Chapter 7
Contracts for Corporations
Mayor Giuliani Privatizes Trash
As the foregoing shows, the city is throwing away an historic opportunity to plan for a more efficient and equitable system of waste management, and to do it with citizen groups and neighborhoods. Instead, the mayor is using the opportunity to issue huge contracts to his business pals.
Last year DOS issued three Requests for Proposals (RFPs) soliciting bids from waste management companies for handling the city's residential waste once it is diverted from the landfill. These RFPs are in effect the most important planning documents in the city -- a sign that no serious planning is occurring.
By their nature, RFPs result in technocratic 'solutions.' When an agency doesn't know how to adapt to a new requirement, instead of involving the public to solicit ideas and to develop a comprehensive plan to handle the new demands, they typically hire professionals to give them a narrowly-defined answer that doesn't address long-term problems. Professionals, eager to be chosen for future contracts, dare not offer any suggestions that might disturb the status quo, and have an incentive to leave long-term problems in place to insure they have future business prospects.
These RFPs are no exception, having been set up so only a few large corporations could meet the qualifications.
Furthermore, DOS -- or any city agency for that matter -- has a greater incentive to issue RFPs than undertake community-based planning and problem solving. Community-based programs tend to be funded through local politicians who can use them to increase their local power base. Contracts, on the other hand, can benefit the Mayor and his agency appointees; Funneled to large corporations, they can result in hefty campaign contributions and invite corruption at the highest levels of government, as occurred at the Parking Violations Bureau during the Koch Administration.
The result of the Mayor's effort to close Fresh Kills by the day he leaves office in 2002 has been a secretly developed set of interim and long-term contracts that call for gigantic new waste transfer stations on valuable waterfront property. The sites for these new transfer stations are in the very same neighborhoods that are already overburdened with clusters of illegal waste transfer stations. These facilities will also be mainly truck-based, bringing thousands more trucks to these neighborhoods' already congested streets. Finally, the contracts are going to be expensive, requiring the city to spend $300 million per year for at least the next thirty years -- a total figure in the billions of dollars. There's no plan for increasing or improving recycling, composting, and waste reduction -- proven practices that would save taxpayers money by reducing the cost and the problem of managing our garbage. Indeed, such initiatives might decrease the profits of the large waste companies.
Chapter 8 -- Centralized Decisionmaking and Fragmented Political Response
back to top
