The project is years behind schedule, $700 million over budget, has seen six people (four of whom were consultants hired by the city) arrested for stealing $80 million in city dollars from the project, the project director himself arrested for taking $5 million in kickbacks to steer $450 million in contracts to firms doling out money to him, and the US attorney says more arrests in the case are forthcoming.
So how did Mayor Bloomberg react to the latest news about the project director being arrested for kickbacks, wire fraud and money laundering and more arrests to come?
He gave himself a pat on the back:
On his morning radio show, Mayor Bloomberg insisted that CityTime is now up and running, but admitted mistakes were made.
"The one thing here there's no excuse for is we didn't catch fraud, which we should have," he said. "But having said that, the project is done, it is working, it will stop fraud and it will be efficient."
From CK: Jonathan Lemire sent me some additional quotes from Bloomberg's radio appearance this morning. Following is a formal statement from the mayor's office.
- “Could we have stopped it? I don’t know. If we look back, if we turned left instead of right, but we didn’t.”
- "We actually did a pretty good job here, in retrospect."
- "The FAA hasn't been able to get their new traffic control system and the IRS -- at the federal level some of these programs go on for decades, cost billions and billions of dollars and never come up with anything."
"We actually did a pretty good job, in retrospect"?
What the hell is he talking about?
Let me repeat:
$700 million over budget, years behind schedule, seven arrests so far and more to come, $80 million stolen, $5 million in kickbacks to steer $450 million in contracts and you have to wonder how much of that contributed to the $700 million over budgeting problem - and Bloomberg says he did a pretty good job, in retrospect?
Mayor Bloomberg, the Accountability Mayor, the man who loves to point the Royal Finger Of Accountability at everybody else, just cannot accept responsibility for this mess.
He needs to be called to account for this.
Especially since the arrests in this scandal and the widening DOE scandals seem to be coming every week now.
The Royal Finger of Accountability lands squarely on his chest for this.
Once again, I am dumbfounded that this scandal has not received more attention--despite yeoman's efforts by people like Juan Gonazalez. The public--especially the unions--should be screaming for blood. I love the way Bloombucks just attempts to sweep his mistakes under the rug, like several hundred million dollars are no big deal. Yeah, it's a great consolation that the FAA screwed up too.
ReplyDelete