Administration responds to Pew report, outlines vendor cooperative and procurement dashboard
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Summary
City officials told council they have accelerated contract conformance work, created a Philadelphia Vendor Cooperative to centralize vendor help and will stand up a dashboard with Pew/Bennett Midland for transparency; the administration said the $3.4 billion figure cited in a report refers to total contract value conformed late, not quantified late payments.
Councilmembers pressed the administration about a Pew/Bennett Midland review that found thousands of contracts were conformed after their effective dates and cited a summed contract value that councilmembers characterized as money paid late.
Camille Duchaisse, the chief administrative officer, said the report’s $3.4 billion figure represents the total value of contracts that were conformed late, but that the study did not quantify how much of that sum represented invoices paid late. “They are equating the amount of the contracts…the total value of the contracts that were conformed late,” Duchaisse told council, adding the administration could not yet quantify how much of that amount reflected delayed payments.
Duchaisse and other staff described steps taken in FY26 to reduce delays: moving contract conformance work earlier, pushing departments to use an expedited conformance process for routine amendments, assigning staff to track when contract performance routing began and establishing closer outreach with nonprofit vendor partners. The administration also said it has stood up a Philadelphia Vendor Cooperative to act as a single point of entry for vendors and to standardize templates and responses.
The CAO said the administration has reduced the average time without a contract in some categories—from about 151 days to about 51 days on average—and will work with Pew/Bennett Midland on an implementation dashboard in the next phase of that partnership to increase transparency and accountability. Duchaisse said the vendor cooperative and revised templates are intended to reduce manual work and harmonize responses across departments.
Councilmembers asked for concrete metrics and a dashboard. The administration confirmed a dashboard is part of the implementation plan and agreed to provide timelines and data to council as they stand them up.
