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Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s Department of Education was accused Monday of “stonewalling” the City Council’s audit of hundreds of agency contracts worth a staggering $12 billion.
The council requested a full audit of DOE deals from the Mamdani administration in March — but were told that coughing up the information would “take months” due to the 600 contracts existing on “a secure system that very few people have access to.”
“This is again basic, rudimentary data that DOE should be providing to the council, and I’m not sure why we’re getting stonewalled,” Council Speaker Julie Menin charged during the tense budget hearing, after DOE Chief Procurement Officer Elisheba Lewi gave the excuse.
Schools Chancellor Kamar Samuels and Mayor Zohran Mamdani appearing together at a press conference on May 19, 2026. Stephen Yang for NY Post“I just find this troubling, that of the 600 — we’re not asking for a printed copy, we’re asking for a file of the contracts,” Menin fumed. “I mean, this should take like an hour of work to do.”
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Mamdani pledged on the campaign trail to “cure procurement” and bring DOGE-style audits to wasteful agency contracts, specifically focusing on the bloated DOE, which is set for a record $43 billion budget.
But five months into Mamdani’s admin, the DOE has yet to audit a single contract and education officials acknowledged during the hearing that procurement reforms remain in “preliminary stages” with no timeline for implementation.
Schools Chancellor Kamar Samuels, meanwhile, is facing scrutiny of his own over a no-bid contract he signed while he was a district superintendent on the Upper West Side, The Post previously reported.
Samuels, while serving as head of District 3 in 2023, inked a $180,000 contract with non-DOE-approved vendor Sean Kreyling — then split the payments into $25,000 checks in an apparent attempt to evade city financial oversight, a recent Special Commissioner of Investigation report found. Samuels’ former deputy superintendent, Mariela Graham, signed a second contract with Kreyling in 2024 for the same amount.
The council’s Education Committee Chair Eric Dinowitz (D-Bronx) pressed Samuels on his involvement Monday, asking him point-blank about his role in the check-splitting contract.
“I regret the lapses in policy and procedures that took place while I was the superintendent, and the actions in question were all meant to [be] in the pursuit of educational opportunity,” Samuels testified — before DOE General Counsel Liz Vladeck stopped him.
Vladeck advised Samuels not to answer further questions about the contracts, citing “active speculation in the press” about the SCI investigation potentially being reopened — an apparent reference to the Post’s recent reporting.
“I’m not the press. I’m asking about a closed investigation that is public. Anyone can go to their website and download this,” Dinowitz shot back.
Vladeck also acknowledged she “personally signed off” on the decision to overrule a watchdog recommendation to fire Graham, who received a two-week suspension after taking the fall for the shady contracting.
The mayor’s office did not return a request for comment Monday.
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