens of printshops.
Two of the shops, Metro Graphics and Copy Photo Print, share the same office suite. The other two, Jon-Da Printing and JM Envelope Company, were listed in the building under the name Harvey Cohen.
The fifth printer on the council’s June mailings was Color Graphics and Communications, at 185 Varick St., also in Lower Manhattan.
Metro Graphics NY was the printing company hired in 2002 and 2003 to produce much of the campaign literature for Mr. Miller’s mayoral run, according to filings with the city’s Campaign Finance Board. In 2002 and 2003, the Miller campaign reported, it paid Metro Graphics a total of more than $20,000 for printing, creating invitations, and postage.
Asked last night about the use of Metro by both the council and the speaker’s campaign, a spokesman for Mr. Miller, Stephen Sigmund, said: “One has nothing to do with the other. … But it’s not surprising. There’s a limited number of printers in the city.”
