21 'I love NY' signs in Rochester area cost $300K+

ALBANY - The state Department of Transportation used emergency highway contracts and paid out thousands of dollars in overtime costs to install hundreds of I Love NY highway signs ahead of the July 4 weekend last year.

More than 3,000 pages of state highway contracts released this month shed new light on the haste in which Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s administration dotted state roadways last year with more than 500 signs promoting New York’s tourism programs, despite a federal order prohibiting the state from doing so.

In at least four cases, records showed, the state DOT utilized emergency contracts generally reserved for urgent highway repairs to quickly erect the signs, a practice the head of a construction industry trade group said was “unusual.”

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And on Long Island, the state paid a contractor thousands of dollars in overtime pay and weekend fees to get dozens of signs up before July 4 — a move that was questioned, but ultimately approved, by the state Comptroller’s Office.

Mike Elmendorf, president and CEO of the state Associated General Contractors, said New York’s use of emergency contracts for tourism signs was “not typical.”

“It’s kind of hard to imagine how putting up signs of this nature could ever constitute an emergency,” he said.

The state DOT defended the use of the contracts, saying it was appropriate and helped ensure many of the signs were up before one of the busiest summer travel weekends of the year.

“In this case, the contracts were used to promote New York state’s highly successful multibillion-dollar tourism industry, which is a huge driver of economic activity across the state,” DOT spokeswoman Tiffany Portzer said in a statement.

Ongoing dispute

The tourism-focused highway signs have been at the center of a dispute between Cuomo’s administration and federal highway officials since mid-2013, when the Federal Highway Administration rejected the state’s request to begin erecting them along highways.

Cuomo’s administration went ahead with the signs anyway, installing 514 in all corners of the state by the end of 2016.

Generally, the signs are royal blue and grouped in five, placed a few hundred feet apart in rapid succession. They tout the state’s I Love NY app and various tourism programs, including Taste NY and Path Through History.

Federal Highway Administration officials have said the signs violate federal law and rules governing what can and cannot be placed on roadside signs, suggesting they could withhold millions of dollars in federal funding for New York unless the signs come down.

In December, the USA TODAY Network’s Albany Bureau submitted a FOIL request to the state Comptroller’s Office for a handful of contracts used for the tourism sign project.

The documents, released last week, show some of the steps the DOT used to get contractors to install the signs quickly, sometimes within just a few weeks of ordering the work.

Emergency contracts

The DOT used pre-existing, emergency “standby” contracts to call on contractors to install the signs in at least four regions: the Hudson Valley, the Rochester area, the Southern Tier and central New York.

The contracts, according to the DOT’s own website, are generally meant for emergency repairs to highways and bridges.

“Where & When contracts are used to accomplish unplanned, urgently needed or demand-response work,” the DOT’s website reads.

“Typically work performed under these contracts needs to be completed quicker than the time needed to create a separate contract will allow.”

Portzer said the contract use was appropriate. The contracts helped ensure the work was finished in a timely fashion, according to the DOT.

“DOT utilized work order contracts — approved by the Office of the State Comptroller — which are standard for specialized construction,” she said.

The documents also shed light on some of the cost of the signs. Previously, the state had only revealed the cost of the signs and posts — which ran less than $2 million statewide, according to the DOT.

Labor costs appear to add significantly to the cost total.

In the Rochester area, for example, the documents show the state paid contractor LC Whitford more than $300,000 to install 21 signs at six locations — an average of about $14,000 a sign.

In Broome, Tioga and Otsego counties, the state paid contractor Suit-Kote $200,000 to install signs, but the documents don’t specify how many.

On Long Island, the documents show the state paid contractor United Fence and Guard Rail nearly $1.5 million for sign work — about $1 million for signs and delivery, and another $448,153 for labor, equipment and materials.

Overtime

Because the state was pushing for the signs to be up by July 4, the price often went up.

For example, the state covered overtime and weekend pay for many of United Fence’s laborers, who worked extra hours to meet the state’s deadlines.

United Fence, meanwhile, was forced to pay a subcontractor extra to expedite the printing of the signs, according to the contracting documents.

And since the signs used multiple colors and complex graphics, the printing costs were more — about $5,800 total for each large “motherboard” signs, and $2,825 for follow-up placards destined for Long Island.

United had to pay a concrete subcontractor to open on Saturdays, carrying $2,300 in fees each time just to get them to open their doors and provide a driver.

The exact amount of overtime pay isn’t specified in the Long Island documents, but the DOT noted in a request to the Comptroller’s Office that extra funds were needed to cover the costs.

That drew questions from Susan Malatesta, a contract management specialist with the Comptroller’s Office, who directed her staff to ask why the extra costs were necessary.

“Why pay more to get these signs up fast?,” she wrote in September 21 email.

Ultimately, DOT told the Comptroller’s Office the extra spending was to ensure the Long Island signs were up by the summer travel season. The Comptroller’s Office signed off on the spending request.

Cuomo, who has been an outspoken supporter of the signs, likely got a first-hand look that weekend: He spent July 4 in the Hamptons, according to his public schedule.

Sign cost

The total cost of the sign project remains unclear.

In November, the DOT said the cost of just the signs and the posts were $1.76 million. That figure, however, didn’t include labor and equipment costs.

The contracting documents — which cover less than half of the state and just one phase of the sign work —include invoices for at least $2 million in total costs for the signs, including labor.

Last month, state Transportation Commission Matthew Driscoll defended the state's process for installing the signs.

He told reporters the DOT followed "all the New York state procurement guidelines."

“Some of them were existing contracts, we just utilized the contracts," Driscoll said. "We use them all the while. So it’s really nothing new in terms of using these contractors to meet our goals.”

Elmendorf, the head of the Associated General Contractors and a critic of the signs, said the money could have been better spent.

“I think the bigger concern is using capital dollars for something that certainly has no benefit to infrastructure and, I think you could argue, has negligible benefit for tourism, because they don’t really tell you anything," he said.

JCampbell1@Gannett.com

Jon Campbell is a staff writer with USA TODAY Network's Albany Bureau.