Wow, did Nicole Gelinas’ blockbuster analysis of the city’s debit-card-for-migrants “pilot project” (“House of cards,” Feb. 20) upset City Hall; hear the screams as a sign we’re doing our jobs.
William Fowler’s letter today repeatedly alleging “inaccuracies” is just part of the complaints; someone also got The New York Times to run a report falsely claiming Gelinas got some facts wrong.
Let’s be clear here: All she did was read the actual contract for the program, plus pay attention to what Mayor Eric Adams and others were saying about it publicly, and explain the potential implications.
She also reached out to City Hall and the Department of Housing Preservation and Development, the agency mysteriously put in charge of the program even though it has zero experience with any relevant work, with questions — which didn’t get answered.
After the column ran, the Adams team went big with “answers” that amounted time after time to “that’s not what we intend to do” — which is utterly irrelevant to what the contract allows for and/or specifies.
E.g., Fowler whines, “Gelinas also claims the city will give migrants up to $10,000 each with no ID check, no restrictions and no fraud control.”
No, she wrote that the contract would allow $10,000 payments with no controls — and that she’d gotten no answers from the city about any controls.
Bigger picture: This was a no-bid contract supposedly to address the food-delivery failures of another no-bid contract; the “savings” are only against that failure — apparently with never any thought given to the most cost-effective way to feed migrants (if the city really has to).
Plus, two years into the migrant crisis, how does this qualify as an “emergency” program? We’re fine with the city experimenting, but even an experiment should make more sense.