New York, NY - The Citizens Budget Commission (CBC) today issued the following statement by CBC President Carol Kellermann:

The City Council should reject proposed legislation that would provide grants to pay higher wages and benefits to certain school transportation service employees than those required by the City's contracts with the private bus companies that employ them. Such grants would, in effect, constitute supplementary payments to City contractors over and above the terms of legally binding, competitively bid contracts, in exchange for no additional services.

This type of payment would undermine the integrity of the City's regular bidding and contracting process and set a troublesome precedent for other vendors that provide services to the City to seek similar de facto enhancements to their contracts.

Further, the savings achieved in the current bus service contracts have already been incorporated in the City's financial plan to fund other municipal services, which will have to be reduced in order to pay for the new payments to the bus companies.

This is an ill-advised measure that should not be adopted.