A Bloomberg DOE Scandal Still Haunts The City

Do you remember the Willard Lanham/Project Cougar NYCDOE scandal from back in 2011?

If you don't, you can look up some posts I wrote about it here, here and here.

The basic overview was a DOE tech consultant stole a bunch of money from the DOE with the help of IBM and Verizon, who helped him cover the trail.

The consultant, Willard "Ross" Lanham, stole $1.7 million from the DOE from 2002-2008 on top of the six figure salary the Bloomberg DOE was already paying him as a consultant.

The scandal got the tabloid treatment when it was discovered that Lanham had an estranged wife (who you can see below) still living in his house (which you can see above) he had built in his own little real estate development and running a "Cougar" dating service for herself out of it.

She billed herself as "yummy mommy" on her blog and lived the high life meeting 20-somethings in the Long Island club scene:

Lanham had even named the street where his house was after his wife, Laura.                     

It was a sweet story of crime, betrayal and fiscal ineptitude from Bloomberg and his minions.

News of the story came around the same time we were beginning to understand just how much got stolen in the CityTime scandal.

The $1.7 million Lanham stole with the help of IBM and Verizon was a pittance compared to the $600 million the CityTime crooks stole, but it still pointed to an underlying rot in the way Bloomberg and his government outsourced work, hired consultants and did little-to-no oversight on the projects.

Now we learn via a Scott Stringer report that the city is STILL paying the piper for the Lanham scandal, two years after Lanham went to jail and almost a year after "fiscal genius" Bloomberg flew off to Bermuda:

New York City has been missing out on tens of millions of dollars a year in technology funding for schools from the federal government because of a continuing investigation into the Education Department, the city comptroller said this week.

...

The money comes from a program called E-Rate. It charges an average fee of about 25 cents per month to landline and cellphone bills and then uses that money for services like broadband technology in schools and libraries, according to the Federal Communications Commission, which oversees the program.

Since 1998, the city has pulled in more than $3 billion in E-Rate financing, the comptroller said, and while New Yorkers have continued to pay into that system, they have been barred from the receiving end since 2011 because of a federal investigation.

The F.C.C. declined to confirm or deny any investigation, but a city official said the inquiry was prompted by a scandal involving Willard Lanham, a former technology consultant for the city. He was accused of stealing money from the Education Department and using it to satisfy his and his wife’s expensive tastes, including for cars like a Corvette and a Porsche and to finance the construction of luxury homes on Long Island.

Mr. Lanham was sentenced to 37 months in prison in 2012 for stealing $1.7 million that was supposed to pay for Internet access at the city’s public schools.

In the letter, Mr. Stringer requested an update on the proceedings and asked when the city would be reinstated to the program. The comptroller said that while the Education Department had retained experts in E-Rate compliance as consultants, and paid them more than $670,000, “apparently those contracts ended without resolution to the city’s E-Rate problem.”

A spokesman for the department said that applications had already been submitted for the current E-Rate funding year, and that the program’s administrators were reviewing that application as well as those from the previous three years.

Last week, the F.C.C. chairman, Tom Wheeler, proposed raising the annual spending cap on the E-Rate program, which has not changed substantially since it began in 1997, to $3.9 billion, in an effort to increase Internet connectivity in schools. The F.C.C. said the increase would cost consumers a few cents more per line each month.

Mr. Stringer said this potential increase in spending could mean the city would miss out on more than $350 million by the 2018 fiscal year. He said he did not know if the city would eventually receive the E-Rate money at the end of the investigation.

I've said this before, I'll say it again today:

Why does Bloomberg still have the reputation for being a fiscal genius and responsible manager of the city?

When you add up the consultant scandals and tech boondoggery during the Bloomberg Years, you see that billions were either stolen or wasted.

And as you can see from the Stringer report, the city STILL continues to pay for Bloomberg's criminal malfeasance.

Let's imagine this was de Blasio screwing all this stuff up for years and years.

Can you imagine the treatment it would receive in the papers?

And yet, we see time and time again these stories of consultant criminality and tech boondoggery during the Bloomberg Years get reported with nary a negative word about our former billionaire mayor.

Reminds me a little of this, without the guillotine part at the end:

Project Cougar - Maybe She Should Run The NYCDOE?

The arrest of the tech consultant that the NYCDOE had hired to provide Internet access to schools is the scandal that just keeps on giving.

Bloomberg claims he needs to lay off 6,166 teachers in order to save $300 million dollars so that he can spend $550 million in the next fiscal year to upgrade technology in schools.

Meanwhile he has spent over $1 billion on technology in the past few years and what do schools have to show for it?

An ARIS data tracking system school staff hate and don't use.

Internet access that doesn't provide any access at all (takes fifteen minutes to check your email sometimes, depending upon time of day.)

But of course the outside consultants hired by Bloomberg to provide all this technology have done very well.

Take the one who was arrested this week for stealing $3.6 million from the city from 2002-2008 on top of the six figure salary the DOE was already paying him.

Willard "Ross" Lanham was really living it up on the mayor's largesse.

He bought three luxuries home and built his own real estate subdivision on Long Island - even took the neighbors on vacation trips.

And his wife - now estranged - well, what can we say about her that the Daily News hasn't:

Red-spiked Steve Madden heels with a barely-there sundress, a fire-engine red shade of lipstick and green eyeshadow.

Self-proclaimed cougar Laura Lanham is ready for a typical Saturday night out - although she makes it clear her provocative outfit isn't hunting gear.

"I don't prowl - they find me," the lithe, hazel-eyed housewife said Saturday. "The young guys love hanging out with me and my friends because we're not demanding."

Lanham, 42, met with the Daily News at Four - a trendy Melville, L.I., spot that bills itself as a "Food Studio/Cocktail Salon" - to describe an ordinary day in her unusual life.

The mother of three said she never set out to be a cougar. She was 23 when she married now-estranged hubby Willard (Ross) Lanham - a Department of Education computer consultant accused of stealing millions in public money - and led a typically sedate suburban existence.

The couple has a 15-year-old daughter, and Lanham is stepmother to a 24-year-old son and a 21-year-old daughter.

But when she filed for divorce in April 2008, Lanham soon found herself looking at men her son's age in a different light.

"Yes, I'm attracted to them," she said. "But you know, at first I thought it was weird, because I'm a mother. My friends said it's much more common than I thought."

The "yummy mommy," as Lanham was billed in one of her blog postings, acknowledges there's an attraction to the 20-somethings in Long Island dance clubs that was missing with her 57-year-old husband - with whom she still shares a home.

"I'm not going to say there isn't a sexual compatibility there, because there certainly is," she said. "Let's put it this way: I get along with these kids."

In a strange twist of fate, Lanham's 15 minutes of recent fame is all because of her estranged spouse.

His arrest for allegedly swiping $3.6 million in city school funds propelled her into media attention. The one-time aspiring Playboy centerfold has handled it well, and even expressed her desire for a reality show.

Her friends say she should aim higher.

"They said, 'Look at Demi Moore. You could be the Demi Moore of Long Island!'" Lanham said.

Now this woman I like - living it up on the city's largesse, unapologetic about it all and just looking for the next cocktail and next co--, er, young buck to make those nights go by faster.

Hell, judging by the articles about her, I'm surprised that Bloomberg hasn't offered her a job as schools chancellor to replace the now defunct "cougar" Cathie Black.

I think because Laura Lanham doesn't go to the same UES parties as Bloomberg, she hasn't been offered the position yet.

But now that she's getting some press and getting the mayor's attention, maybe now he'll put her in her rightful place in the Bloomberg worldview - a position of power and prestige.

After all, Laura Lanham has lived off the largesse of others, has stolen everything she has, is a bloodsucker extraordinaire and seems clueless about every important aspect of life - just like Cathie Black.

Why not have one predatory cougar replace the last one?