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Contract Timeliness

Visuals in this post: From Study to Ballot Contract Timeliness Where the 387 Days Go Cycle Time by Agency Nonprofit Payment Streets and City Land Building Permits Rainy Day Fund
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Government Efficiency August 2026

New York City Registered 39% of Its Contracts On Time Last Year

A City contract is “retroactive” when the work is due to start before the Comptroller has registered it, and the City cannot pay a vendor until registration happens. In FY2025 the City hit its start date on 39% of contracts. That was the best result in five years, and it still means three in five contracts began late or later.

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Three in five City contracts are still registered after they were supposed to start

Share of contracts registered by the Comptroller on time or late, fiscal years 2021–2025. Vendors cannot be paid for work performed before registration.

  • On time
  • 1–30 days late
  • 31–60
  • 61–90
  • 91–180
  • 181–365
  • 366+ days
Source: Mayor’s Office of Contract Services, 2025 Citywide Indicators Report, Retroactivity by Fiscal Year Note: Source percentages are rounded and two years sum to 99% and 101%; bands are normalised to 100% for the stack. Labels show the published figures.

Late registration is why a nonprofit takes out a loan. The City is barred from paying for work done before a contract is registered. A provider that starts serving clients on July 1 under a contract registered in November has carried four months of payroll on its own balance sheet. The City runs a Returnable Grant Fund that lent providers $104.6 million interest-free in FY2025 to bridge exactly this gap.

The Commission on Government Efficiency documented this and did not put it on the ballot. COGE's final report says City procurement is “plagued by delayed payments to contractors” and that today's problems are “much the same as they were in 1989,” when the current Charter rules were written. The payment fixes now underway sit in local law and administrative pilots rather than in the Charter.

What is counted: all contracts registered by the City Comptroller in each fiscal year across Mayoral agencies. A contract is on time when it is registered on or before its start date. Buckets measure the gap between the start date and the registration date.

Retroactivity is not the same as HHS timeliness. Retroactivity is measured from registration; the separate human services timeliness measure is based on when an agency submits a contract to the Comptroller. See Nonprofit Payment.

Sources: Mayor’s Office of Contract Services, 2025 Citywide Indicators Report; COGE Adopted Final Report (July 23, 2026).