City Comptroller Brad Lander — who has publicly vowed to weed out bad actors among city contractors — has a history of looking the other way at shady contractors with criminal pasts.
The city’s top financial watchdog, a socialist, is charged with monitoring city contracts, reviewing them for waste and fraud and — if there are red flags — sending them back to the issuing city agency for further review. Though Lander cannot stop a contract from proceeding, his office plays an important role in oversight and in practice can gum up the approval process.
In October 2022, Dragonetti Brothers Landscaping, a longtime city contractor, paid a $1.2 million fine after pleading guilty to insurance fraud, according to a press release from Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg. The company had received hundreds of city contracts since the 1990s for projects including park landscaping, sidewalk reconstruction and pedestrian crosswalks. Reps for Dragonetti did not respond to request for comment
The guilty plea barred Dragonetti from working with the city’s Department of Design and Construction and Business Integrity Commission for three years — though other agencies were free to keep working with them.
Lander appears to have rubber-stamped no fewer than seven new contracts the firm won in October and November 2022, according to the office’s own checkbook.com website. The Parks Department contracts include $7.6 million to plant trees in Manhattan, $7.3 million for tree and stump removal in Queens, and $2.5 million for block pruning in Brooklyn.
“I can tell you the [comptroller’s] job has gotten very politicized and the politicization of the job is starting to get in the way of how the job is being performed,” Michael Lambert, a former deputy comptroller told The Post, calling the city’s work with shady vendors “a major dropping of the ball at the contract review process level.”
In September 2022, a $130 million contract was awarded by the city Department of Design and Construction to LendLease US Construction LMB Inc. to build Brooklyn’s Shirley Chisholm Recreation Center. The 65,000-square-foot facility in East Flatbush will include a basketball court, indoor pool, indoor track, and gym.
But in 2012, the same company admitted to the US Department of Justice that they had defrauded public clients through systemic over-billing on projects — including many in New York. Two top executives later pled guilty, and the company ultimately ponied up $56 million in fines and restitution.
“Through this deliberate scheme of billing clients for work not done, [LendLease] deceived their customers and stole taxpayer dollars,” then-US Attorney Loretta Lynch said.
LendLease defended its current practices. “You’re referring to a case that concluded in 2012 when the company entered into a deferred prosecution agreement … and all charges dismissed in 2014, all of which meant we avoided a plea and/or prosecution,” a company rep said. “The company subsequently took appropriate remedial actions, including restitution payments to clients.”
In 2019, the city Department of Investigation launched a probe into Acacia Network, the largest provider of homeless shelters in the city, after the non-profit was busted for allegedly funneling $12 million into a for-profit subcontractor which was prinicpally owned by Acacia leaders.
This did not prevent the city Department of Homeless Services from awarding the non-profit hundreds of millions worth of new contracts in 2022, including more than $140 million for a shelter in Queens and another $130 million for another in The Bronx.
“Acacia Network is committed to providing high-quality, integrated services to thousands of vulnerable New Yorkers every year. These 2019 allegations in the media have constructed a narrative about the organization that simply isn’t true. We have welcomed the additional scrutiny and have complied with all information requests that have resulted from this. We continue to be in good standing with our City oversight agencies, and look forward to our continued work with our partners to fulfill our common missions,” a company spokesperson told The Post.
Queens Democratic councilman Bob Holden said that these companies had “violated the public trust” and “should not be doing business with this city.” As custodian of city finances, he said the buck stopped with Lander.
“Brad Lander is the gatekeeper. He is the person we have in there to investigate this and stop this and end this corruption. New York state is one of the most corrupt states in the union, and the city is a big part of that,” Holden said.
“If he would do the job that he was hired to do, I don’t think we would have this problem and you wouldn’t be writing this story.”
The shady contracts fly in the face of Lander’s public paeans for good government. The comptroller has long been a stickler for closing “corruption vulnerabilities in the city’s contracting process.”
Team Lander pointed the finger at the city agencies issuing the contracts.
“Councilmember Holden is intent on misunderstanding the basics of the City’s contracting process that gives City agencies the responsibility for selecting and vetting vendors while the Comptroller’s office is charged with final oversight over City agencies to ensure appropriate procurement rules were followed and that there is money in the budget to pay the contract,” said Lander spokesperson Chloe Chik.