Mayor de Blasio said Thursday he’s “not happy” that his administration is taking so long to pay social service providers, as exposed by The Post earlier this week.
“I’m not happy with it, I don’t accept it. For non-profits especially, they have real cash flow challenges,” Hizzoner said at an unrelated press conference in Morningside Heights.
“A lot of nonprofits that do such crucial work in this city, they’re hand-to-mouth in terms of their budgets,” he added. “The city of New York obviously is a huge entity. We owe it to them to pay them as quickly as possible — so I’m not satisfied with the state of affairs.”
A Post analysis of more than 59,000 contracts registered by the comptroller’s office since 2013 found that city agencies made late payments an average of 59 percent of the time.
The Department of Homeless Services, which is set to spend more than $2 billion this fiscal year, was even worse — making its social service vendors wait for payment in nearly 80 percent of its contracts.
While DHS officials pointed to backlogs that predated the administration, Hizzoner said that doesn’t fully explain the tardiness — which stretch to a year or more.
“The city needs to focus on paying these organizations as promptly as possible and we’re still not doing it well enough and I’m going to instruct all my agencies to fix it,” he said.