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Major infrastructure projects in New York City remain chronically delayed while a key reform effort by Mayor Eric Adams is falling short, according to a new report by state comptroller Tom DiNapoli.
The report, released Friday, analyzed more than 5,100 capital projects listed on a city database as of October 2023, and found that about 64% were delayed at least three months past their original completion date. More than half of the studied projects were over budget, amounting to about $55 billion in extra spending each year.
Those findings will be no shock to many observers of the city’s capital process, which has long been criticized for its delays and cost overruns. The Adams administration has pledged reforms, but the state comptroller said City Hall is already lagging on one of them: a public dashboard intended to bring transparency to the murky process.
Instead of improving transparency, the new Capital Projects dashboard suffers from infrequent updating that renders it less useful than the city’s previous, soon-to-be-defunct database for capital projects, the report states. The new dashboard has not been updated since September, and gives no information about initial project budgets or explanations for delays.
“The city has made a big deal about capital reforms,” said Rahul Jain, a deputy state comptroller for New York City, in an interview. “Unfortunately, though, it’s not giving you the information you need to actually track whether the reforms are having their intended impact or which agencies might need a helping hand to get more projects back on track.”
City Comptroller Brad Lander, who worked with the Adams administration to create the new dashboard, is now echoing his state counterpart’s critique, saying in a statement on Friday that the Adams administration should work harder to update a website that “is already woefully out of date.”
City Hall spokesman William Fowler defended the dashboard’s utility, which he said is “reporting accurate budget and schedule information covering billions of dollars and thousands of projects” for the first time.
“This data improvement is just one of many recommendations and internal reforms we’re delivering on that will cut years off the process and save the city tens of millions of dollars each year,” Fowler said, adding that the administration has asked state lawmakers to take other steps to improve the process such as allowing joint bidding on projects.
The new borough-based jails intended to replace Rikers Island are among the city’s biggest current capital projects — construction of the new jails in Manhattan and Brooklyn currently costs a respective $2 billion and $3.3 billion, according to the dashboard. The city is also spending billions on a new upstate tunnel for its water supply system.
The most common reasons for project delays include budgetary constraints, changes in scope or design, and unforeseen site conditions, the report found.
The Adams administration’s proposed capital process reforms, announced last year, include converting the Department of Design and Construction to a public authority to help speed up its procurement ability. A handful of the administration’s desired reforms were recently enacted in Albany, such as allowing contract bids to be submitted electronically and raising the allowed value for no-bid contracts to minority- and women-owned firms to $1.5 million.
But the state comptroller said those reforms, focused largely on speeding up project delivery, include little discussion of the root cause of delays and cost overruns. Only one reform — the flawed dashboard — relates to how projects are monitored, DiNapoli’s office noted.
And the broad category of “budgetary constraints” leaves it unclear whether such delays are due to a literal shortage of money or the city’s decision to reprioritize spending on other projects, the report states.
“Given limited resources and an escalating cost environment, the city should monitor its capital spending in a more uniform and comprehensive manner so it can review funding expectations, prioritize where additional work is needed, and maximize the return on every capital dollar it spends,” DiNapoli said in a statement.
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Nick Garber , 2024-04-08 19:02:51
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