Mr. Freeman solicited new proposals for contracts to be submitted by this evening.
The department has also issued a request for proposals for contracts covering 250 schools in Region 8, in north Brooklyn, and Region 3, in northeast Queens.
"But the idea was to get people who had the expertise," Mr. Thompson said, and to deal with potential conflicts of interest when it came time to request proposals for contracts and to issue them.
John Hardie, ITN chief executive, criticised the government's Digital Britain proposal for contracts to be issued to a number of consortiums around the country to take over provision of regional news on ITV1, saying it risked creating a "patchwork system" that would play second fiddle to the BBC.
Q.: What about proposals for renewable contracts for teachers instead of tenure?
Ellen Yount, the spokeswoman for the Agency for International Development, disputed that claim and said her office had cooperated with the center and that requests for proposals for Iraq contracts had been publicly available on the agency's Web site for more than six months.
Despite the number of requests for proposals filed for contracts, Washington is frustrated and concerned by the number of bids by minority small business owners that didn't win the government's bidding process.
The proposal for the contract was granted despite concerns voiced by a city contract specialist, the newspaper reported.
"Their proposal for this contract was robust," she said.
In April, though, the city began to solicit proposals for a new contract, and the payment system it proposes is strikingly similar to the fee-for-service plan it had sought to overhaul.
