Bloomberg Refuses Accountability For 911 System

It's always somebody else's fault and his beloved technology always works the way it was supposed to:

Mayor Bloomberg defended the city’s 911 system Thursday even as one of the candidates to succeed him blasted it as a failure and vowed to overhaul it.

Bloomberg said it was “very tragic” that little Ariel Russo was left waiting for an ambulance after she was fatally struck by an SUV, but blamed individual dispatchers.

“The software worked exactly the way it was supposed to be,” Bloomberg told reporters, including our Tina Moore. “There clearly was something wrong with somebody sitting in front of the screen, and maybe two people sitting in front of screens. They didn’t do what they were supposed to do and we’re looking at the procedures. It’s very tragic.

“But it was not a software thing. That’s just ginned up by unions who don’t like the fact that we have combined all of the call takers together, basically,” he insisted.

Juan Gonzalez has reported that the problem was with the software, not human error.

The Daily News editorial writers wrote the same.

Bloomberg once again refusing accountability for his tech messes - and this one perhaps resulted in a fatality.

Kids Rally Against Bloomberg's Afterschool Program Cuts

Letting the Children First Mayor know exactly what it means to put children first:

NEW YORK CITY — Hundreds of kids held signs and chanted outside City Hall Thursday morning to urge Mayor Michael Bloomberg to spare their afterschool programs.

"Our parents need to go to work sometimes and they can't leave us at home alone," said 9-year-old Ayana Barnes. "That is why it's important to have an afterschool program."

The mayor's preliminary budget for fiscal year 2014 includes $130 million in budget cuts to afterschool and childcare programs. These cuts could affect 47,000 kids from all over the city, according to Campaign for Children. 

Children who attended the rally not only spoke out against the budget cuts but also showed what would be lost if they didn't have afterschool programs.

Young girls from Sports and Arts in Schools in Queens offered a double-dutch performance, kids from Stanley Isaacs Center sang an original song and little ones from Union Settlement showed off their drum beats — all skills that were learned in afterschool programs.

"I didn't just learn how to play sports and do activities, I also learned how to speak my mind," said Erinn Cruz, 14.

She added that the afterschool programs in her community keep kids off the street and relieve the stress some parents feel about who will look after their children while they work.

"To cut these programs would be a disservice to the community," she said.

The mayor's office declined to comment on the afterschool cuts specifically.

"We’re working with the City Council to deliver an on-time, balanced budget that keeps the city’s fiscal house in order, while also protecting vital services," said Lauren Passalacqua, spokeswoman for the mayor.

Mayor Bloomberg believes putting money toward standardized testing, data tracking systems for the scores from those tests, and an evaluation system that closes schools and fires teachers based upon that data tracking is much more important than afterschool programs or childcare.

Oh, and let's not forget the outside consultants to run all those things (and rob the city blind while they're at it...)

Bloomberg's $2 Billion 911 Fiasco - Why No Accountability?

From the NY Post:

Mayor Bloomberg’s controversial $2 billion effort to modernize the 911 system — billed as a cure-all for every emergency-communications ill — was labeled a boondoggle by the city’s own experts two years ago, The Post has learned.

The project “does not have a defined business case” for spending $2 billion on a new 911 system, Gartner Consulting told City Hall in a March 2011 report marked “draft — confidential.”

In bureaucratic-speak, Gartner was telling Hizzoner “the program should not go forward” because the city hadn’t shown a legitimate need, as required by federal guidelines.

The consultant’s 45-page report, reviewed by The Post, explained the city was wasting its money by plowing ahead without resolving key problems. It slams the high-tech system for management failures and computer glitches, and clobbers key communications officials for refusing to cooperate and, instead, battling over turf.

The consultants report also found:

* Repeated failures of the emergency-response software were reported but were not fixed.

* The NYPD refused to merge its system for dispatching units with that of the FDNY and the EMS — although that was a key reason for creating the new system. And the departments would not work together to create a unified management structure for the new system.

* The city agencies involved in the plan would not assist the system’s architects in setting up the new 911 network.

The document has not only been kept from the public but was also withheld from auditors from the City Comptroller’s Office, who spent more than a year analyzing the mammoth project.

“If the city withheld any documents from my office during the course of our audit into the 911 system, they violated the City Charter,” Comptroller John Liu told The Post. “The Bloomberg administration should know by now that it can’t sweep its wasteful projects under the rug.”

The damning assessment of the Emergency Communications Transformation Program echoes much of what was laid out a year later in another document, the 911 Call Processing Review, or 911 CPR.
That report, kept secret for months until The Post revealed its findings, is now the subject of a major lawsuit between city fire unions and City Hall.

A highly edited version of 911 CPR was released in May in response to public pressure. Even the sanitized version of the report said the emergency-communications network was on life support because the technology didn’t work and the Police and Fire departments weren’t cooperating.

At the same time, fire officials started acknowledging that emergency-response times were actually on the rise — instead of decreasing — since the new system was installed.

Bloomberg spokesman John McCarthy said the city stands by its new emergency communications network.

“New York City failed to upgrade its 911 system for decades until the successful overhaul by this administration,” McCarthy said.

Where's the accountability for our fiscal genius mayor who wasted $2 billion on this fiasco?

The full 911 report needs to be released and Bloomberg, the people around him, and his outside consultants need to be held accountable for this mess.

The papers were screaming over the loss of $250 million in education aid.

What about $2 billion wasted on this 911 boondoggle?

And that amount has to be added to all the other money Bloomberg gave away to the CityTime crooks and other criminal consultants.

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 Can't Figure Out How To Get Support Service Medicaid Reimbursements

You can bet if this was about teacher evaluations, they'd get this right:

New York City has failed to recover tens of millions of dollars in Medicaid reimbursements for services it provided to special-needs students in recent years, as the Education Department has struggled to adapt to new rules imposed after a devastating federal audit forced the city to return money it received for claims it could not properly document.

State Health Department data from 2006 to 2010 show that education-related claims by the city were 60 percent lower last year than they were five years ago. And virtually all of the $302 million in Medicaid reimbursements the city did receive during that period were for administrative claims that, under the rules that took effect in September 2009, are no longer eligible for reimbursement.

New York, where more than two-thirds of the 168,000 special-needs students are poor enough to qualify for Medicaid, has lagged far behind the state’s other large school districts in filing claims. In fact, the city’s Education Department filed no claims related to nursing services, occupational and physical therapy, psychological counseling, audiological evaluations or transportation between 2006 and 2010; meanwhile, Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse and Yonkers — where the combined special education populations are less than 10 percent of New York City’s — were reimbursed $77 million for such services.

The city’s Education Department did not try to file thousands of claims in the 16 months immediately after the new rules were announced, the state records show. A spokeswoman said it was because the department lacked the staff and the training to handle the more demanding requirements. (Data for 2011 was not available.) Claims can be filed for up to 24 months after the service is provided, but much of the required material cannot be retroactively documented.

“The Medicaid reimbursement process has become increasingly cumbersome,” the spokeswoman, Barbara Morgan, said.

Ms. Morgan said a city analysis found that the Education Department did not have proper documentation for all but 9,000 students during the 2007-8 and 2008-9 school years, a period covered retroactively by the new rules. The analysis shows, however, that even for those students, almost 20 percent of the $10 million in claims filed were rejected for not meeting the new criteria.

The city says the new claims process is really, really hard and gee, they just can't figure it out so well just yet, but they're getting there...they're getting there.

Except that lots of other cities are dealing with the same process and handling it pretty well:

At a time of tight budgets and grim economic forecasts, many districts and states — each with its own set of filing rules — have invested heavily in compliance. Bruce Hunter, associate executive director for policy at the American Association of School Administrators, said the reimbursements, generally from 50 percent to 70 percent of the cost of a service, had become “an enormous help to school districts” across the country.

In New Jersey, where the state treasury retains 65 percent of the reimbursements, filing the claims has been mandatory since 2008, and the state has set precise goals for its districts, including a 90 percent return rate on forms giving parental permission for schools to file on a child’s behalf. In Washington, Mayor Vincent C. Gray asked the accounting firm Deloitte in February to suggest, among other things, ways to improve the system used by local schools to apply for reimbursements.

Each of the 57 county-level school districts in Michigan, where 40 percent of the reimbursements are kept by the state, has had its own Medicaid coordinator for years. Their duties include hiring therapists and nurses whose certification meets federal requirements and, much like an attendant at a doctor’s office, keeping students’ prescriptions up to date to ensure the claims are not disallowed, said Jane E. Reagan, a Medicaid specialist at the Michigan Education Department.

“It’s a hassle, but once you’ve got the infrastructure and staff in place, the costs are almost always worth the benefit,” said Ms. Reagan, who is the president of the National Alliance for Medicaid in Education, a professional group.

In New York State, Buffalo hired a company to handle the claims; Syracuse sent social workers knocking on students’ doors to make sure their parents signed the required consent forms; and New Rochelle hired a consultant to train school bus monitors to note pickup and drop-off times for special-needs children, as mandated by the new rules, which district officials estimate will lead to $100,000 in additional claims each year.

“We’ll be able to put more teachers in the classroom and more staff in our schools without costing the local taxpayer any additional money,” said Yvette Goorevitch, New Rochelle’s director of special and alternative education.

So why can't New York City handle the process right?

Because the people at Tweed are morons, that's why:

But in New York City, according to a September letter from the State Health Department, officials were still submitting some claims using forms that are no longer accepted. A second state audit, released in April, showed that many of the city’s claims in 2009 were missing documentation or showed incorrect dates for services, forcing the Education Department to return $87,000 as a result.

The Manhattan borough president, Scott M. Stringer, wrote to Dennis M. Walcott, the schools chancellor, in October, criticizing the city for failing “for years to apply in an organized fashion” for the reimbursements. “Funding for public schools have been cut to the bone, and it’s unconscionable that the D.O.E. will leave millions of dollars on the table,” Mr. Stringer, a mayoral hopeful, said in an interview.

Don't worry, though - the Children First folks at the DOE are going to get this thing right.

They've got a plan:

Ms. Morgan, the spokeswoman, said the city was working on the problems. In addition to putting a manager in charge of the claims, the department hired a Medicaid compliance officer last year. This fall, it added 15 doctors, who are paid about $60 an hour, plus some benefits, to work approximately four hours each week writing the service orders that must be attached to each claim. It also hired three medical consultants who are paid $110 an hour, without benefits, to do the same work.

The department has also screened therapists to determine whether they have the appropriate certification, and whether the services they provide are eligible for reimbursement. It has offered compliance training to more than 16,000 therapists, supervisors, outside providers and finance staff.

And it has spent $80 million to build a database — the Special Education Student Information System — that it hopes will make filing claims easier by making prescriptions, treatment plans and schedules of services readily available. Many teachers and principals, however, have complained about the time it takes to load the database and how often it crashes.

Ah, yes - the famed SESIS computer system that is so shitty it makes the famously buggy ARIS computer system look like it was created by divine intelligence.

That's their plan for fixing the problem.

As I said earlier, if this were about teacher evaluations tied to test scores so they can fire teachers or a new testing contract for an online servicer, you can bet your sweet ass they'd get it right the first time.

But this isn't about firing teachers or handing out computer contracts to corporate cronies (that part they already screwed up with SESIS) - so they screw this up and screw it up and cost the city millions and millions of dollars.

When the deadline for the new teacher eval system comes up and Chancellor Putzo holds a press conference to say the teachers are costing the school kids millions because they won't agree to having 40% of their evaluations based on two different sets of tests (one state, one city), somebody in the press needs to call him on this support services/Medicaid fiasco.

Frankly, it's not even true that teachers are costing city kids millions of school dollars if the eval agreement isn't hammered out - that money can only be used for useless crap like data tracking systems and new standardized tests.

But the Medicaid money IS useful and necessary and the city ought to figure out how to get the reimbursements.

After all, didn't Bloomberg say only his fiscal genius could save the city during a time of economic turmoil?

Wasn't that the rationale for his third (illegal) term?

I'll answer that for you - it was.

Yet we see time and time again how this man wastes hundreds of millions of dollars on computer projects that go way over budget because he allows crooks to steal tens of millions of dollars (and in the case of CityTime, hundreds of millions.)

Or he puts millions into garbage projects like the infamous GPS systems for the FDNY and the Sanitation Department that are so bad, they show trucks in the East River when they're actually in Astoria.

Or millions into garbage computer programs like SESIS or ARIS.

But he can't figure out how to get Medicaid reimbursements.

Bloomberg has a reputation for being a shrewd businessman.

The only thing shrewd about this guy is how he keeps the majority of the populace from seeing how incompetent he is as a manager.

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.

The Bad Old Days

Lots of high profile murders and violence in NYC this past week had me feeling like it was New York circa 1989.

The Daily News noticed too:

A recent spate of murders in the city combined with a shrinking police force has some officials and residents fearing bloody months ahead.

And the summer hasn't even started yet.

"I think it's only going to get worse with more violence and shootings," said Alyssa Bryan of Brownsville, Brooklyn. "I have a bad feeling about it. Look at what happened already."

Eight people were shot to death across the city between 12:01 a.m. Friday and Monday night, including a mom in the Bronx and a father of two in Crown Heights, Brooklyn.

Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly has warned for some time that the reduction in the number of officers - from 41,000 in 2001 to 35,400 this year - would eventually have an impact on crime.

That warning stands a good chance of coming true beginning in July, when a Police Academy class typically hits the street, according to City Councilman Peter Vallone (D-Queens). Budget cuts forced the postponement of the class.

"We're not going to have new police officers the rest of the year," said Vallone, who heads the City Council's Public Safety Committee. "Right now, it's clear to the population we do not have the beat cops and bike cops we used to have. And if it's clear to the population, it's clear to the bad guys, as well."

But Deputy Commissioner Paul Browne, the NYPD's top spokesman, said the spate of murders over the weekend is likely an aberration.

"We see crime peaks and valleys throughout the year that tend to flatten over time," he said.

Police records show murders were down 1% through Sunday, according to the latest NYPD data available. Police reported a much sharper decline through Feb. 23 - a drop of 25%. That means the number of murders have risen at an alarming rate in March, April and May compared with the same period last year.

Eugene O'Donnell, a professor of police science at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, said the NYPD's shrinking patrol force is worrisome. "We have no reason to believe there can't be slippage back to the bad old days," he said.

What people don't seem to understand is that we don't have money for cops - we only have money for tax cuts for hedge fund managers and money to hire outside consultants and money for data tracking systems.

Geez, what does Bloomberg have to do to get you guys to understand what's what?

More On The Latest DOE Consultant Scandal

Juan Gonzalez reports some more details in the latest DOE outside consultant scandal:

Another day, another outrageous consultant scandal at the Department of Education.

A group of consultants billed taxpayers for full-time, six-figure salaries while spending big chunks of their time devising - along with their school system boss - plans for a new business enterprise, Special Commissioner of Investigation Richard Condon reported Tuesday.

The boss, George Raab, the DOE's chief financial officer at the time, "engaged in prohibited private business relationships" with the consultants, Condon said.

A former managing director at Bear Stearns, Raab was appointed to the $196,000-a-year school system post in October 2008 by then-Chancellor Joel Klein.

Once he arrived at the agency, Raab arranged for four former Bear Stearns colleagues to be hired as consultants, the report found.

Three of them immediately began using their DOE email accounts to prepare drafts of business plans with Raab for a new department Raab wanted to launch at a private investment firm, Guggenheim Securities LLC.

One of the consultants, William Howatt, received $374,000 for less than a year's work.

Howatt, a new age hypnotherapist, was supposed to boost productivity and morale among mid-level managers by "improving their ability to adapt to change," DOE officials claimed at the time.

Howatt appears to have done much of that morale-boosting remotely - from his home in Nova Scotia.

You can't make this stuff up.

Another consultant told Condon's investigators under oath she "did not have a set schedule at the DOE" and sometimes "worked from home."

A third was found to be billing the DOE even when he went out of the country on vacation.

Raab quit in September 2009, less than a year after Klein appointed him. He then went to work for Guggenheim and hired two of the DOE consultants at his new firm.

Raab did not respond to calls and emails for comment.

DOE brass only began to notice something was wrong after the Bear Stearns group had moved on.

"As soon as we discovered there was improper use of emails, we reported this matter to the Special Commissioner," DOE spokeswoman Marge Feinberg said.

The bigger questions are: Where was Klein while this was happening, and why has financial oversight over private consultants virtually disappeared in the Bloomberg era?

The CityTime scandal, the Judith Hederman scandal, the Willard Lanham scandal, a 2005 scandal involving an outside consultant who stole $1.5 million while receiving improper pay increases approved by three top DOE officials who later resigned - the list is adding up.

Now Bloomberg plans to spend $550 million on tech upgrades to the school system, most of which will be paid to outside consultants and companies that receive no-bid contracts even as he says he has to lay off 4,278 teachers to save $300 million.

How is he getting away with all of this?

Despite these recurring problems, the DOE's discretionary spending on consultants has increased by 331% since 2004, notes Manhattan Borough Scott Stringer.

"It's time we stop this black hole of consultant spending until we have a complete overhaul of the process and better oversight," Stringer said.

Bloomberg wants teachers to be accountable, but apparently not consultants.

And you can add Bloomberg himself, as well as Klein, to the list of non-accountability.

It IS time to stop him.

Another DOE Scandal Involving Outside Consultants

How many more of those scandals can go on before somebody takes the keys for the DOE car from a clearly drunken and oblivious Mayor Bloomberg?

A former Department of Education chief financial officer inappropriately lined himself up for his next job in the private sector while he was still at the DOE, and he was aided by consultants who were supposed to be working on DOE business, according to the special commissioner of investigation, Richard Condon.

George Raab, who was CFO until September of 2009, "had an inappropriate financial relationship with three consultants" to the DOE, Mr. Condon said in a report released Tuesday. Mr. Raab and the consultants worked on setting up a department at Guggenheim Securities LLC, Mr. Condon said, and Mr. Raab joined Guggenheim immediately after resigning from the DOE.

In addition, Mr. Condon said Mr. Raab sent and received e-mails using his DOE address concerning personal residential real-estate investments.

Mr. Condon recommended that Mr. Raab and the consultants be made ineligible for future employment with the DOE. A spokeswoman for the DOE, Marge Feinberg, said that "as soon as we discovered there was improper use of emails, we reported this matter to the special commissioner. We agree with his recommendation that these individuals should be made ineligible to work" for the DOE.

The special commissioner's report details a series of e-mails sent between Mr. Raab and the consultants regarding the set-up of the Guggenheim business. Some of the consultants' emails were sent during times that the consultants had submitted work sheets that indicated they were working for the DOE.

The DOE's use of outside consultants has been coming under increased scrutiny, with Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer saying the agency should "put the brakes" on their increasing use.

"This is just another example of run-away consultant spending at the Department of Education, which for years has failed to impose even minimum standards of oversight and accountability when it comes to outside contracts," Mr. Stringer said in a statement. He added that the allegations are particularly troubling given that the city is set to eliminate about 6,000 teacher jobs. Spending on "non-mandatory consultants" has more than tripled since 2004, Mr. Singer's statement said.

Now it would be nice to see Condon look into just how it is that Rupert Murdoch bought Wireless Generation a couple of weeks after Chancellor Klein joined News Corp.

Klein of course signed a contract with Wireless Generation for a few million when he was chancellor.

That contract is up for renewal this month.

Klein, the man who signed that contract, now works for the same umbrella company that owns Wireless Generation.

I guess as Orwell observed, some conflicts of interest are more conflicted than others.

Sports Equipment Company Execs Arrested For Defrauding Schools In 11 States

Ah, the free market is a wondrous thing!

The CEO and chief financial officer of the former Circle System Group were charged today in federal court in New Jersey for allegedly double billing schools almost $1 million, as well as submitting fake price quotes to win athletic equipment bids and showering school officials with gifts for which the company later billed the schools.

CEO Alan Abeshaus, 79, a former Palmer Township resident who now lives in Highland Beach, Fla., and Chief Financial Officer Mitchell Kurlander, 52, of South Whitehall Township, who is Abeshaus’ son-in-law, both were indicted by the U.S. Attorney of the District of New Jersey with one count of mail and wire fraud conspiracy. Kurlander also is charged with nine substantive counts of mail fraud and 12 substantive counts of wire fraud.

...

In New Jersey, Abeshaus and Kurlander are accused of double billing schools of more than $970,000. According to the indictment, the company submitted invoices and statements to schools that were similar in form and appearance. As a result, schools often paid both the invoices and statements, according to the indictment.

Kurlander is accused of instructing Circle employees to deposit the duplicate charges into the company’s account, which he tracked in a secret bookkeeping account that only he could access. Kurlander allegedly paid $822,000 of this money in special bonuses to Abeshaus.

Kurlander and Abeshaus also are accused of directing the company’s sales staff to provide multiple price quotes, including some that appeared to come from other companies, to allow schools with requirements to obtain multiple price quotes to justify a contract with Circle System. Using quote forms with the letterhead of other companies, Circle System employees would prepare fake, higher quotes at the direction of Kurlander and others, according to the indictment.

Circle submitted hundreds of such fake quotes to at least 100 different schools, including more than 60 public schools in New Jersey and schools in approximately 11 other states, according to the indictment.

Here in NYC, we just call this kind of thing "outside consulting".

But in other states it's actually illegal to double bill or bill for services not rendered.

Who knew?

Certainly not Mayor Bloomberg.

CityTime.

Willard Lanham.

John Haggerty.

ARIS.

And the list goes on and on (and will so long as Comptroller Liu audits the Bloomberg contracts.)

NY Times: Bloomberg's Teacher Layoff Predictions False

The numbers just don't make sense.

There used to be 82,000 teachers in NYC.

Now there's 75,000.

But enrollment is up.

Class sizes are maxing out.

I have 34 a class - 170 total a semester.

But Bloomberg says my school MUST lose 7 teachers to layoffs and 3-4 more through attrition.

He says 4,666 must go through layoffs, another 1,500 through attrition.

The Times looks at Bloomberg's numbers and finds them wanting:

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg has been warning that 4,600 city teachers will receive pink slips this spring, as he pushes for legislation in Albany that would eliminate rules requiring that layoffs be based solely on seniority.

That number of layoffs will be necessary, the Bloomberg administration says, because budget cuts will eliminate about 6,100 teaching positions, and only 1,500 teachers will be lost due to attrition, the natural churn of teachers resigning, retiring, being fired or otherwise leaving their jobs.

But over the past two years, the city’s teaching force has shrunk by 2,000 to 2,500 each year through attrition, according to Department of Education statistics, suggesting that the city would need to lay off 500 to 1,000 fewer teachers than it has said.

Carol Kellermann, the president of the Citizens Budget Commission, an independent watchdog group, said the attrition estimate “struck us as low, based on historical norms.”

And the teachers’ union, which has fought dearly to keep seniority protections, called the city’s estimates part of a political game to scare people into backing an end to seniority.

“Thank God they are not standing in front of the pearly gates,” said Michael Mulgrew, the president of the union, the United Federation of Teachers. “They would all be struck by lightning.”

The questions over the layoff projections come as the city tries to both protect its newest teachers from what it says would be widespread dismissals and to squeeze as much money out of Albany as possible. It is also squabbling with the governor’s office over how much the state would cut in city education aid.

Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s office says its proposed budget would reduce education aid to New York City schools by $579 million. City education officials, however, say that the cut is $1.4 billion, in part because they were counting on receiving hundreds of millions of dollars more from the state in the next fiscal year than they did in the current one.

The governor took issue Thursday with the idea that any teacher layoffs would be necessary. “When they say, ‘Well, we’re going to lay off teachers, and we’re going to hurt children’ — that’s basically the threat in this discussion, right?” Mr. Cuomo said Thursday at a news conference at the Capitol.

“I don’t believe it,” he said, adding that he thought that the state’s school districts could cut more administrative costs to avert teacher layoffs. The city has not yet projected layoffs for any education employees beside teachers but says they are under consideration.

The DOE of course says, Oh no, we MUST lay off teachers, all the administrative costs we can cut have been cut.

But as Juan Gonzalez points out in today's Daily News, Bloomberg has doubled spending on outside technology consultants to $10 billion dollars over the course of his administration.

Nobody knows what these outside consultants do because they budget the process through capital spending and don't have to make public actual numbers on the consultant contracts.

Meanwhile, Bloomberg continues to threaten layoffs that don't have to be done at all.

Here are the numbers of teacher who have disappeared over the past few years:

Between October 2009 and October 2010, according to Department of Education payroll numbers, 4,551 teachers left; the previous year, 5,027 departed. But roughly 2,500 new teachers joined each year, mostly in areas where the city was mandated to maintain staffing, like special education.

The resulting net loss has been about 2,000 to 2,500 teaching positions a year. Over all, the city, with its 1.04 million students, has a total teacher roll of 74,675 now, compared with about 79,896 in September 2008, city and union officials said.

Moving from there to the city’s latest projection of just 1,500 positions to be lost by attrition requires some math and budgeting choices. The most important is a question of timing. Education officials said this week that when they make layoff projections, they count only resignations and retirements that happen between June 1 and the first day of school in September, traditionally the peak time for departures.

This leaves out hundreds of teacher departures, and the savings that would result, the union says. Last year about 600 teachers left during the school year, for example, and 900 left the previous school year.

So we have two sets of jive going on here - one, the Bloomberg administration and the DOE are manipulating the layoff numbers for their own political ends. Cuomo says no layoffs need to be done, the union points out how many teachers have already been dropped from the payroll via attrition the past few years.

Meanwhile, Gonzalez points out just how much Bloomberg is handing to outside consultants on WHO KNOWS WHAT.

It all adds up to one thing - Bloomberg is a crook, his layoff threats ought to be turned back around on him and he MUST be called to account for all the outside consultant contracts.

You want layoffs, Moneybags?

Open the books on the consultants first.

Let's see what you're spending on these boondoggles.

De Blasio Has Plan To Save Some Teachers - But It Doesn't Go Far Enough

FLASH - there has been a public advocate sighting! And he's saying something negative about Bloomberg:

The city should save 300 teachers from layoffs by canceling its plans to increase payments to high-priced computer consultants, Public Advocate Bill de Blasio urged Saturday.

In a letter to Schools Chancellor Cathie Black, De Blasio recommended also looking for other cuts to avoid increasing class sizes in city public schools.

"There is nothing more important for our children's education than keeping teachers in the classroom," he wrote.

The Daily News reported Friday that the agency is planning to increase its budget for the technology contracts next fiscal year by 86%, or $24 million, while planning to lay off 4,600 teachers.

De Blasio noted that class size is already on the increase and suggested there were other ways to save teachers.

"The department should examine its administrative budget to identify any superfluous spending that could be used to prevent teacher layoffs," he wrote. "Freezing all nonessential expenditures, such as this contract, is without doubt the right place to start."

Average class size in elementary school rose by 4% this year, official figures show.

Faced with a $4.6 billion budget gap, Mayor Bloomberg has argued state budget cuts to education require blanketing the city with pink slips for teachers.

Bloomberg has pushed for Albany to change the state's last in, first out law, which requires that the newest teachers in the city be laid off first.

Critics have said the mayor is playing politics, just threatening layoffs just as he did last year, when there are other ways around the budget shortfall.

OK, as pushback on Bloomberg's layoff plan, this is a start, but it does NOT nearly go far enough.

And that's part and parcel of who Be Blasio is - cautious, playing the moderate game, not stepping out too far against Bloomberg for fear the Mayor of Money turns his billions against him.

De Blasio OUGHT to be calling for a public review of ALL of Bloomberg's no-bid contracts and outside consultant dealings - both related to the NYCDOE AND to other city agencies.

As Comptroller John Liu has been revealing through audit after audit of Bloomberg's dealings, the Mayor of Money is wasting city cash like it was his own money.

Contracts are routinely costing ten times what the original budgeting was.

There is PLENTY of money in the city coffers to save teachers if only Bloomberg would stop handing it out to his cronies and consultants like Playbills at a Broadway show during a snowstorm.

It's great for De Blasio to SUGGEST Bloomberg curtail additional money to computer consultants and keep a few hundred teachers.

But this suggestion is does NOT go far enough NOR save enough teachers.

De Blasio ought to be calling for outside consultant cuts that are large enough to save thousands of teachers.

Or better yet, he ought to be noting how much money Bloomberg wastes on contracts like CityTime - $770 million and counting - and point out that the city refuses to collect taxes on wealthy condo owners - a policy that costs the city $900 million a year - and state emphatically and explicitly how that money should be used to save teachers from layoffs.

In other words, De Blasio should be saying that Bloomberg is FULL OF SHIT when he says he has to lay teachers off.

When De Blasio acts like his own man and not some cautious politician afraid to anger his his Big Daddy, you'll let me know, yes?

WTF? FILE: Bloomberg: "The Budget Is Good News"

From the WTF? file:

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, in unveiling his budget plan on Thursday, summed up New York City’s financial health with a phrase scarcely heard in the halls of government these days: “It’s good news.”

While other cities and states grapple with calamitous balance sheets and mass layoffs, Mr. Bloomberg proposed a $65.9 billion spending plan for the next fiscal year, an increase of $2.5 billion, or four percent, over the current budget.

And even as other governments have fallen into deep financial holes, the city’s forecast for tax revenues has increased by $2 billion since November, making the draconian cuts many city workers had feared unnecessary.

New York City stands on far surer financial footing than most major cities — at least for the moment — propped up by a financial industry that has come back roaring from the depths of the recession. Revenue from business taxes is expected to grow by 19 percent this year over the previous year.

Mr. Bloomberg, taking to the lectern to explain his budget, gloated as he spoke about the city’s record number of tourists, its better-than-average unemployment rate and its recovering commercial real estate market.

“We are in a much stronger position than most because we have planned ahead,” he said. “I’ve always been optimistic about New York.”

If everything in NYC is so peachy clean and the city is raking in an additional $2 billion in tax revenues, why is Bloomberg reducing the teaching force by 6,166 teachers (1,50o through attrition, 4,666 through layoffs)?

Might it be because he wants to, not because he, you know, has to?

Let's face it - he can ALWAYS avoid layoffs and class size increases.

All he would have to do is shut down some of the no-bid contracting the NYCDOE does with all those outside consultants, ratchet down the testing apparatus for a couple of years and cancel the CityTime project and other Bloombergian giveaways to his corporate cronies.

But he doesn't do any of that because he doesn't want to.

Instead he WANTS to lay teachers off because he knows he can use this "crisis" to gut seniority, tenure and the teachers union.

It's a CHOICE he is making.

Mulgrew and Company, arrogant insulated elites they may be, but even they have to know if they give on this stuff, it's GAME OVER for the UFT.

Seriously, what rationale is there for the existence of the UFT if seniority and tenure have been gutted?

So we have a SHOWDOWN here in NYC, not quite like the one transpiring in Wisconsin, but make no mistake, the stakes are just as high.

Bloomberg knows that he has the moneyed elite to back him on this and flood the airwaves, the tabloid covers and the TV stations with anti-union/anti-teacher garbage.

The anti-union/anti-teacher side is well-funded, well-connected, and well-heeled (and in Cathie Black's case well-sauced too.)

The UFT has morons like this working for them.

It doesn't seem like much of a fight, does it?

And yet, as I say, the stakes couldn't be higher.

The UFT cannot afford to "collaborate" or "concede" anything here - not layoffs, not furloughs, not pension changes, not ATR concessions.

Bloomberg has all the money he needs to run the system, without layoffs.

Cuomo said as much last week.

The city itself is saying that by acknowledging an additional $2 billion in revenue.

Hell, Bloomberg says the city is in great f---ing shape.

If all that is true, tell us, Moneybags, why the need for layoffs?

Seriously, wtf?