Citing an unexplained 44% increase to a school-cleaning contract, city Controller John Liu on Wednesday nixed a $65 million deal agreed to by the Education Department.
The extraordinary spike in an agreement between the department and Temco Service Industries comes at a time when schools have had to cut costs by nearly 14%, on average, since 2007.
"With budget deficits still looming, contracts with huge, inexplicable cost increases and other outstanding questions simply cannot be green-lighted," Liu said.
"An extra $20 million on top of $45 million is an enormous amount of money."
