Bloomberg: We Must Continue With CityTime

What the hell, it's only $700 million overbudget:

Mayor Bloomberg insisted Friday the scandal-plagued CityTime project "has to get done."

A handful of consultants have been charged with scamming the city out of $80 million on the payroll-computerization system, but Bloomberg said New York should get most of the cash back.

"That doesn't make it any better. The real damage is it slows you down from developing a system that we really need," the mayor told WOR radio.

"The consequences of those things are much greater than the money, but we should get most of this money back."

CityTime, meant to convert thousands of public employees to electronic timesheets, is years behind schedule and has ballooned over budget to nearly $700 million.

City officials finally admitted the problems, long after Daily News columnist Juan Gonzalez uncovered irregularities in the bloated project.

Bloomberg noted 90,000 workers get their pay through the system, with that number slated to rise to 175,000.

There's no turning back, he insisted.

"If you stopped it today, 90,000 people wouldn't get a paycheck," he said. "Those agencies that use it, by and large, are very happy. They say it saves an enormous amount of time and labor... For all the problems with it, it will save us money once it gets going."

Uh, huh - and since it's only 12 years since they started the project, it should be up and running by 2022, give or take a decade or so.

Bloomberg NEVER wants to admit a screw-up.

Not ever.

He NEEDS to be held accountable for this.

He hired Joel Bondy to run OPA.

Bondy worked for the company that was overseeing CityTime.

The OPA director that Bondy took over for, Richard Valcich, had already publicly stated CityTime was a mess.

But rather than do anything about that, Bloomberg hired a crook to watch over other crooks who were "consultants" on the project.

That was approximately $650 million dollars ago.

Now the arrogant prick refuses to take any responsibility for the scandal, the theft, the hiring of Bondy, or the lack of oversight he conducted on Bondy.

And he STILL maintains that the city will have to lay off employees even as he has literally lit money on fire in this CityTime mess.

$700 million would pay for an awful lot of employees, wouldn't it?

It would.

Given the scope of this scandal, the first city employees who ought to get laid off are the ones involved in CityTime.

After that, the next employee who ought to be laid off is Bloomberg himself.

Time to go, Moneybags.

Time to go.