$600 Million Stolen - And It Was Bloomberg's Fault

That's what was announced yesterday regarding the CityTime scandal:

Nearly all of the $600 million that New York City has paid to the main contractor for its troubled automated payroll project has been tainted by fraud, prosecutors said Monday in announcing a new indictment that charged two technology executives and their company in what a United States attorney called a “massive and elaborate scheme.”

“Today we allege what many have long feared: The CityTime project was corrupted to its core by one of the largest and most brazen frauds ever committed against the City of New York,” Preet Bharara, the United States attorney for Manhattan, said at a news conference.

It was the first time that Mr. Bharara, who was joined by Rose Gill Hearn, the commissioner of the city’s Department of Investigation, had held a news conference about CityTime since the scandal broke in December. The new indictment also adds accusations against six other people who had been previously charged in the case.

In addition to announcing the new indictment, prosecutors said the chief systems engineer in the New York office of the contractor, Science Applications International Corporation, had pleaded guilty to charges and was the second central figure to cooperate with the authorities. Prosecutors also said the fraud was much more systemic than they had first realized, and stretched back to 2003, two years earlier than they had said previously.

While no city official has been implicated, investigators suggested that the Bloomberg administration, which was deeply invested in the project and anxious for the technology to work, had failed to recognize what Mr. Bharara said was a scheme that “appears to have metastasized over time.”

Ms. Gill Hearn said, “The individuals charged today understood, exploited and preyed upon the city’s desire to modernize its timekeeping and payroll operations for more than 160,000 employees.”

Bloomberg was so eager to get a payroll system into place that would keep city employees from stealing away ten minutes early from work that he allowed the CityTime crooks to steal $600 million dollars.

Oops.

And of course there is no mea culpa from the mayor here.

As NYC Parents Blog points out, Bloomberg thinks he did a great job on this project.

Uh, huh - that's what he said.

$600 million stolen, no oversight by the city on this, at least one city official (former Office of Payroll Administration Director Joel Bondy) implicated in the scandal, many more tarred with failing to see it happening over SEVEN FREAKING YEARS and the U.S. attorney called this scandal one of the worst frauds ever committed against New York City.

That doesn't seem like a great job to me.

And yet, Bloomberg will do his best to make like this never happened, he will continue to talk about how important it is to hold "bad teachers" accountable and how teachers need to be fired and the city cannot afford them anymore blah blah blah while $600 million has disappeared from the city coffers without anybody in the Bloomberg administration (other than perhaps Joel Bondy and his deputy, who seemed to be in on the fraud) noticing.

Will he continue to be Teflon with these scandals?

Will this stuff still not stick to him?

Will people continue to think he's a great fiscal manager even as it is becoming obvious from the CityTime scandal and the DOE scandals that the outside consultants this guy has hired have stolen what may amount to a billion dollars when everything is said and done?

I read somewhere that political observers don't think these outside consultant scandals rise to the level of the Koch scandals of the 80's.

Now that the U.S. attorney has called this one of the worst frauds ever committed against the city of New York, I wonder if they're still going to say the same thing?

Same goes for his media buddies who carry water for him at the Post and the Journal and the Times (I'm leaving the News out of this because Juan Gonzalez at the DN really helped spur this investigation along with his reporting)?

Does Bloomberg get a pass on this?

Letitia James: OPA Director Joel Bondy Should Be Arrested

City Councilwoman Letitia James says Office of Payroll Administration Director Joel Bondy's resignation from his job is not enough to make restitution for the $80 million dollar CityTime scandal:

City Councilwoman Letitia James (D-Brooklyn), one of CityTime's earliest and fiercest critics, said the administration should probe Bondy's actions, despite his resignation.

"Quitting is not enough," James said. "He should be thoroughly investigated, and I believe arrested. There's no way you can separate Mr. Bondy from this scandal. He should be held accountable."

A call to Bondy was not returned last night.

Bondy was not charged on Dec. 15, when the US Attorney's Office arrested four consultants and two relatives for allegedly swindling the system over the past five years.

Prosecutors charged them with falsifying time sheets, making payments to phantom shell companies, and siphoning off money through Chinese and Latvian banks to fund lavish lifestyles -- including the purchases of Mercedes-Benzes and two Long Island homes worth more than $3 million.

Bondy was accused of giving consultants working for Spherion -- the firm tasked with overseeing the quality of CityTime technology -- "direct access." He had worked at Spherion before being brought on to head the OPA in 2004.

Critics, from James to city Comptroller John Liu, railed against the project as its cost ballooned from $63 million when it was launched in 1998 to an anticipated $722 million.

It is considered the biggest scandal under Mayor Bloomberg's watch, and he has repeatedly said he has "zero tolerance" for corruption in his administration.

Bloomberg has "zero tolerance" for corruption in his administration?

Good grief, Charlie Brown, what baloney that is!

The CityTime crooks were stealing money FOR YEARS.

The city knew there were problems with the payroll system and the contractors involved as far back in 2003.

Then Bloomberg hired a guy who had ties to the companies involved to be OPA director and conduct oversight of the project.

And next thing you know, the project costs $600 million more than it was supposed to cost and a bunch of crooks, er, consultants are a lot wealthier.

That's zero tolerance?

Hell, Bondy deserves to be arrested and Bloomberg himself needs to be investigated and called to account for how he allowed this mess to "slip through the cracks."

Payroll Admin Director Gave Rubber Stamp To CityTime Project

And Bloomberg gave a rubberstamp to the Payroll Administration Director:

The Bloomberg administration official responsible for overseeing a huge, troubled payroll and timekeeping project for New York City employees that is the focus of an $80 million federal corruption case said on Thursday that he was resigning.

In a one-sentence letter to the board that oversees his agency, the official, Joel Bondy, said he was leaving as executive director of the Office of Payroll Administration effective Dec. 31. Last week, Mr. Bondy, who has not been charged, was suspended without pay. His biography was removed from the agency’s Web site earlier this week.

His departure comes as newly available documents reveal that he gave glowing evaluations for the work done by the quality assurance monitor for the project, known as CityTime, during a period when, prosecutors say, consultants for the firm were bilking the city for their own enrichment.

Last January, Mr. Bondy took stock of how the effort to overhaul the city’s payroll system was going. The company charged with quality assurance, Spherion, was due to be evaluated on an $18.6 million contract.

How Spherion’s performance was rated by Mr. Bondy had potential implications for the company’s ability to stay on the job and to win future city work.

Mr. Bondy, records show, was deeply impressed with the company’s work. According to two years of evaluations, for the periods from February 2008 through 2009, made available through a state Freedom of Information Law request, he gave the firm an overall rating of excellent, the highest possible level, for its work on CityTime.

And for each of the three areas covered in the evaluations, including fiscal administration and accountability, Mr. Bondy wrote the same seven-word comment in praise of Spherion: “The contractor’s work has consistently exceeded expectations.”

Criminal charges by prosecutors, though, now suggest that Mr. Bondy’s work was, at minimum, deeply flawed. During the years that were the focus of his appraisal, two consultants for Spherion, and two subcontractors hired by the company, are accused of taking part in the $80 million fraud, according to a criminal complaint filed last week in Federal District Court in Manhattan.

Investigators said that from 2005 through this December, Mark Mazer, Spherion’s lead quality assurance consultant on CityTime, awarded lucrative contracts to people he knew who then kicked back about $25 million to him. Prosecutors said these individuals also billed for work that was never performed and hid the money in shell companies that were in the names of Mr. Mazer’s mother and wife.

The case has raised questions about Mr. Bondy’s assessments: Was he duped, was he simply not qualified, or was he knowingly misleading the city? Mr. Bondy did not return calls or reply to e-mails seeking comment.

“Agencies rely on these performance evaluations to award billions of dollars in city contracts, and this case reveals a greater vulnerability in the process,” said Sharon Lee, a spokeswoman for City Comptroller John C. Liu.

The Times reports that the previous OPA director had sternly warned about the problems with SAIC, Spherion and CityTime:

In a February 2003 letter to SAIC, Mr. Bondy’s predecessor at the payroll office, Richard R. Valcich, accused the company, in McLean, Va., of repeatedly delaying the project to get paid more, failing to adhere to basic industry standards and rewriting contracts on its own.

But it appears that Mr. Bondy never took the necessary action to control the problems with CityTime, whose cost has swelled to more than $600 million.

And at the time that he was doing Spherion’s two performance evaluations — both signed on Jan. 26, 2010 — the fraud alleged to have been committed by the consultants was in full swing.

Mr. Bondy rated Spherion excellent in the category of timeliness of performance, and good in the area of fiscal administration and accountability.

Questions in that category included: did the vendor submit “accurate, complete and timely payment requisitions,” and did it “meet its budgetary goals, exercising reasonable efforts to contain costs?”

Mr. Bondy worked for Spherion on the CityTime project before Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg selected him to run the payroll office. Mr. Bondy has also had ties to Mr. Mazer, whose performance he was evaluating.

Such great oversight in the Bloomberg administration.

Bloomberg hires a guy who used to work for a crooked company to oversee that crooked companies crooked contracts.

How's that for accountability from the Mayor of Accountability?

Bloomberg needs to answer DIRECTLY, not through a spokesman, but DIRECTLY, why it is he hired Joel Bondy to be OPA Director.

You have to wonder who got pieced off in this deal and just how deep the corruption in the Bloomberg consulting contract deals goes.

Judging by the CityTime scandal, pretty deep.