School- bus ‘ collusion’

The city comptroller has asked the feds to investigate possible collusion by schoolbus companies after finding poor oversight of contracts worth $ 94 million.

Soon after winning the contracts in 2013, five bus firms handed them over to competitors that also took part in the bidding but lost — including two exchanges before the contracts even started, an audit found.

Comptroller Scott Stringer said the eyebrowraising moves warranted a look by the Justice Department because of the checkered history of yellow bus firms here and because federal funds were involved.

“The Department of Education has once again left the city vulnerable to collusion, allowing bus companies to bid for contracts and subsequently divide those contracts amongst themselves with apparently little or no scrutiny,” said Stringer. “When we saw that bus companies were handing over valuable business to their supposed ‘ competitors’ before their contracts had even begun, it looked an awful lot like the wheels of corruption were, once again, going round and round.”

The audit hit the DOE for poorly monitoring the contracts and the performance of vendors — particularly the firms that got their contracts as a handmedown.

In response, education officials vehemently denied the claims. “It is arguably reckless, and certainly wrong, to use the term ‘ risk of collusion,’ ” wrote the agency’s chief financial officer, Raymond Orlando, who stressed the secondhand contracts weren’t inflated.