Speaker numbers apply only to this recording.
The New York City Council Committee on Workforce Development, chaired by Julie Won, met at 1:00 PM on October 27, 2026, in Hearing Room 2 at 250 Broadway for an oversight hearing on the Office of Community Hiring (OCH). Councilmembers Cabán, Epstein, Hanif, and Wong were present. NYC Talent Executive Director Doug LeHarry and OCH Executive Director G. Lee testified. The committee examined OCH quarterly reports, hiring data, procurement coverage, staffing, outreach, and accountability. The hearing was held and the committee filed the oversight report for T2026-2532.
Program overview and reported progress: NYC Talent reported that community hiring, authorized by state legislation in 2023, embeds workforce goals into city contracts. Rules went into effect January 23, 2025. As of the hearing, 528 registered contracts totaling $13.3 billion carried community hiring goals, and about 1,200 community hires had been employed, with roughly 1,136 income-based and almost 70 residence-based hires. LeHarry also reported 362 procurements released totaling $18.4 billion. He said nearly all mayoral agencies, more than 20, were participating.
Chair Won’s concerns about data and reporting: Chair Won noted OCH’s latest quarterly report showed 179 contracts worth about $3 billion, up from 60 contracts and about $1 billion in March, but only 8 of 83 construction contracts reported progress, and 6 of those 8 were below the 30% community hiring goal. All five apprenticeship-goal contracts reporting progress showed zero community-hire apprentice hours. Of 94 service contracts with combined goals of more than 3,000 hires, more than half reported no progress. Won flagged an apparent anomaly: a DSS PACE workforce program contract in Queens with a goal of 31 hires reported 1,229% progress. She said OCH reports still do not state total hires, pay, or demographics as required by law, and the first announced community hiring procurement, $1.2 billion in security guard and fire safety services from June 2024, still does not appear in OCH reports.
Administration explanation of anomalies: LeHarry said the 1,229% figure was confirmed and reflected a vendor hiring above its formula-based goal. He estimated it could represent a couple hundred hires but did not provide exact figures. He said many contracts are newly registered and hiring needs vary over contract terms, so lack of reported progress does not necessarily mean no hiring. The city was using certified payroll reports for construction and a mix of vendor and referral-source data for non-construction, with a digital tool being implemented.
Outreach and referral network: LeHarry and Lee described a referral network of 81 organizations, including 28 community-based organizations funded through DYCD, plus SBS Workforce1, HRA Business Link, and labor unions. LeHarry read the list of 28 CBOs. Councilmember Epstein asked why council offices were not enlisted as partners and cited settlement houses like Henry Street and Grand Street Settlement. LeHarry welcomed council partnership and agreed to provide the CBO list. Councilmember Wong asked about reaching young people; LeHarry highlighted a September 30 HRA community hiring job fair with 25 employers, 388 job seekers, and 16 conditional job offers. Wong invited the office to hold a job fair in his district.
Jobs NYC center and agency roles: Councilmember Cabán raised complaints about the September 28, 2026 Jobs NYC center opening at 2 Lafayette Street, including reports of more than 50,000 applications with very few hires. LeHarry said the center focuses on city jobs while community hiring covers jobs with city vendors; SBS staff at the center can route job seekers to Workforce1 services. He said his office would supply details on staffing and hours.
Staffing and budget: Chair Won noted the FY2027 adopted budget provides $1.7 million and 16 positions for OCH, including $388,200 for contractual services. G. Lee said the OCH team currently has eight people, six full-time employees, one Civic Corps member, and one intern, plus two headcount at SBS, and three vacancies. Won questioned the discrepancy with 16 authorized positions; Lee said no active postings exist for OCH vacancies. LeHarry said the $388,200 is for technology investment and there is a consultant firm, JK Consultant, supporting technical implementation.
Penalties and accountability: LeHarry said OCH has not issued any notices of non-compliance or assessed penalties. The best-efforts standard, rooted in state law, is applied case by case. Penalties can begin at $2,500 plus $1,000 per week for failing to take corrective action, and can scale over time. Vendors’ community hiring performance can be considered in future contract performance evaluations. Chair Won and public witness Gregory Morris both questioned whether the penalty is a meaningful deterrent.
Income threshold and language access: LeHarry defended the 300% federal poverty guideline threshold, saying it was chosen with agency and CBO input and intentionally expands eligibility; many hires are public-assistance recipients. Language access for OCH outreach is currently English only, with referral partners providing other languages. Chair Won urged expansion to at least five languages.
Other administration commitments: LeHarry agreed to follow up within two weeks with information on potential job opportunities tied to the 528 registered contracts and to provide more data internally, including demographic breakdowns. He also committed to providing details on PLA versus non-PLA construction metrics, pre-apprenticeship data, and the construction hours figure, which he later gave as 23.75% of hours worked by community hires.
Gregory Morris, CEO, NYC Employment and Training Coalition: Morris expressed strong support for community hiring as the right use of public spending but raised concerns about accountability, noting prior HireNYC failed when entities were not held responsible. He called the $2,500 penalty unlikely to deter, said NYC Talent is under-resourced given its vacancies, and noted agencies not participating miss opportunities. He cited hiring hall data: nearly 20,000 individuals served over the past year and about 2,000 conditional offers, with more than half of attendees holding bachelor’s or master’s degrees. He asked whether the model solves unemployment, underemployment, or wage transition and said the administration has not clarified its workforce development investment.
Anthony DeCarlis, former hospitality worker, Clear the Records: DeCarlis highlighted New York Labor Law Section 210B, effective November 8, giving workers the right to access personnel files, and asked the committee to make this right part of the community hiring pipeline so workers can review and dispute records before being screened out.
Good afternoon. Welcome to the Committee on Workforce Development. At this time, we ask that you please silence all electronics. If you wish to testify, please see one of the Sergeant Arms in the back. And at no point, please do not approach today's chair. You may begin. Good afternoon, and welcome to today's oversight hearing of the Committee on Workforce Development. My name is Julie One, and I have the privilege of chairing this committee. Before we begin, I'd like to recognize my colleagues who have joined us, uh, Councilmember Hanif and Councilmember Epstein. Today we're looking at the Office of Community Hiring. The idea behind community hiring is simple. The city spends billions of dollars each year on contracts, and the companies and nonprofits that get awarded those contracts should be hiring New Yorkers who need the work. In 2023, Albany gave the city the power to set hiring goals on city contracts for low-income New Yorkers, NYTRA residents, and people living in our highest poverty neighborhoods. The city's own rules took effect in January 2025. When the program launched, the administration projected 36,000 jobs a year once it was fully up and running. In February, New York City Talent told this committee that more than 200 procurements were already out on the street, and that program could reach upwards of 20 billion dollars in city contracts each year. But then we started looking at the Office of Community Hiring's own reports. OCH's latest quarterly report was posted just last week, and it shows 179 contracts worth about $3 billion, carrying a community hiring goal up to up from 60 contracts worth about 1 billion in March. That's real growth. But unfortunately, the progress hasn't kept up. Of the 83 construction contracts, only eight reported any progress, and six of these eight were below the 30% community hiring goal. On all five contracts from the apprenticeship goal that reported progress, the share of hours worked for by apprentices from these communities was zero. Four service contracts, 94 contracts now carry community hiring goals that add up to more than 3,000 hires, but more than half of them still have no progress reported at all. And some of the numbers that have that are reported don't add up. One Department of Social Services Workforce Development Program in Queens has a goal of 31 hires, but OCH's report shows that it at more than 1,200% of that goal. Either something remarkable is happening or OCH is counting something other than new hires. And nowhere in these reports does cities how many people have actually been hired. The law requires these reports to show how many people were hired, what they're paid, and who they are, and that information is still isn't in there. So today I want to understand what's behind these numbers where nothing has been reported. Has the work already started and vendors just aren't reporting? Or is it that OCH doesn't have the staff or the systems to follow up? In February, New York City Talent told us that 30 it has 37 staff in total. I want to know how many of them are working on community hiring and whether that's enough to keep up with the program that's nearly triple in size in a single quarter. I also want to know what happened to the program's very first procurement. In June 2024, the city announced 1.2 billion dollars in procurement for security guard and fire safety services as its first community hiring effort, and the city expected those contracts to be placed by 2025. They still don't appear in any of OCH's reports. This isn't the city's first try at this. Back in 2019, under higher New York City, about 80% of job referrals were marked as pending for years because employers never told the city whether anyone was hired. We can't afford to repeat that. What we'll be looking for today is a real count of how many New Yorkers have been hired through community hiring, a date for when the city will publish the data the law requires, and a plan for holding vendors accountable when they don't meet their goals. Before we turn it over to the administration, I'd like to acknowledge the workforce development committee staff, senior counsel Alex Polanoff, senior policy analyst William Hongjak, and financial analyst Spencer Kuhn. And I just want to continue to acknowledge that the mayor has been very vocal and very upfront in the news as well as on his social media and in public press that he wants to hire from the city of New York, and that these are job openings that we want to continue to have this conversation. So with that, I'll turn it over to committee council to administer the oath. Thank you, Chair. Uh Alex Pollanoff, Senior Council. Will all members of the administration testifying today? Please raise your right hands.