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PUBLIC TESTIMONY
Testimony by Lisa Rivera, President and CEO of New York Legal Assistance Group
1:46:14
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Lisa Rivera, President and CEO of New York Legal Assistance Group, testified about ongoing challenges faced by legal service providers regarding timely payments from the city. She highlighted persistent issues with contract registration, budget approvals, and invoice submissions, emphasizing the strain these delays put on their organizations.
- Despite timely contract registration, funding amounts changed multiple times during the fiscal year, causing complexity and delays.
- Budget approval processes are lengthy, with multiple revision cycles and errors, resulting in approvals as late as nine months into the fiscal year.
- Communication with city agencies is often frustrating, with long response times and unhelpful solutions to raised issues.
- These contracting challenges are diverting resources from critical work serving New Yorkers who depend on their services.
Lisa Rivera
1:46:14
Thanks.
1:46:15
Good afternoon, chair Juan.
1:46:17
Council members and staff, thank you for to speak today.
1:46:20
I'm Lisa Rivera, president and CEO of the New York Legal Assistance Group.
1:46:24
As you know, and we have repeatedly testified, legal service providers continue to face challenges related to timely payments.
1:46:32
While the city owes all legal service providers millions of dollars, we are going on two years of being told there are staffing shortages and software issues.
1:46:42
Though we are sympathetic to those concerns to a point, the problems have persisted for years without a satisfactory fix.
1:46:49
With respect to budgets, despite timely registration of our housing contracts with HRA in FY '20 '5, which was a celebrated change, the city changed our funding amounts no less than three to four times during the fiscal year adding complexity and delays to the process.
1:47:05
While we would all typically welcome increases to the budget, they don't help if we can't actually use the funds in a timely fashion.
1:47:13
The change that we receive required lengthy back and forth with the city to finalize the amount which finally occurred in December.
1:47:20
The entire process was rife with errors.
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As for the actual approval process, the agency often requests many revisions, which provide which providers must respond with changes and then resubmit the budget.
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This cycle repeats multiple times.
1:47:36
The earliest some of our organizations started to receive budget approvals was in late January at NILAG.
1:47:42
Nine months into the fiscal year, our first housing budget was approved as I sat here today listening to the testimony.
1:47:49
This is not all due to software and staffing shortages.
1:47:52
We have submitted budgets and that lay dormant in Passport without being approved or denied.
1:47:58
Without a budget approved, we can't submit invoices.
1:48:01
Without submitting our invoices, we can't get paid.
1:48:04
And while we have raised these problems time and time again, it is not until our agencies escalate the issue that we receive movement.
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The following are some examples of the responses that we receive.
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Mox has an auto reply that their current response time is fifteen to twenty days.
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We were told to put our patient's hat on when we asked about delays.
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One agency told us to reach out to a specific person for assistance.
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We did that, but then our service ticket was canceled and we were told to go through the proper ticketing agency to start that process all over again.
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We have precious few resources because we are underfunded.
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We are devoting massive amounts of time and resources towards dealing with what issues should be routine city contracting.
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We understand the struggles mocks, HRA, DCD, and other agencies have had, but ultimately we are doing critical work that requires responsiveness.
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New Yorkers, your constituents, our clients depend on it.
1:48:59
Thank you.