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Q&A
Questions on emergency contracts for asylum seekers
4:07:38
ยท
147 sec
Councilmember Brannan inquires about the oversight of emergency contracts issued for the asylum seeker crisis. The Comptroller's office explains their review process and recommendations for competitive procurement.
- The Comptroller's office conducted reviews and released a report on emergency procurement practices in November 2023
- They found varying costs in staffing contracts, with security guard pay differing by up to 40% between contracts
- Comptroller Lander expressed regret for not revoking emergency approval sooner
Justin Brannan
4:07:38
Thank you, controller Lander.
4:07:40
I wanna get right into some contract questions around the emergency contracts for the asylum seeker crisis.
4:07:50
I think the administration took the issuance of emergency contracts to mean carte blanche so that they could direct contracts to whomever for whatever they wanted.
4:08:02
Has your office been able to look back at any or all of the contracts that were approved under the emergency provision to ensure that there was no abuse of the procurement rules?
Krista Olson
4:08:17
I mean, we review each request for emergency procurement that comes to our office at that time.
4:08:26
And we have done some look backs in terms of the overall.
4:08:32
We released also a report in November of twenty twenty three on emergency procurement and practices and we do have some recommendations that came out of that.
4:08:44
And one of those main recommendations is for the administration to move towards competitive procurement and we are seeing some of that.
4:08:55
Because of delays in those contracts that are going through the appropriate process and coming to us, we still are slow in receiving them and being able to do a full assessment.
Brad Lander
4:09:07
And we did reports.
4:09:08
We looked specifically at the staffing contracts.
4:09:11
I mean, we looked we did content focused dives on emergency procurement for hotels.
4:09:18
And in that one, found that actually the cost per night scanned out and was pretty reasonable across that contract.
4:09:25
Then we looked at the staffing contracts and found that the costs were all over the place, that the amount that we were paying for a security guard varied like a % from contract to contract.
4:09:37
So we have done a couple of deep dives into the specific procurement.
4:09:42
But, you know, I think your question is important here.
4:09:44
You know, if I could do one thing over again, it would have been to revoke the emergency approval, the prior approval we gave much sooner than than we did.
4:09:54
It was reasonable for them to have the authority in July of twenty twenty two and for a few months following, but it quickly got out of control.