Democratic mayoral nominee and frontrunner Zohran Mamdani on Tuesday rolled out a plan to overhaul how the city’s Education Department inks contracts with outside vendors — a policy designed to address what he labeled as the agency’s “redundant and duplicative spending” and a “lack of accountability.”

Mamdani pitched “curing procurement” as a three-pronged plan, he said, which would cut “wasteful spending,” overhaul the agency’s current procurement architecture, and hold vendors accountable. 

“What we are going to do through this agenda of curing procurement is to ensure that every single dollar we spend within the Department of Education is $1 that is furthering our mission of delivering excellent education to students across the five boroughs,” he said, during a Tuesday news conference on the Upper West Side in which he unveiled the plan.

Mamdani charged that the DOE’s current procurement processes are poorly managed. He charged that the department uses outdated systems that are “incompatible” with those employed by the rest of the city government, is short-staffed and faces delays in hiring, and is overwhelmed by the sheer volume of contractors with whom it works.

Mamdani’s education math

Under the first prong of Mamdani’s plan, the next DOE chancellor will conduct audits of the department’s top 50 vendors and its 25 largest contracts, he said. The department will also review each new contract as it comes up for renewal.

“We expect that these measures alone will result in at least a 10% reduction in redundant spending and a 30% decrease in retroactive and emergency procurement,” Mamdani said.

As an example of the wasteful spending Mamdani says his plan would curtail, he pointed to hundreds of millions of dollars in technology contracts he said the DOE inked during the COVID-19 pandemic. The department did that, he said, without coordinating inventory, resulting in “duplicative practices” and “redundancies” that led to wasteful spending.

The second plank of Mamdani’s plan involves reconfiguring the DOE’s vendor system by merging its two separate internal procurement offices, establishing a contracting hub in each of the five boroughs, and utilizing the city’s PassPort online portal for the agency’s contracts.

“This will be done in addition to mandating fiscal training and certification for every single staffer who works on procurement,” Mamdani said. “These measures are expected to accelerate the procurement cycle by 40%.”

City Council Member Julie Won (D-Queens), who chairs the council’s Committee on Contracts and joined Mamdani at the press conference, stated that placing DOE contracts in PassPort will make it far easier for the city to track its spending on vendors and adjust its expenditures accordingly.

“What we would see under [Zohran Mamdani’s] leadership is life-changing for New York City and for the Department of Education,” Won said.

The last piece of Mamdani’s plan involves introducing a “vendor rating dashboard” to boost accountability.

Mamdani said he will also push to make the city government more efficient overall by cutting wasteful spending at other city agencies. He has suggested that procurement reform and other measures to reduce unnecessary costs could help fund his ambitious affordability agenda, which includes items such as free bus service and universal free childcare.

“We will be looking at efficiency for every single agency,” Mamdani said, “efficiency such that we deliver excellence.”