The council is required to approve any contract worth more than $1 million, but the contracts take effect automatically if the council doesn’t act within 10 days of receiving them.

Records obtained by The Examiner show that Fenty’s team submitted the contracts on July 12, two days before the council’s recess and a time when council members were focusing on numerous matters, including the top staff of the stricken schools.

The contracts took effect without public comment last Sunday.

Fenty spokeswoman Carrie Brooks said that “passive review” is common in the District. There were 30 such contracts pending last week, she said.

“It’s not a sneaky, behind-the-scenes kind of thing,” Brooks said.

The four neighborhoods have been without libraries for years, in part because city contracting officials botched the original design contracts. They canceled a previous contract in 2005, after sinking $700,000 in public funds into the projects.

The Government Accountability Office published an audit earlier this year, writing that such mistakes are common because city officials don’t track public dollars in more than $1.9 billion in government contracts.

Documents showed that D.C. contracting officials were willing to pay Freelon and Davis, Brody up to 15 percent of the total cost of building the libraries.

Federal law restricts design fees to 6 percent of construction cost, but the law doesn’t apply to local contracts.

Council Member Harry S. Thomas Jr., who chairs the committee on libraries and whose committee had jurisdiction over the contracts, did not respond to numerous requests for comment.

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