New York City Council's contracts chair proposes 11 steps to get nonprofits paid on time
Council Member Lincoln Restler's agenda, reported on Sept. 28, asks City Hall for faster bridge loans, a 10-week push on unpaid invoices and public data on delays. Its one bill, introduced Sept. 10, would set model staffing plans for the agencies that manage human services contracts.
New York. The chair of the New York City Council's Committee on Contracts, Council Member Lincoln Restler, has laid out 11 steps to get nonprofits with human services contracts paid on time. His office's page for the plan, titled "Getting Non-Profits Paid", carries no date; City & State reported it on Sept. 28.
The agenda says the city buys $15.6 billion a year in goods and services from the human services sector, and that nonprofits wait an average of 388 days after a contract's start date before they are reimbursed, which forces them to take out loans.
Loans, backlogs and grants
Most of the 11 points are requests to City Hall and the Mayor's Office of Contract Services rather than legislation. One concerns the Returnable Grant Fund, the city's interest-free loan program for human services providers, whose loans are issued by the Fund for the City of New York. Nonprofits apply through the agency that holds their contract, and the agenda says they should not have to wait on the same staff who are slow to register it. It asks for one designated reviewer at each agency, more lenders, money for every nonprofit that seeks a loan and decisions within 14 days.
Another point asks City Hall for a 10-week push to clear the backlog, aiming for agencies to approve 90 percent of outstanding budgets and invoices. The agenda would also widen the Discretionary Grant Pilot, announced in August 2025 to replace contracts with one-year grant agreements for small Council awards, to any organization receiving up to $50,000 from a city agency. That would take about 2,500 allocations out of the procurement process, the agenda says.
The bill and what comes next
The one bill is Int. 1053, introduced on Sept. 10 by Mr. Restler with Council Members Linda Lee, Althea V. Stevens and Shahana K. Hanif. It would require the city's chief procurement officer to draw up model procurement staffing plans for human services agencies within 180 days, each with a recommended minimum number of procurement employees, and to report within another 180 days on how the agencies' staffing compares. Mr. Restler's memorandum in support says no comprehensive data on agency procurement staffing exists. The bill has not had a committee hearing.
The agenda would also make ContractStat, the city's internal contract tracking tool, public, with monthly data by agency and vendor. It asks City Hall to recreate the Nonprofit Resiliency Committee, formed under former Mayor Bill de Blasio, and to have it meet monthly for at least a year.
Matthew Rauschenbach, a spokesperson for Mayor Zohran Mamdani, told City & State that the administration looked forward to working with Mr. Restler "to identify where we can collaborate."
About this story
501c3.help wrote this story from the sources listed with it, not from material an organization sent. Our editors approved it on Sept. 29, 2026. Stories in The Nonprofit Herald are free, and nothing is asked in return. Editorial rules.
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