Back from the backlog
It’s no secret that the nonprofit sector in New York is not a supplement to the functions of government; it is an indispensable extension of both the reach and type of services that our city provides, a system whose importance became painfully clear as New York plunged into being the epicenter of the global COVID crisis.
Yet even as countless nonprofits, from tiny community organizations to citywide institutions, were providing crucial assistance on behalf of the government, the government itself was failing them and putting them in existential jeopardy by forcing contracts through a clunky, byzantine process that would leave them in limbo even as organizations were already performing the services, hugely delaying their ability to get paid by the city.
This was not mere annoyance. Organizations would have to float significant costs, sometimes incurring interest-bearing debts just to keep the lights on, while teetering on the verge of not making payroll (which, we’ll note, was often for human services workers who themselves belonged to low-income and minority communities around the city). It was a significant step for Mayor Adams and Comptroller Brad Lander to launch a joint task force to examine the issue, which in February produced a memo identifying key issues.
Still, diagnosing an illness isn’t curing it, which is why we now fully applaud concrete action by Adams, Lander and their teams: the clearing of $4.24 billion in outstanding contracts and contract amendments that had gone unregistered, a move expected to help more than 450 providers. If all goes smoothly, the sorely needed funds should be making it into institutions’ coffers in the next few weeks. We’ll be watching to make sure it’s so.
We’ll also be watching to make sure that the city expeditiously outlines a full plan and timeline to fix the issues that created this backlog in the first place. Clearing a bottleneck means little if it quickly reappears. New York’s service providers deserve the certainty that they’ll be able to continue to do their work without a bureaucratic ax looming overhead.