De Blasio "Insources" IT Work For New York City

Juan Gonzalez in the Daily News:

Mayor de Blasio is about to end the era of huge technology firms feeding off taxpayers with their legions of $500,000-a-year consultants camped at scores of city agencies for years.

On May 15, de Blasio’s top aides completed months of secret talks with the city’s largest municipal union on a far-reaching new “IT Insourcing” agreement.

First Deputy Mayor Anthony Shorris has committed in that pact, a copy of which the Daily News obtained, to “use city employees for IT work where it will achieve financial savings and improve service delivery, by reducing reliance on external IT consultants.”

City officials expect to save $3.6 million this year through the insourcing plan, but that figure could potentially rise to nearly $100 million over five years, according to the pact’s supporting documents.

De Blasio has thus turned into general policy an effort he began last year, when he took much of the city’s botched upgrade of the 911 system away from private contractors like Northrop Grumman and turned it over to municipal workers.

This signals a major shift by our city away from the “privatizing” or “outsourcing” model that has reigned in urban America for more than 20 years.

“There’s been a bias in too many places at using folks outside the public sector for certain city functions,” Shorris said Thursday. “We want to get away from a reliance on outsourcing things that don’t need to be outsourced.”

Mayor Bloomberg loved outsourcing everything he could - especially IT contracts.

And he defended this outsourcing even after the projects went years over budget or the outside consultants were found to be stealing millions from the city.

Here is part of a column from Adam Lisberg back in 2011 in the DN on that subject:

On his Friday radio show, he was asked about a new shift in city policy that had been in the newspaper for two days running - and didn't seem to know it had happened.

It's a shift on something that had been a sore point for Bloomberg's critics - outside contractors paid six-figure salaries for tech projects that blow deadlines and budgets, like the scandal-ridden CityTime system.

The mayor has long defended his administration's contracting policies, even though municipal unions and Controller John Liu say city workers could do the job for less.

So it was news last week when one of Bloomberg's deputy mayors, Stephen Goldsmith, agreed with critics and said New York will save tens of millions of dollars by bringing the work in-house.

On the radio, WOR-AM host John Gambling tossed Bloomberg a softball about it. But instead of explaining the new company line on insourcing, the mayor defended outsourcing.

"People say, 'Oh, you're spending too much money on outsiders.' If you didn't do that one contract outside, you'd have to have those people permanently on your staff," the mayor said.

"The consultants, they say, 'Oh, they charge a lot more.' Well, because that's the business," he continued. "They don't work all the time, so they have to get paid more. And sometimes they have expertise you don't have in-house."

CityTime, the 911 mess, the NYCDOE scandals (two here and here) the FDNY GPS mess, ARIS, the NYCHA computer mess - the Bloomberg Era incompetence on outsourcing goes on and on.

And yet, Bloomberg's pals in the news media gave him a pass then on this incompetence and they continue to give him a pass today.

Bloomberg was never personally held accountable for these.

It is good to see the current mayor change course and start to use municipal workers for these projects.

Bloomberg Administration Hid 911 System Overruns, Conducted Little Oversight Of Consultants Or Vendors

Juan Gonzalez reports that fiscal genius Mayor Bloomberg oversaw a 911 system overhaul that was $1 billion over budget and ten years delayed.

Gonzlaez also writes that Bloomberg officials hid the cost overruns:

-The overhaul, now scheduled for completion in 2017, has soared in cost by almost $900 million — from $1.3 billion to $2.2 billion.

-More than $200 million of those costs were not previously known because Bloomberg aides buried them in the budgets of other agencies.

-Officials rewrote the monthly reports of 911 project managers or pressured them to “sanitize” and “soften” negative news so as to “to improve the spin” on its progress.

And of course there was no accountability from the Bloomberg administration on the consultants or vendors putting the project together because these weren't lazy city employees working on it, they were heroic private consultants and innovative private vendors:

-Multiple layers of private consultants and vendors virtually ran the overhaul with little supervision from city employees. At times, those consultants ended up marking up their bills to the city as much as 600%.

 -During one 18-month period, City Hall kept cancelling meetings of the interagency city group that was nominally in charge of the project, leading the city’s own quality control consultant, Gartner Group, to complain: “The most senior members of the administration simply failed to pay attention.”

I wrote yesterday that if de Blasio oversaw such a public safety and financial disaster, there would be hell to pay in the media for it.

But really, other than a couple of Juan Gonzalez columns and a few other news items, it seems former Mayor Bloomberg remains the fiscal and management genius he was always depicted as in the media.

Report: Fiscal Genius Mayor Bloomberg Royally Screwed Up 911 Upgrade

Explain to me how Michael Bloomberg continues to be revered as a fiscal genius after CityTime and this mess:

The city’s mammoth upgrade of its antiquated 911 emergency call-taking system was plagued by delays, cost overruns and “persistent mismanagement” under the Michael Bloomberg administration, investigators charged Thursday.

In a 109-page report, the Department of Investigation said failures over nearly a decade, including poor performance and price markups by a number of contractors, drove up the price of the overhaul by hundreds of millions of dollars.

The project, which was launched in 2004 to improve the city’s 911 call infrastructure and create essential backup protections, isn’t expected to be completed until 2017, at a total cost of more than $2 billion.

“[The project] not only is late and over its original budget, but also has tested public confidence in the city’s ability to deliver on necessary improvements to the 911 system that are critical to public safety,” the report says.

It's amazing what billions in your bank account can do for your reputation.

I guarantee you, were de Blasio to have similar scandals like CityTime or the 911 mess, the elites of this city, including the media, would not be so gentle.

Why Are Bloomberg And Klein Still Considered Tech Geniuses?

Harris Lirtzman left this comment on the ARIS post from this morning:

I thought you and your readers might be interested in an article I wrote on Schoolbook on Jan. 28 in the long, painful lead-up to the contract negotiations called "Cut Waste at Education Department Before Negotiating Teachers Contract."

One could put any number of the technology and organizational and procurement boondoggles from the Bloomberg Era in any order of waste, perversity or simple ineffectiveness: my top candidates were SESIS (the "Special Education Student Information System"), your very own beloved ARIS, failure to collect hundreds of millions in federal and state reimbursements to the City for providing "related services" to students with disabilities because the DOE has no effective way to capture the information that would support the claims, stopping non-competitive contracts and procurements to "DOE-friendly" organizations and reforming or eliminating the failed and expensive school network systems.

I have always found it remarkable that the man who was responsible for building one of the most successful financial technology companies in the world could not get a single effective technology system build during his time in the City-- ARIS, SESIS, City-Time, Enhanced 911--but yet he and Joel Klein were lionized as visionaries and effective managers by many who wanted to believe.

ARIS we hardly knew ye but we're so glad to see you go.

http://www.wnyc.org/story/opinion-cut-waste-coming-table-over-teachers-contract/

I would add the NYCHA computer system, the FDNY and Sanitation Department GPS systems, and the EMT tablets to the list of Bloomberg tech boondoggles that Harris lists (SESIS, ARIS, CityTime and the 911 system.)

Let us imagine Mayor de Blasio had even a tenth of the failure that Bloomberg had with these boondoggles.

Can you imagine the press coverage?

And yet, Bloomberg has never been personally called to account for the billions of dollars of taxpayer money he lit on fire for these projects. 

Another Bloomberg NYCDOE Contractor Fraud Story

Mayor Bloomberg was a self-described financial genius who saved the city from financial ruin numerous times - and yet, the contractors his administration hired robbed the city blind.

Here's the latest:

A contractor for the city Department of Education was busted for allegedly scamming the city for more than $1 million with massive overcharges — including billing the city $572 for circuit breakers that cost a measly 18 bucks.

Derval (Eduardo) Lazzari, 54, also had his companies charge the city $157.50 a pop for over 8,000 non-existent “carbon dioxide” tests on refrigerators, federal prosecutors said.

The Queens man “cheated the New York City Department of Education and the children it educates by submitting fraudulent invoices for repairs to New York City schools,” Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said.

The criminal complaint said Lazzari had been running the scam since 2006, when his company, Acme American Repairs, was awarded a contract to repair cafeteria equipment in city schools.

“Beginning shortly after the 2006 contract went into effect, Lazzari instructed the billing clerk ‘to bill as close to $1,000 on ever work ticket as possible without going over,’” regardless of what work — if any — was done, the complaint says.

The contract eventually paid the company $22 million, and it was awarded a second deal in 2010, court papers say.

The big bills caught the eye of the Special Commission of Investigation for city schools, which discovered the rampant overbilling, court papers say.

The agency found “Acme repeatedly billed the DOE $572.05 for a circuit breaker estimated to cost $18,” and “repeatedly billed the DOE between $200 and $300 for electrical outlets estimated to cost between $2 and $22,” the complaint says.

The company also billed “for parts or services that were not installed and/or inapplicable to the type of repair and/or service work completed.”

Previous Bloomberg contractor and tech boondoggle stories can be seen here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.

Previous Bloomberg NYCDOE consultant and tech boondoggle stories can be seen here, here, here and here.

One Final Bloomberg Boondoggle

From the Daily News:

In one of its final acts, the Bloomberg administration pushed through a costly contract to modernize the city's 311 call system — hiring the same company fired by the feds for the botched rollout of the Obamacare website.

The city’s Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications, known as DoITT, awarded the contract to the Montreal-based company CGI on Dec. 31, hours before Bill de Blasio was sworn in as mayor.

Bloomberg administration officials were keen on approving the deal because the former mayor sees the 311 hotline as one his legacies, sources said.

But rival companies are up in arms, saying CGI has little if any experience managing call centers. A website, Dont911nyc311.com, has popped up to protest the contract.

CGI has never overhauled “a 311-type system,” said a source in the information technology industry.

“We’re transferring a service New York City provided to its people to a service New York City is contracting to outside parties to do. It’s a serious situation.”

The contract will cost taxpayers $10 million this year — and potentially tens of millions more in future years.

This is the same kind of Bloomberg behavior that brought us the 911 system overhaul - the one that cost over $2 billion dollars, is years behind schedule and still doesn't work right.

Same as the CityTime boondoggle as well.

How the press never went after Bloomberg on the 911 system, the CityTime mess and the other contract boondoggles is beyond me.

You can bet they'll go after de Blasio if he does the same.

But Bloomberg essentially gets a pass - no meme about what an incompetent steward of city contracts he was.

Cuomo's Education Bond Puts State's Environment At Risk

Sheriff Andy wants to invest $2 billion in technology for schools so that students can take tests on computers and their teachers can be evaluated using so-called state of the art technology.

That's not exactly what he said when he called for a $2 billion bond for education technology, but that's what many observers think he wants the money for (i.e., the infrastructure for the PARCC tests.)

Scott Waldman at Capital NY reports that Cuomo's pushing of the education bond has an even more obvious downside:

ALBANY—Gov. Andrew Cuomo's proposed education bond act might put an iPad in the hands of every student, but a chance to fix the state's leaky sewage infrastructure would go down the drain.

The $2 billion education bond act floated by Cuomo in Wednesday's State of the State speech would get computers, tablets and high-speed broadband into every school across the state. But it will also effectively kill off any chance of a $5 billion environmental bond that would pay for sewer upgrades, drinking water protection, climate change adaptation, improved air quality and farmland protection.

Only one bond plan can be put to voters statewide vote a year and it must be for a single purpose, according to the state Budget Office.

Cuomo made it clear Wednesday that he'll put his weight behind the education initiative, not environmental improvements, on the same ballot where his name will appear in November.

Screw the clean drinking water and sewage systems that don't leak - Bill Gates and Rupert Murdoch want an education bond that will effectively hand over $2 billion to their companies (as well as other technology companies) and Sheriff Andy is happy to comply.

Having seen how little improvement the iPads have done for LA's school children, or how little the Amplify tablets have helped students in North Carolina, it's difficult to justify the education bond over the environmental bond - especially when so much of the money will simply go to consultants, tech companies and edu-entrepreneurs.

But I'm sure Sheriff Andy will get his way on this and we'll soon see $2 billion in bond money heading the way of the consultants, tech companies and edu-entrepreneurs.

Many of these people are so corrupt that no matter how much money you throw their way, the expanded broadband and Internet access never happens.

A few years ago, Bloomberg said there was no money for teachers and he had to lay some off even as he was expanding technology spending in schools by $542 million.

The goal was expanded broadband and Internet access in every school.

The money got spent, all right, but the expanded broadband and Internet access did not come.

Andy's education bond is aimed at getting the technology infrastructure up for the PARCC tests, but given how this kind of money has been wasted in the past, I would think Sheriff Andy's great grand son will be governor before that goal is reached.

This money could be spent on something useful - either for the environment (like fixing drinking water and sewage systems) or for education (like lowering class sizes and building new schools.)

Sheriff Andy has instead chosen to waste it on a tech boondoggle.

Bloomberg Strokes His Ego On The View

In touting his accomplishments as mayor - including making the school system "dramatically better" - Bloomberg said the following when asked by the hosts of The View what he might do next:

“I’ve always thought that Santa Claus is a short, Jewish, balding 72-year-old guy, so I’ll give it a go,” he quipped.

Ha ha ha ha ha ha - that line is almost as funny as the one about making the school system "dramatically better."

Or the story about how his malanthropic unit plans to bring all the data-driven successes of NYC like CityTime and the Bloomberg Boxer Day Blizzard plow job and plunging test scores and phonied up crime stats to the world at large.

Funny stuff, Mike.

If you had $30 billion less, people would tell you to your face how full of crap you are.

But $30 billion blinds a lot of people to reality - and not just the hosts of The View.

Do you think any mayor other than the billionaire Bloomberg who over saw a 911 system redo that is over a decade overdo, cost over $2 billion dollars and STILL doesn't work would be able to tout his accomplishments without that mess being mentioned in the press?

Or the CityTime scandal, the worst fraud ever perpetrated on NYC citizens?

Or the Boxer Day Blizzard catastrophe that saw deaths when Bloomberg couldn't get the streets outside of Manhattan plowed for days?

Same for the 911 system mess, which may have contributed to the death of a four year girl on the Upper West Side after she was hit by a car and the 911 system caused delays in emergency response.

This fevered little ego known as BLOOMBERG who needs to put his name on everything he owns - literally - would certainly get a lot more scrutiny than he has if not for the $30 billion in wealth, the press he already owns (or his friends own) and the press he is rumored to be in the market for (like the NY Times or the Financial Times.)

As it stands now, he gets to do his little "I'm Amazing" shtick without anybody calling him an imcompetent ego maniac to his face.

But that's America for you.

As some cynic more famous than me is alleged to have once said, nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public.

I see that more and more every day.

Michael Pollan Knows Nothing About Mayor Bloomberg

.@michaelpollan @paultough NOT a good idea; Bloomberg has been a disaster when it comes to instituting tech systems; witness CityTime
— leonie haimson (@leoniehaimson) November 24, 2013

Apparently Michael Pollan missed not only the news about CityTime scandal - the worst fraud ever perpetrated against NYC - but also the 911 system overhaul mess that has seen Bloomberg spend over $2 billion dollars in tech upgrades that cause the system to freeze repeatedly and just may have led to the death of a four year old.

Or the EMT records modernization project Bloomberg instituted that the NY Post called a "technical nightmare" that causes the new wifi devices to freeze up and lose information - again putting lives at risk.

Or the NYCHA computer system upgrade that Bloomberg spent $36 million on that Juan Gonzlaez described this way in the Daily News:

Bureaucrats at the New York City Housing Authority gave their new $36 million computerized rent-collection system the bizarre acronym NICE (NYCHA Improving Customer Experience).

But for landlords and public housing tenants, the system — designed by firm Siebel-Oracle — is a cyber-monster run amok.

Since NICE was launched in February, the annual certification process for 100,000 tenants who receive Section 8 rent subsidies has turned into a hellhole of disappeared documents, erroneous payments and baseless eviction notices.

Many of the 30,000 private landlords who get paid by the Housing Authority are up fed up.

“It’s total chaos beyond belief,” said one Brooklyn building owner. “Landlords are being mixed up and getting wrong checks. Sometimes the computer automatically sends termination notices to every tenant in a building. Transfers get held up for months. The whole thing gets worse every day.”

Or how about the GPS systems Bloomberg bought for the FDNY that the NY Times described this way:

The Bloomberg administration spent millions of dollars to put custom-made GPS tracking units in fire and garbage trucks, only to have vehicles inexplicably show up on computer screens as if they had sunk to the bottom of Long Island Sound or New York Harbor, the city comptroller has found.

Faulty devices, inaccurate locations, needless features and prices to make a vendor blush — as much as $56,000 for a single unit in a sanitation truck — characterized the two projects, according to two audits released on Wednesday.

The comptroller, John C. Liu, said the findings were more evidence of the administration’s troubled record with computer projects.

“Once again, millions of taxpayer dollars have been wasted on technology that falls short of what’s promised, raising questions about the oversight of expensive outside consultants,” he said in a statement. Mr. Liu, a likely mayoral candidate, has crusaded against city technology spending on projects like CityTime, the scandal-plagued payroll system.

Last week, the Bloomberg administration acknowledged that it had mismanaged its major information-technology projects and vowed to improve oversight.

And let's not forget the Bloomberg Blizzard Disaster of 2011 that saw Bloomberg telling people to relax and take in a Broadway show as New Yorkers died in this city because Bloomberg was too incompetent to get the streets plowed in a timely fashion.

Or his downplaying of the storm threat pre-Sandy that caused some New Yorkers to take the storm less seriously than they should have.

I'm sick of these "experts" like Pollan pontificating about stuff they know NOTHING about, showing their ignorance in the bargain, and no one calling them on it.

Not that he's going to care, but I'M going to call him on it.

Pollan is an ignoramus if he thinks Bloomberg is some uber-competent techno-genius who should be tapped to fix the Obamacare mess.

This is the kind of statement that calls into question whatever else this guy writes or talks about.

The Post-Mayoral Propaganda Around Bloomberg Is Starting Already

From the Daily News:

Hizzoner is getting a big honor indeed – a biography.

Simon & Schuster announced Tuesday that outgoing New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg is getting a “major biography” by way of author Eleanor Randolph, a longtime journalist and editorial board member for the New York Times.

According to the release, the biography will take an intimate look into the “extraordinary career and legacy of Bloomberg, who revolutionized business reporting, who has been a powerful and innovative mayor of New York City for the last 12 years, and who has become a public figure of national significance.”

Gee, that doesn't sound like a puff piece at all.

Oh, no...wait...

It does sound like a puff piece.

Is Eleanor Randolph on the Bloomberg payroll?

Probably not.

Does she want to be on the Bloomberg payroll?

Sure sounds like it from the description of the book.

Bloomberg has tons of of his own journalists on payroll already, from Jonathan Alter to Andrew Kirtzman, who will provide plenty of pro-Bloomberg propaganda in the coming years.

And then we have shills from the NY Times editorial board who look like they're about to add to the pro-Bloomberg propaganda canon.

Will anybody do an independent accounting of the Bloomberg Years?

Will anybody look into the manipulated crime stats?

Or the phonied up graduation rates?

Or how they lied about the test scores?

Or how they lie about emergency response times now?

How about all the scandals - from CityTime to the 911 system that STILL doesn't work and almost killed another person this week to the NYCHA computer mess to the FDNY GPS scandal to the Seedco scandal to the NYCDOE scandals (see here and here) and on and on and on...

And let's not forget the Bloomberg Boxer Day Blizzard disaster, when he couldn't get the streets outside of Manhattan plowed and people died as a result or his downplaying of the seriousness of Sandy prior to Cuomo forcing him to call for an evacuation when the governor shut the MTA down.

So much to scrutinize, but Eleanor Randolph's book doesn't sound like it's going to look into any of that.

Then again, as a member of the NY Times editorial board, she's been responsible for a lot of pro-Bloomberg propaganda in the past, so there's no reason to expect that will change now that the mayor is leaving.

Outside Contractor Who Stole $2.7 Million From NYCDOE Sentenced For Fraud

Let's see there was CityTime and the 911 system boondoggle and the NYCHA computer system mess and the FDNY GPS's that don't work and ARIS and the Willard Lanham fraud and the Judith Hederman fraud and now this:

A Pennsylvania man was sentenced today to 57 months behind bars for fooling the Department of Education into paying him $2.7 million after he lied about providing special-education and bilingual services to students.

Nelson Ruiz, who collected the taxpayer-funded cash from 2008 to 2012 through six companies he controlled, will also serve three years of supervised release following his prison sentence for defrauding DOE and also furthering the scheme by bribing an agency staffer. Ruiz, 36, of Shohola, Pa., copped a plea to masterminding the scheme in December.

Before being sentenced in Manhattan federal court, his lawyer, Don Savatta talked openly to Judge John Koeltl about how Ruiz started the scam by “accident,” first submitting “incorrect” invoices to DOE that he wound up being paid for. Savatta said Ruiz then purposely submitted phony papers a second time as a “test” -- and after DOE still couldn’t catch the false information and paid him again, Ruiz couldn’t stop himself from repeating the process.

“Mr. Ruiz acknowledges it was greed and easy money that drove him and is embarrassed and ashamed that it did not stop years ago,” Savatta told Koeltl.

Ruiz through his plea deal agreed to fork over the $2.7 million related to the crime.

We are so lucky we have had fiscal genius Mike Bloomberg to steward this city for the last 12 years.

I mean, how could this city have survived with Mike Bloomberg?

Bloomberg: We're Lucky The CityTime Crooks Ripped Us Off!

Yeah, he said it:

New York City is lucky it got ripped off hundreds of millions of dollars in the CityTime scandal, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said this morning.

Mr. Bloomberg’s argument was that because the fraudsters agreed to pay the city back $500 million after being hounded by federal prosecutors and the city’s Department of Investigation, the project of modernizing the municipal payroll system ended up being a bargain.

“That whole system cost us something like only a 100 million dollars and it should have been many times that,” he said. “We were lucky because of the fraud. And in the end it turned out, because of the recovery, we saved a lot of money.”

The mayor arrived at this topic after defending the city’s much-maligned 911 system, which has been barraged with reports of dysfunction and shutdowns. Mr. Bloomberg compared the two cases and maintained the system was working just fine.

“When was the last time you heard a complaint about the basic accounting system for the municipal workforce that has something like two thirds of all municipal workers on it? None one. Not one complaint,” he said, latter adding, “It certainly works and this 9/11 system certainly works as well. Will there be glitches? Computer systems all the time have glitches. Nothing’s perfect.”

A little 4 year old girl died during one of those 911 system "glitches".

Bloomberg's response?

Oh, well - what can you do?  Nothing's perfect...shit happens...

I'm sure he believes his own b.s. here that the CityTime fraud was awesome because it ended up saving the city money and the new 911 system is working swimmingly despite the half dozen crashes a day it's been having and the dead 4 year old who just might have been saved had the system worked like it was supposed to work.

He's clearly delusional and divorced from reality at this point in his life and I wouldn't be surprised to see him diagnosed with some kind of disorder or dementia in the coming years.

Putting The $250 Million In Perspective

That's the amount in increased aid the city will lose if the DOE and the UFT fail to come to an agreement over evaluations by January 17.

An additional $200 million in grant money may be put in jeopardy as well.

The total operating budget of the DOE is $19.7 billion.

The CityTime crooks stole $700 million from under the nose of city officials.

The Bloomberg 911 system is $1 billion overbudget.

Sure, losing an increase in $250 million in aid to the school system would suck - if that money were actually going to be used in schools.

But let's be frank - Bloomberg and Walcott have cut school budgets by 14% over the past few years even as they have increased spending on technology contracts, testing contracts and outside consultants.

The new teacher evaluation system is premised upon having both state and city tests in every subject in every grade all throughout the year.

They're not going to use the $250 million in classrooms or schools.

They're going to use it for technology contracts and testing contracts and consultants.

This is the kind of "aid increase" that winds up costing more than the actual aid increase (kinda like how the NY State Race to the Top "award" of $700 million cost districts around the state a total of $2 billion in reforms.)

The media will bludgeon teachers with that $250 million figure on the off chance no agreement is reached, but honestly, Bloomberg loses more a year to crooked consultants than that and most of this money will never see the inside of a classroom or a school unless it's in the form of a standardized test or a six figure Common Core consultant.

Bloomberg The Tory

Bloomberg addressed the Conservative Party's annual conference in Birmingham and claimed he has governed as a Tory in New York, bringing a milder form of right wing politics to the city that has more in common with the Tories in England than the GOP in Washington.

Bloomberg also took the opportunity to brag about his supposed successes as mayor:

Mr. Bloomberg said he and Mr. Cameron had each made difficult decisions on the economy, a reference to the sweeping austerity measures Mr. Cameron has introduced. Balancing his own city budget, Mr. Bloomberg said, involved “raising taxes and cutting spending, and let me tell you, that didn’t make me the most popular man in New York.” 

He cited a series of statistics that he said showed his pragmatism had yielded results: Crime is down 30 percent, he said, high school graduations are up 40 percent and welfare claims are down 20 percent.

He never did mention how the crime stats are phonied up, the graduation rates are phonied up, and the agencies in the city government are bastions of corruption (Seedco being the latest scandal there.)

He didn't mention the failed 911 system he has built that has gone $1 billion over budget and still isn't finished after eight years work.  He also failed to note how he has tried to keep New Yorkers from knowing the extent of his incompetence over the 911 system by hiding an independent report into the debacle.

He also didn't mention the CityTime scandal that saw crooks steal $700+ million dollars from the city in the worst fraud ever perpetrated against city taxpayers.

And he didn't mention the Bloomberg Blizzard of 2010 when he couldn't get the streets cleared for days but told people to relax, stop whining about all the piled up snow and go take in a Broadway show instead as people in the boroughs died from a lack of medical care.

Instead he declared himself a great leader and his claims have, as usual, gone unchallenged.

But the Tories, in private, did mention one of Bloomberg biggest accomplishments, one which they envy very much - his refusal to compromise on anything:

Conservative officials, who have felt hampered by their coalition government with a liberal party here, also expressed admiration for the New York police commissioner, Raymond W. Kelly, who visited London before the Olympic Games this summer. “They run things a bit like we’d like to,” one official said, “if we didn’t have to worry about inconveniences like compromise.”

Yeah, that's what Britain needs - a government run by a bunch of rich, out-of-touch oligarchs who don't give a shit about anybody other than themselves and who use the police force as their "own private army."

Yeah, that's what Britain needs.

Remind me, didn't Britain get rid of absolute monarchy back in the day?

Maybe we ought to try the same here in NYC.

Hiring More Guidance Counselors

Last week, Comptroller John Liu called for the NYCDOE to hire more guidance counselors, specifically college counselors, to help students with their post-secondary plans.

In a report called “The Power of Guidance” released Thursday, Liu calls on the city Education Department to spend $170 million to hire an additional 1,612 high school guidance counselors.
That would bring bringing the total number of high school counselors to 2,907.

“Students need enhanced advising and guidance that address both the developmental and practical components of college planning and preparation,” the report states.

Guidance counselors in public schools are ideally positioned to help kids get into college, Liu argues, because they advise kids on academic and personal matters.

With 290,653 students enrolled in city high school, the additional counselors would establish a ratio of one counselor per 100 students.

 

I know many schools are starting to ratchet up the College and Career Readiness programs because Bloomberg has added a college metric to the school report cards.

Some college counselors have 400-500 students in their charge and now, with the College and Career Readiness plans spread to 9th, 10th, and 11th grades, they've got to worry about so much more than their seniors, the application process, SAT's and financial aid.

Adding college counselors to the system so that each counselor works with no more than 100 students makes total sense.

And so Bloomberg and the DOE will reject that call because a) it came from John Liu and Bloomberg hates Liu and b) it doesn't involve any no-bid tech contracts or hiring outside consultants for six figure salaries.

Why hire new college counselors for $55,000 a year when you can light that money on fire with tech projects, costly and useless education software and expensive outside consultants instead?

Bloomberg Appeals Court Decision On 911 System Report To Keep Boondoggle Under Wraps

The Accountability Mayor refuses to be held accountable himself:

The Bloomberg administration appealed on Friday a state judge’s order requiring New York City to release an consultant’s report that is believed to be critical of the 911 emergency-dispatch system.

“The city has been forthright and already provided reams of critical documents — but releasing an unfinished work product will chill the candid discussion necessary for genuine analysis,” said Gail Mulligan, the city’s assistant corporation counsel. “Today’s legal filing means that an automatic stay is in place. We’re hopeful that the appellate court will consider our arguments carefully.”

On Monday, Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron ordered the city to turn over the documents by Monday of next week. He compared the city’s claim that the report should be kept private to former President Richard Nixon’s claims of executive privilege during the Watergate scandal.

But an appeal means the report will remain under wraps for the foreseeable future.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg commissioned the report following the city’s poor response to the post-Christmas blizzard in 2010, a storm that paralyzed the city for days and tarnished the mayor’s reputation as an expert manager. The mayor has repeatedly apologized for the city’s response to the storm, calling it inadequate.

The Teacher Data Reports they released as soon as they could.

The 911 report that shows Bloomberg's administration to be crooked and incompetent - that they're sitting on for as long as they can.

This system is $1 billion over budget and doesn't work.

The report shows that.

Bloomberg wants to make sure New Yorkers don't learn that for a long, long while.

In other Bloomberg tech news, the administration whacked its top technology official on Thursday over all the "hiccups" the administration has had with technology projects going millions over budget and becoming outdated before they're finished.

New York City’s chief technology official resigned after clashing repeatedly with a deputy mayor over the management of several costly, ambitious and troubled projects that have bedeviled the Bloomberg administration, people briefed on the confrontations said on Friday.

The departure of the technology official, Carole Post, was announced on Thursday, a day before Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said the city would challenge a judge’s order to release what is said to be a sharply critical consultant’s report on an over-budget, much-delayed modernization of the city’s emergency calls and dispatching system.

The 911 system overhaul was one of a number of technology projects that were signature initiatives of the Bloomberg administration, but encountered cost overruns and performance issues.

City Hall aides said Ms. Post, who is the commissioner of the Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications, should not be blamed for the mismanagement of the $2.3 billion 911 project, whose woes predated her arrival in the job by several years.

But the city’s deputy mayor for operations, Caswell F. Holloway, grew increasingly frustrated by and impatient with Ms. Post’s department’s work on major initiatives, individuals involved in the city’s technology operation said.

...

In meetings over several months last year and as recently as March 27, people briefed on them said, Mr. Holloway, a hard-charging infighter who formerly led the city’s Department of Environmental Protection, voiced concerns about the cost of an upgrade to CityNet, the city’s internal data network; continuing problems and shortcomings with CitiServ, a data center that was supposed to consolidate dozens of city agency servers; and a shortage of users for NYCWin, a secure municipal wireless network.

The wireless network, for example, which cost $500 million to build and costs $40 million a year to operate, is underused and arguably outdated.

CityNet has experienced interruptions in service, despite a system of redundant fiber optic rings intended to enable it to withstand a breakdown. And the $95 million CitiServ project has confounded agency officials, with DoITT struggling to migrate old systems into the new data center.

The technology department is officially referred to by its acronym, DoITT, but is sometimes derided as “Don’t Do It” by city workers who seek to avoid working with the department.

Tech projects way over budget, not delivering what was promised, or worse, outdated by the time they're completed.

That's Bloomberg' technology legacy as mayor.

Doesn't matter if Bloomberg has a great track record in the private sector as some technology genius.

As mayor, his record sucks at best.

At worst, it veers on the criminal (a la CityTime.)

Which is why he wants to sit on the 911 report.

He's got to know that this $2 billion boondoggle is going to make CityTime look like good governance.

Accountability For CityTime Company, But Not For Bloomberg

One of the buzzwords in education these days is "accountability."

Mayor Bloomberg loves to hold other people accountable for their performance of their jobs - especially teachers.

One of the reasons he supports publishing teacher evaluations in the newspapers is so that parents can hold their kid's teachers accountable for performance.

Yes, with Bloomberg, it's always about accountability and performance

And yet, how come he isn't being held accountable for the CityTime mess?

In a city where Boss Tweed, Mayor Jimmy Walker, and Stanley Friedman all brazenly pilfered public money during eras gone by, no government scandal compares to the size and scope of CityTime.

It was "the single biggest fraud ever perpetrated on the city of New York," U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said Wednesday.

But thanks to a dogged joint investigation by Bharara and Rose Gill Hearn, the commissioner for the city's Department of Investigation, the crooks are paying back most of what they stole.

Science Applications International Corp., the main contractor on the CityTime project - and one of the country's biggest defense giants - has agreed to return to taxpayers the astonishing sum of half a billion dollars by close of business Thursday.

Of that money, $466 million will go directly to the city treasury and the rest to the federal government. SAIC also agreed to forgo another $40 million in bills it had previously submitted to the city.

No local or state government in the country has ever recouped so much money from a single fraud, Bharara said.

The money represents a huge chunk of the nearly $700 million taxpayers shelled out for an automated timekeeping and payroll system that mushroomed over a decade to 10 times its original pricetag of $63 million.

Sounds good, except that the person who allowed all this thievery in the first place - namely Boss Bloomberg - hasn't once answered for the scandal:

Mayor Bloomberg, who stood next to Bharara at a press conference Wednesday, called this "a major victory for taxpayers...for justice and public integrity."

But for a guy about to receive a $500,000 settlement, the mayor did not seem all that elated.

Bloomberg has not yet explained how such a massive theft - the biggest stain on his administration - could occur for so long without any of his aides noticing.

Only one city official, former Payroll Administration director Joel Bondy, has lost his job because of CityTime.

Maybe when the criminal trial of the CityTime crooks finally begins, we'll learn what our own officials knew and didn't know.

Yes, maybe then Bloomberg will have to answer publicly for his own conduct in the oversight - or lack thereof - of the CityTime project and his own administration officials who were working on it.

Bloomberg Takes "Partial" Responsibility For CityTime Theft Of $600 Million

From NY 1

Mayor Michael Bloomberg told reporters today that he did not pay enough attention as about $600 million was allegedly stolen from CityTime, the city's automated payroll system.

So far, authorities have charged 11 people, including one corporation, in connection with the massive fraud involving CityTime, which was designed to cut down on payroll waste and abuse.

Speaking at the New York City Civic Corps graduation ceremony at Gracie Mansion today, the mayor said the system should have been monitored more carefully.

"Certainly nobody paid as much attention to it as they should have, from me on down, and we're going to find out who did what," said Bloomberg. "A lot of it is 'should have, would have and could have,' I think it's fair to say, and we should have watched it more carefully and hopefully we learn and don't make the same mistake again."

The CityTime scandal is one of the largest frauds against the city, rivaling the corruption under 19th century Mayor William "Boss" Tweed.

Bloomberg's taking "partial responsibility" for the CityTime scandal is like a woman being "partially pregnant."

The mayor either is responsible for the contracts his government has with private contractors and is in charge of oversight of said contracts or he's not.

My reading of city law is that the mayor is, indeed, in charge of those things (though the City Controller's office does play a role and former Controller Bill Thompson was woefully inadequate in that job.)

Nonetheless, the city was made aware of problems in the CityTime project as far back as 2005 and Bloomberg did nothing about it.

So for him to say that he is only partially responsible for this mess is just jive.

Given that the CityTime scandal, as NY1 duly notes, "is one of the largest frauds against the city, rivaling the corruption under 19th century William "Boss" Tweed," and given that $600 million has disappeared from the city coffers and into the pockets (and bank accounts) of crooks, Bloomberg's taking "partial responsibility" for the scandal is not good enough.

I should add that there are other scandals involving city contracts, outside consultants and a startling lack of city oversight that are being investigated as well.

CityTime is just the tip of the scandal is just the tip of the scandal iceberg for the Bloomberg administration.

When you look at the various DOE scandals involving the tech consultants and when the school construction contracts are investigated. you will see that Bloomberg's legacy as mayor of New York City will be analogous to Boss Tweed's legacy.

He bears full responsibility for these scandals.

The mayor loves to point the "accountability finger" at others, like teachers and principals in the NYC school system.

But when it comes to taking responsibility for his own government and it's lack of oversight of these outside consultant contracts, he is still refusing to say the buck stops with him.

Oh, Harry Truman, where are you now?

A victimized city turns its lonely eyes to you, whoo-whoo-whoo...

Bloomberg Refuses To Take Responsibility For CityTime Corruption

It's not his fault!!!!!!!!!

Mayor Bloomberg today insisted most of the problem with his scandal-scarred CityTime payroll project was cost over-runs – not corruption.

“The biggest expense was that they started out by underestimating the complexity and cost of the project and then, as they went along, kept adding things. That’s the biggest chunk,” Bloomberg said this morning on his radio show.

He added: “But there was an unconscionable amount of fraud.”

His comments seemed to reject allegations from Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara, who blasted the CityTime project on Monday as “one of the largest and most brazen frauds ever committed against the City of New York.”

Bharara was, at the time, announcing yet another indictment of consultants connected with the computerized payroll project – Reddy and Padma Allen, a husband and wife who co-owned a subcontractor called TechnoDyne L.L.C. That brings the total number of indictments to 11 people and one company, TechnoDyne.

The indictment claims that “virtually the entirety of the more than $600 million that was paid to [the main contractor, Scientific Applications International Corporation] was tainted directly or indirectly by fraud.”

The scandal has tainted Bloomberg’s third term, but he has largely dismissed suggestions that he or his administration is at fault.

“The system is now up and working and it seems to be working,” Bloomberg said on the radio this morning. “There was an enormous amount of fraud. How much it really is, will be, and how much you can recover, you know, you won’t know.”

Wow - the Mayor of Accountability takes no accountability for the CityTime mess.

In fact, he doesn't even agree that it is a mess at all.

Sure, he acknowledges there was corruption and overruns that just couldn't be helped, but overall he thinks the project is just great.

Just great.

Talk about a lack of accountability.

Let's review.

The U.S. attorney said the following about the CityTime project:

The CityTime project was "corrupted to its core."

The fraud was "epic in magnitude, duration and scope."

$600 million dollars of the money the city paid for the project was either directly or indirectly tainted by the criminality.

This crime one of the "most brazen frauds ever committed against New York City."

That's what the U.S. attorney working on the case said about the matter.

11 people have been indicted in the scheme so far.

The U.S. attorney promises more indictments to come.

In Bloomberg's world, this is nothing to blink at.

You see, these were private consultants from the private sector, not unionized employees from the public sector, so really, what's the matter if the project goes nine years over the time it was supposed to be completed and increases from the original $63 million pricetag to somewhere over $700 million dollars?

So what if the consultants working on CityTime extended the project by years in order to steal $600 million dollars?

So what if the company hired to work on the technology project stole $400 million and had no other major clients (in fact, probably wouldn't have existed if not for the CityTime money)?

So what?

In the words of another great manager of government projects, former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, "Shit happens!"

Ah, but can you imagine if the $600 million dollars had been stolen by unionized and public employees?

Oy vey, Bloomberg would have been talking all the day long about how crooked the city employees are, what a disgrace the unions are, how everybody involved needs to go to jail, yadda yadda unions suck yadda...

Same goes for what the editorial boards at the tabloids - the Times, the Murdoch Street Journal, the Post and the News.

They NEVER would let this theft - the worst EVER committed against the City of New York - pass with nary a bad word about the crooks, the companies themselves that enabled this thievery or the system that so was so lacking in oversight that the crooks oversaw themselves.

And yet, because these are private consultants working for private companies, well, what can we do about it?

Shit happens, you know?

The double standard applied to this crime is emblematic of our times (as I noted in this earlier post here.)

But $600 million stolen dollars is STILL $600 million stolen dollars.

So here is what ought to happen in this case:

The mayor ought to be arrested himself for criminal negligence in this matter.

Certainly he ought to be called to account and made to publicly state how it was that the worst fraud in the history of New York City was committed on his watch and continued for years after a whistleblower alerted the city to the matter.

And he ought to NOT be allowed to lay off thousands of teachers and close senior centers and firehouses in order to save a few hundred million when he has not only allowed $600 million to be stolen by the private consultants but plans to spend another $900 million on private consultants and tech spending for the NYCDOE next year, a bonanza of corruption and fraud that should not be allowed to go forward without significant scrutiny by outside entities independent of the mayor.

The Mayor of Accountability needs to to be held accountable himself for the corruption in the CityTime case, as well as the DOE corruption that has already seen one outside consultant arrested for stealing $3.6 million and a top DOE official resign because the company she was overseeing was stealing money from the DOE (even as she was sleeping with one of the owners.)

And these are just the crimes that have been revealed so far under Bloomberg's watch.

Remember, Bloomberg doesn't have to give a lot of details about how he spends money in capital projects, so who knows how much money the crooked consultants are getting away with in the no-bid contracts they've been handed by Bloomberg.

It is time for Bloomberg to go.

Time to go, old man.

Bermuda is calling.

And so is Sing Sing.

Enough is enough.

CityTime Fraud Couldn't Have Happened Without Help From Inside City Hall

Al Jazeera has a really good video report on the CityTime scandal:



This is the biggest theft in NYC history - the crooks stole $600 million dollars.

Mayor Bloomberg shrugs over it all, says the money just "slipped through the cracks," and anyway, the project is working now and stopping future fraud by city employees sneaking off early from work, so Bloomberg is thrilled with the results.

And it only cost over $700 million dollars, $600 million of which was stolen!

Amazing.

Just amazing.

And the sad thing is, Bloomberg is getting away with this.

This scandal should tarnish his reputation the way Tea Pot Dome tarnished Harding.

And like the Tea Pot Dome scandal was just one scandal among many in the Harding administration, this one is just the tip of the iceberg for Bloomberg and his outside consultants and tech contracts.

The more they look into the outside consultant contracts handed out by the Bloomberg administration, the more fraud they will uncover.

At the NYCDOE, there are at least two other outside consultant/tech scandals (the Willard Lanham scandal and the Judith Hederman scandal.)

Yet somehow Bloomberg moves on, making believe he's some financial management genius.

Financial genius, my ass.

Warning Harding is more like it.

Bloomberg ought to be forced to resign in disgrace.

Instead, he's still governing like he's got a four million vote mandate.

He's slashing the budget and cutting programs for seniors and laying off thousands of teachers to save hundreds of millions of dollars while the crooked consultants rob the city blind.

It's time to go, old man.

Time to go.

Bermuda is calling.