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.

De Blasio Looks To Create Job Training Programs That Work

De Blasio says many of the jobs programs from the past (i.e., Bloomberg's) didn't work:

The city is spending half a billion a year to place out-of-work New Yorkers in low-wage jobs - and it's time to stop, Mayor de Blasio said on Tuesday. 

De Blasio, speaking at a thriving manufacturing hub in Brooklyn, announced plans to revamp all of the city's employment training programs, which he said do little to prepare would-be workers with good-paying jobs to help alleviate the income gap. 

"We don't want to place people in minimum wage jobs," de Blasio said. "That's not what we came here to do." 

He is creating a 30-member "Jobs For New Yorkers" task force - which includes labor, business and non-profit heads - that will help shift the city's focus towards finding employment in high paid jobs, as opposed to lower-paid gigs. 

Studies have shown that even as New York's job growth has inched up since the great recession, many of the jobs created have been in low-paid sectors - like hospitality and tourism - while at the same time spots in high-paying fields have shrank. 

"In the past, there's been a temptation to tout achievements in terms of job training and placement, but when you looked a little more closely some folks were in those jobs for three months, or six months or nine months and then they were out of them," de Blasio said. "That's not acceptable to us. We want jobs that people can stick with, that a family can grow with. That's what this task force will focus on."  

In September, the task force will give de Blasio a report recommending specific initiatives the city can do to train and place the out-of-work in sectors that have jobs, and pay well - like tech, manufacturing, and accounting. 

Leaders of the task force include Cesar Claro of the Staten Island Economic Development Corporation, Jukay Hsu, founder of the Coalition for Queens, and Vincent Alvarez, the president of the New York Central Labor Council.

Mayor Bloomberg used to brag about the placements people received through his jobs placement programs, but as with much else about Bloomberg's tenure as mayor, when you took a closer look at his actual "accomplishments," you saw that they were phony:

New York City’s Department of Investigation (DOI) has reported that, of 6,500 job placements claimed by Seedco, 1,400 were fraudulent. That is, those who had purportedly been helped by the nonprofit were either still jobless or they had found jobs on their own without Seedco’s help. The DOI report says that Seedco “developed systematic practices to report false placements.” One of the most remarkable findings is that Seedco got the city’s approval for shredding job placement documents for the period of 2008 to February 2011, so the actual number of fraudulent job placements might be much higher. 

If you want to see an example of the courage of a whistleblower, look to Bill Harper, a former deputy director at Seedco. In August of last year, Michael Powell of the New York Times first reported about Harper’s allegations that SEEDCO was falsifying reports of job placements for its performance on city government contracts. At the time, Powell said that Seedco tried to sully Harper’s reputation and claimed to have conducted an audit that found only 60 fraudulent job placements compared to Harper’s count of 400. A month later, Powell was back reporting on new allegations about Seedco’s job placement accomplishments. This time around, both the city oversight agencies and Seedco itself were less defensive and dismissive, and Seedco promised corrective actions such as reviews and retraining of staff. 

Though Seedco’s relatively new senior management is promising to make additional changes, the new charges are obviously not good news for the organization. Powell reports that federal prosecutors are looking at Seedco’s job placement contracts and the city has announced that it will take away Seedco’s $7 million annual contract and give it to a different nonprofit.  

Why did a great and respected nonprofit allegedly get involved in this kind of behavior? According to Powell’s article, “The employees at Seedco…described a culture of unrelenting pressure from the Bloomberg administration to produce data showing that the job placement effort was working. Each year, city officials increased the targets for placements, even in the midst of a deep recession. The city required contract agencies to give weekly, monthly and quarterly reports of progress. City officials graded their progress, giving good marks to those with high numbers of placements, and poor grades to those that fell behind.” Staff reported that managers pressured them to fake job placements and learned tricks for fabricating job placement reports.  

Under Mayor Mike Bloomberg, the city has emphasized performance-based contracting, making Seedco’s competition for new contracts, such as a contract for a new workforce center in the Bronx that it wanted at the time, dependent on showing the numbers. Faking the reports had reportedly become part of Seedco’s organizational culture of responding to Bloomberg’s city hall pressure.

Of course that's one of the past jobs programs de Blasio is alluding to when he announced his jobs program task force.

Classic Bloomberg criminality- and yet, many people in this city still think he was a great mayor.

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.

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.

Bloomberg Sows The Seeds Of Corruption

See if you see any connection between this Seedco corruption story and how Bloomberg runs the school system:

City investigators have discovered evidence of large-scale fraud in one of the agencies leading Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s signature initiative to find jobs for unemployed New Yorkers.

The Department of Investigation found that Seedco, a nonprofit organization that frequently works with the Bloomberg administration, falsely claimed to have helped at least 1,400 people — out of about 6,500 — find jobs; those people are in fact jobless or found employment on their own.

Seedco “developed systematic practices to report false placements” to the city’s Department of Small Business Services, according to a report on the investigation that was released on Friday.

...

The reports of fraud come as a blow to Mr. Bloomberg, who sought a third term based on his ability to lead the city in a tough economy and has heralded his administration’s success in finding jobs for unemployed New Yorkers. The mayor has praised the role nonprofit groups, paid by the city, have had in the jobs effort.

...

The employees at Seedco also described a culture of unrelenting pressure from the Bloomberg administration to produce data showing that the job placement effort was working. Each year, city officials increased the targets for placements, even in the midst of a deep recession. The city required contract agencies to give weekly, monthly and quarterly reports of progress. City officials graded their progress, giving good marks to those with high numbers of placements, and poor grades to those that fell behind.

Agencies producing high numbers of job placements are given “performance-based” bonuses. And Seedco, at the time of the fraudulent job placements, was competing for a new multimillion-dollar contract to run a work force center in the Bronx.

Seedco employees told city investigators that they believed they would lose their jobs if they failed to reach their goals.

Internal memorandums and e-mails, uncovered by the Department of Investigation and Seedco, reveal directors and staff members discussing unethical and, in some cases, outright fraudulent behavior.

Gee, I'm sure now that we're going to put unrelenting pressure upon schoolteachers to raise student test scores every year or be fired, they'll be no unethical or outright fraudulent behavior by employees of the school system trying to save their jobs.

And if there is any of that, we'll just blame the "bad teachers" instead of the unrealistic goals and benchmarks pushed by Bloomberg and his corporate managers.

Because it's never the fault of the most brilliant mind to ever run New York City - the Mayor of Money himself, Michael Bloomberg.

None of the cronyism, corruption, or criminal activity of city employees and/or the consultants hired by the city seen on his watch is ever his fault.

CityTime and the theft of $600 million in city money - not his fault.

Money laundering through the Independence Party - not his fault.

NYPD ticket fixing scandal - not his fault.

NYPD gun-running - not his fault.

NYPD planting drugs on victims to increase arrest stats - not his fault.

Judith Hederman/FTA/NYCDOE scandal - not his fault.

Willard Lanham/NYCDOE scandal - not his fault.

Faulty GPS systems - not his fault.

Faulty NYCHA computer system - not his fault.

And of course the systematic fraud perpetrated at Seedco, encouraged by the Bloomberg administration's own obsession with data, stats and "performance" - not Bloomberg's fault either.

Bloomberg is very big on the performance of city employees - so much so that he's willing to spend $700 million over budget just to make sure they punch in and punch out at the right time - but when it comes to tracking his own performance as steward of the city and its finances - it's never his responsibility and it's never his fault when things go wrong or money gets stolen.

Must be those damned teachers...