NYC comptroller strips Mayor Eric Adams of power to strike emergency migrant service deals with contractors without approval - as city spends $1.7BN catering to 146,000 asylum seekers who have flooded Big Apple

A New York City comptroller has revoked Mayor Eric Adams’ emergency right to make deals with contractors for migrant services without prior approval.

Comptroller Brad Lander’s office made the revocation known in a letter dated this past Thursday, three months after he retroactively rejected a $432million, no-bid contract with a for-profit medical services firm accused of mistreating migrants.

The mayor's office has previously said the loss of such a power would slow down its response to the ongoing migrant crisis, which has seen more than 140,000 asylum seekers arrive in The Big Apple since spring 2022.

Adams, 63, has also said the revocation could inhibit migrants’ access to food and shelter, as the city is set to spend roughly $12billion in tax dollars within the next two years to house them.

The former NYPD captain has since been forced to slash the city budget to cope, with $110.5 billion in reductions across the board - including billions taken from important departments like education and policing.

Given the expansion of such efforts, part of the comptroller’s office letter states, 'our Office is revising its prior approval' - after his office reviewed $1.7 billion in emergency contracts over a 21-month span, including the agreement with DocGo.

Another excerpt outright declares: 'The comptroller’s office citywide prior approval is hereby revoked.'

Such deals, it adds, 'will require an independent prior approval from the comptroller’s office.'

The revocation, first reported by The Daily News, comes roughly a year after the Adams administration was awarded the unprecedented permission to make deals with migrant service contractors by Lander’s office, without the comptroller’s pre-approval.

The crisis - which spread to New York in April 2022 when Adams touted New York as a 'sanctuary' for asylum seekers - has since worsened exponentially, and the mayor has struggled to find a solution.

An Adams administration spokesman, Charles Kretchmer Lutvak, responded to the letter sent to several city agencies on Monday, reiterating Adams' previously aired belief that the comptroller was hampering his ability to quickly respond to the needs of the migrants.

'Thousands of new migrants are still coming to New York City every week,' Lutvak told The New York Times, 'and the comptroller tying our hands behind our back is unfair to both new arrivals and longtime New Yorkers.

'[It] will unquestionably slow down every step in the process.'

The back-and-forth serves as the latest installment in an ongoing in-fight between the two Democrats, who have publicly disagreed over the administration’s approval of the aforementioned DocGo contract.

Funded by the city, the plan was poised to cost taxpayers another $432million for a medical services firm and had been approved - that is until Landers retroactively rejected it in September.

Upon airing his decision, the relatively new city comptroller cited the private company’s lack of expertise and other controversies - including allegations they mistreated and misled migrants as part of its city-subsidized program to relocate them to other parts of the city and the country. 

'My office did not make this decision lightly,' the elected official, who assumed his post two years ago, wrote at the time.

'After a careful review, we are declining to approve this contract due to numerous outstanding concerns.'

Immediately afterward, Adams used his mayoral right to override the comptroller's objection, stating that the city would continue to honor the nine-figure contract, which will see four companies receive $176.8 million to do case management at each of the city’s 16 Humanitarian Emergency Relief and Response Centers.

A couple of weeks later, Lander reacted - stating he would be beginning an audit to determine how the city had come to award the contract to DocGo, which bills itself as a medical firm and has no prior experience handling migrant services.

During the probe, his office reviewed $1.7 billion in emergency contracts over a 21-month span, including the $432 million agreement with DocGo.

In a Monday statement after the News reported on the internal letter, a Lander’s spokesperson revealed some of the results of that review, saying they had found 'extensive failures to report subcontractors despite problems that surfaced with many of them.'

'In response,' it continued, 'we concluded that the most prudent course for the city’s fiscal health and integrity would be to require City Hall to seek prior approval before using emergency procurement on a case-by-case basis.

'We will continue to conduct fast and thorough reviews of emergency contracts.'

The revelation was delivered four months after a New York Times report found local authorities had expressed frustration at the lack of coordination between DocGo and agencies that provide services to the migrants, and that local security guards enlisted by the for-profit firm have repeatedly threatened the migrants.

The report also claimed that Adams' promises to find steady work for the asylum seekers has been nearly impossible.

Less than a month later, The Times piece was further bolstered by Department of Homeless Services data reporting that hundreds of beds in the city shelter system sat empty while a large group of migrants were sleeping outside the Roosevelt Hotel for several nights over the summer.

Citing the Times report as additional evidence, the state’s filing slammed the Adams administration for '[allowing] hundreds of migrants to sleep on the street.'

Adams, meanwhile, is set to travel to DC Thursday, to discuss the needs of his city and others amid the continued stream of arrivals.