Five months into Mayor Zohran Mamdani's administration, the New York City Department of Education has not audited a single one of its hundreds of agency contracts, and when the City Council demanded answers, the DOE's response amounted to a bureaucratic shrug.
Council Speaker Julie Menin accused the department of obstructing the council's review of roughly 600 contracts worth a combined $12 billion during a budget hearing Monday, the New York Post reported. The DOE's chief procurement officer told lawmakers that producing the contract information would "take months." Menin was not persuaded.
The clash laid bare a widening gap between Mamdani's campaign rhetoric and his administration's actual conduct. The mayor pledged on the campaign trail to "cure procurement" and bring DOGE-style audits to wasteful agency contracts, with the DOE as a prime target. Instead, lawmakers say they cannot even get basic files out of the agency that controls a record $43 billion budget.
The City Council first requested a full audit of DOE contracts back in March. Months later, council members say they have received nothing of substance. DOE Chief Procurement Officer Elisheba Lewi told the hearing that the 600 contracts sit on "a secure system that very few people have access to," and that gathering the information would take months more.
Menin dismissed that explanation in blunt terms, as the Post reported:
"This is again basic, rudimentary data that DOE should be providing to the council, and I'm not sure why we're getting stonewalled."
She pressed further, noting that the council was not asking for hard copies:
"I just find this troubling, that of the 600, we're not asking for a printed copy, we're asking for a file of the contracts. I mean, this should take like an hour of work to do."
An hour versus months. That is the distance between what elected overseers consider reasonable and what the DOE says it can manage. For a city agency that spends more than most state governments, the inability, or unwillingness, to produce a digital file of its own contracts raises questions that go well beyond logistics.
The hearing grew sharper when attention turned to Schools Chancellor Kamar Samuels and his own procurement record. A recent report from the Special Commissioner of Investigation found that Samuels, while serving as head of District 3 on the Upper West Side in 2023, signed a $180,000 contract with Sean Kreyling, a vendor not approved by the DOE. The payments were split into $25,000 checks, a structure consistent with an effort to stay below oversight thresholds.
The same report found that Mariela Graham, Samuels' former deputy superintendent, signed a second contract with Kreyling in 2024 for the same amount. Samuels may now face criminal charges over the arrangement, and DOE officials have scrambled to contain the fallout.
Council Education Committee Chair Eric Dinowitz, a Bronx Democrat, pressed Samuels directly on his involvement. Samuels offered a carefully worded statement of regret:
"I regret the lapses in policy and procedures that took place while I was the superintendent, and the actions in question were all meant to [be] in the pursuit of educational opportunity."
But when Dinowitz pushed for more detail, DOE General Counsel Liz Vladeck stepped in and advised Samuels not to answer. She cited "active speculation in the press" about the SCI investigation potentially being reopened.
Dinowitz did not accept the dodge. He pointed out that the SCI report was already public, anyone could download it from the watchdog's website. His reply cut through the legal fog:
"I'm not the press. I'm asking about a closed investigation that is public. Anyone can go to their website and download this."
The exchange captured a pattern that ran through the entire hearing: DOE officials treating routine oversight requests as extraordinary burdens, and treating public information as if it were classified. When the people's elected representatives cannot get straight answers about how tax dollars are spent, something has gone wrong at a basic institutional level.
Vladeck herself acknowledged that she "personally signed off" on the decision to overrule the watchdog's recommendation to fire Graham over the contracting issue. Graham instead received a two-week suspension, a penalty that, for a deal involving $180,000 in unapproved spending, barely qualifies as a slap on the wrist.
Mamdani's first months in office have already drawn sustained scrutiny. His first 100 days produced a trail of broken promises on issues from housing vouchers to homeless sweeps, and the DOE mess now adds procurement accountability to the list.
DOE officials acknowledged during the hearing that procurement reforms remain in what they called "preliminary stages." They offered no timeline for implementation. That means the same system that produced the Samuels-Kreyling contract, unapproved vendors, split payments, minimal consequences, continues to operate with no meaningful changes.
The mayor's office did not return a request for comment Monday.
That silence fits a broader pattern. Mamdani campaigned as a reformer who would root out waste in city agencies. He singled out DOE procurement as a target. Yet five months in, his own DOE cannot, or will not, hand over a list of its contracts to the body charged with budget oversight. The council asked in March. It is now June. The answer is still "months away."
Meanwhile, questions about how the Mamdani administration handles taxpayer money extend well beyond the DOE. His East Harlem grocery store initiative already sits on $25 million in public commitments with requests for tens of millions more, another project where the gap between ambition and accountability keeps growing.
Consider the scale. The DOE operates on a $43 billion budget. The contracts under review total $12 billion. The council's audit request covers 600 deals. And the agency's response is that it cannot produce a file.
In the private sector, a company that could not locate its own contracts would face shareholder revolt. In city government, the DOE's procurement officer says the system is too secure and too restricted for anyone to pull the data quickly. That is not a defense. It is an indictment of the system itself.
The SCI report on Samuels adds another layer. A district superintendent signed a $180,000 deal with a vendor the DOE had not approved, then structured the payments to stay below review thresholds. His deputy did the same thing the following year. The watchdog recommended firing the deputy. The DOE's own general counsel overruled that recommendation and signed off on a two-week suspension instead.
These are not isolated procedural hiccups. They describe a culture where rules exist on paper and evaporate in practice, and where the people responsible for enforcement actively shield those who break the rules.
The political dimensions of the Mamdani administration's troubles continue to multiply. The mayor has drawn attention from the Trump administration, and his own allies have begun raising uncomfortable questions about his leadership.
The City Council's frustration is bipartisan in character, even if New York's political landscape skews heavily Democratic. Menin and Dinowitz are not Republican antagonists looking for a fight. They are members of the mayor's own political ecosystem who cannot get the most basic financial data out of the city's largest agency.
When Menin says the task should take "an hour of work," she is making a factual point, not a rhetorical one. Contract records in a modern procurement system are digital. They exist in databases. Producing a list of 600 contracts is not a research expedition, it is a query. The DOE's claim that this requires months of effort either reveals a system so broken it cannot perform a basic function, or it reveals an agency that does not want the council looking at its books.
Neither explanation reflects well on the Mamdani administration. And the growing list of controversies surrounding the mayor only sharpens the question of whether this is incompetence or intent.
Twelve billion dollars in contracts. Zero audits completed. A chancellor with his own procurement scandal. A general counsel who overruled the watchdog. A mayor who promised reform and delivered delay.
New York City taxpayers deserve to know where their money goes. Right now, the people in charge of spending it are making sure nobody finds out.
