Three years after a bribery scandal stripped the Buildings Department of two-thirds of its elevator inspectors, the city agency still can’t find enough honest applicants to fill all the slots.
As a result, it has been forced to pay $5 million to private firms to conduct elevator safety checks.
The agency currently has 40 inspectors – but 17 unfilled openings.
In 1996, 42 elevator inspectors were suspended in the wake of a massive bribery scandal. With only a skeleton staff remaining, the department brought in three private companies to help with an inspections backlog.
The department’s unit never returned to its full capacity after the scandal.
Landmark Elevator Consultants of Wantagh, L.I., National Elevator Inspection Services of Missouri, and EIC Inspection Agency of Jersey City are all due to have their contracts renewed next month. Each will get $1.69 million for two years.
Buildings spokeswoman Ilyse Fink conceded the agency is still having a problem hiring staff inspectors.
But she insisted the city isn’t losing money on the contracts, since each building owner pays $65 for inspections, which take place three times every two years.
She said each staff inspector has support workers, cell phones, beepers and health and pension benefits that have to be paid for by the city.
“It’s really not clear whether or not it is more cost-effective” to have in-house staffers do the work, she said.
The three companies are required to perform a total of 1,050 inspections a week, she said.
Fink said the hiring difficulties stem, in part, from the salary level – the inspectors start at about $40,000 a year – as well as from stiffer hiring standards.
The jobs “are not competitive with the economy,” Fink said, adding that if the department gives the inspectors huge wage hikes, it sets a salary precedent for every other agency employee. “That’s one of the difficulties.”