At a Committees on Oversight and Investigation, General Welfare, Finance, and Contracts joint oversight hearing oversight hearing on Dec. 17, Commissioner of the Department of Social Services (DSS) Molly Wasow Parker, DSS Chief Accountability Officer Bedros Boodanian, and Special Counsel at the Mayor’s Office of Contract Services Charles Diamond answered inquiries about the implementation of 23 policies recommended by the city’s Department of Investigation (DOI) in 2020.
A major issue that needed to be tackled was contractors and service providers that had organizational structure, fiscal compliance, or other compliance issues.
“Well before the report was released, or in some instances before the investigation was started, DHS had completely ceased doing business with some providers,” Parker said, referring to the Department of Homeless Services, which is under the DSS.
Some other providers are placed on “closely monitored corrective action plans,” Parker said.
Parker described the corrective action plans as programs that are tailored to vendors’ unique issues. She told the council that vendors being monitored are required to send quarterly reports to the DSS citing improvement in areas specified in their plans.
Sometimes providers needed more than a little help, Parker said. She used the Bronx Parent case as an example to show what the DSS is doing to fix issues with contractors.
“They changed names, but they are still in existence, but with an entirely different leadership structure, which is something that was directed and mandated by us,” she said.
Nepotism was also a big box to check on the road to recovery for the DSS, according to the report. Parker said they had implemented a new anti-nepotism policy. She also defended the Department of Homeless Services, saying that the nepotism in the report was overstated.
“Nepotism is obviously a word that has very negative connotations. In practice, what we have is it can be a variety of different things, right? So we have been seeing instances where two siblings are motivated by the desire to serve their communities, have an organization together. That is not a bad thing,” she said.
She acknowledged cases of parents giving their children no-show jobs.
The council was interested in efforts to curb excessive executive compensation, bringing up that five nonprofit executives contracted by DSS made more than $700,000 a year, and another eight made over half a million a year.
Parker said the DSS can’t solve this issue by itself.
“We are not directly paying, and therefore executive compensation rate is not paid directly through our own tracks. We are paying a net cost rate that not-for-profits then use to pay for a variety of overhead costs, including executive compensation. The short answer is no, we are not signing off on those figures,” she said.
She said she is willing to work with other agencies to find a solution to this issue.
