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Q&A
Discussion on funding for city oversight agencies
3:56:02
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136 sec
Council Member Gale A. Brewer inquires about funding for various oversight agencies in New York City, expressing concern about insufficient staffing for investigators and attorneys. Comptroller Brad Lander responds by highlighting a new tracker on their website for agency headcount and discusses potential improvements in claims settlement processes.
- Brewer mentions several oversight agencies, including DOI, IG at the Department of Education, CCRB, and Human Rights Commission
- Lander introduces a new headcount tracker on their website to monitor agency staffing levels
- The Comptroller's office identifies a need for modernizing their claims adjustment software to improve oversight and potentially reduce the $2 billion spent annually on claims against the city
Gale A. Brewer
3:56:02
Thank you very much.
3:56:03
As chair of oversight and investigations, I'm always trying to make sure there's enough money for oversight agencies.
3:56:10
And we asked about, DOI, and we, asked about the IG at the, Department of Education, which apparently is so underfunded but never asked for funding.
3:56:21
You got CCRB.
3:56:22
You have, I'm sure that, council member Williams will talk about, human rights, etcetera.
3:56:29
There's a lot of them.
3:56:30
Yeah.
3:56:30
So my question to you is do you is something that you look at in terms of their funding?
3:56:35
I always think that there's just not enough investigators or attorneys in these oversight agencies.
Brad Lander
3:56:42
Well, one thing I'll point to is we do now have a really good tracker on our website of headcount.
3:56:48
So one thing you can very easily see on a real time basis is what budgeted headcount agency was in the past, what it is currently, and what actual headcount in those agencies is.
3:57:00
So it's a really easy way to look at Commission on Human Rights or any of the others and see how much down are they from where they used to be, and also how many people do they really have, because in many cases there's big gaps even between budget headcount and actual.
3:57:17
We've looked I'm trying to think we've looked at a few of the agencies.
3:57:20
I don't know that we've done an oversight recently.
3:57:24
I'll give you one example, though, as an oversight agency ourselves of a place where we could use some resources, one thing that we do is settle claims against the city.
3:57:36
And it turns out the software we're using for that is like in COBOL.
3:57:40
It's 30 years old.
3:57:41
We could be identifying patterns much better of harm being caused that we could actually reduce claims if we're able to modernize.
3:57:50
So we have an RFP out right now for new software system for claims adjustments.
3:57:57
We have to wait for that to come back, but that's one more area that I think the city could do or we could be doing much more effective oversight.
3:58:04
It's about $2,000,000,000 we spent last year on claims against the city in an area where there's just a lot less scrutiny than we should have.
Gale A. Brewer
3:58:12
Well, that would be a place where DOI could make a difference if it had the staffing.
Brad Lander
3:58:18
Agreed.