REMARKS
Open Remarks by Council Member Gale Brewer, Chair of the Committee on Oversight and Investigations
0:03:42
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3 min
Council Member Gale Brewer leads a joint hearing on NYCHA's response to recent corruption, focusing on oversight and bribery related to micro purchase contracts.
- Brewer emphasizes the urgency of addressing NYCHA's corruption, particularly regarding bribery and extortion in micro purchase contracts.
- She highlights the history of abuse and the lack of oversight in NYCHA, making it prone to fraud.
- Recommendations by the Department of Investigation were initially ignored by NYCHA until the arrest of 70 employees.
- The hearing aims to explore solutions to ensure repair needs of public housing residents are met without corruption.
- Brewer also acknowledges whistleblowers coming forward with similar complaints, demonstrating ongoing issues within NYCHA.
Gale Brewer
0:03:42
Thank you very much.
0:03:43
I am Gail Brewer, and I'm chair of the council's committee and oversight and investigations.
0:03:47
And I know we'll hear from Tear Juan, she is on maternity leave, and we have to have a quorum in order for her to speak.
0:03:55
So that's why she's not speaking right now, but I'm sure we will get a quorum.
0:03:59
I'm delighted to be conducting today's hearing jointly with the committee on public housing and the committee on contracts.
0:04:06
I do wanna thank council member Chris Banks and council member Julie Wan for all the hard work as well as that of their teams of putting this hearing together.
0:04:16
The recent arrests of 70 19 employees on bribery and extortion charges while disturbing being are unfortunately not surprising.
0:04:25
Nietta does have a history of corruption and abuse surrounding the use of micro purchases.
0:04:31
These arrests are just the latest example.
0:04:34
Micro purchases at the center of this bribery and extortion team, have a streamlined approval process to give development employees, those are the folks in the field.
0:04:45
The ability to quickly address small scale problems in their buildings without having to go through a lengthy bidding process.
0:04:54
We all want apartments to be repaired quickly, It's a laudable goal, particularly the vacant ones to be honest with you.
0:05:00
However, as we have seen over and over the lack of oversight, makes these types of contracts vulnerable to abuse and fraud.
0:05:10
Department of Investigation, and I wanna thank the commissioner and her staff, has repeatedly warned night show that these macro contracts are vulnerable to corruption, but the agency did not act.
0:05:22
In 2021, the Department of Investigation made several recommendations tonight.
0:05:27
And I know it was before this DOI, and this night of I was around regarding micro purchase reforms was the agency similarly rejected.
0:05:39
It was not until 70 current and former NATO employees were arrested that they agreed to implement a set of recommendations made by DOE, and I appreciate NATO doing that.
0:05:49
It shouldn't, however, take seventy breaths for night shift to shut down known opportunity for bribery and extortion by development managers.
0:05:58
Particularly when DOE has given them a road map on how to get this done.
0:06:02
This is no excuse, and I wanna add that my office has received several people who have come forward as whistleblower with the same kinds of problems in the last couple of weeks, and I have sent them to DOE.
0:06:15
Today, we are here to examine NICE's response to the most recent bribery and extortion that was uncovered in the micro purchase contracts.
0:06:23
We want to consider how we can ensure that public housing residents can have their urgent repair, need, address in a timely manner without leaving the process open to bribery, extortion, and all kinds of corruption, like what was recently uncovered by the federal prosecutors in Manhattan.
0:06:40
I just wanna add also, you know, it's hard because residents complain that they are seeing the offices of the development staff, so called local staff, fixed up, and not their apartments.
0:06:53
And these are the kinds of things that we should have paid more attention to.
0:06:57
Before I turn this wonderful meeting back to Cheer Banks, I'd like to ask the great public advocate to say a few words.
0:07:07
I do also wanna thank Nicole Katar, legislative, whose general counsel to this committee.
0:07:13
Legislative analyst, Erica Cohen, and Alex Yablon, and financial policy analyst Owen Kotowski, and from my office, Sam Goldsmith, and now I turn it over to our great public advocate, Jermione Williams.