Already Fired Once By Wal-mart for Massively Condemned “Harold, Call Me” Ad, Infamous Terry Nelson’s Firm Now Welcomed Back To Wal-mart Family

Already Fired Once By Wal-mart for Massively Condemned “Harold, Call Me” Ad, Infamous Terry Nelson’s Firm Now Welcomed Back To Wal-mart Family

At The Time, Wal-mart Said Firing Nelson Was: "..The right course of action" — What Has Changed?

African-American elected officials unequivocally slammed Wal-mart today for working with infamous race-baiting political operative Terry Nelson’s firm FP1 Strategies- five years after they already fired him once for being behind the universally condemned racially tinged “Harold, call me” ad in the 2006 Tennessee senate race. The ad received national criticism from all corners of the political world and was eventually pulled, after which Wal-mart severed its relationship with Nelson. However, Walmart, through its joint lobbying efforts with other retailers, is now working with Nelson’s new firm, a shocking reversal from five years ago when Wal-mart said they fired Nelson because ''we believe this is the right course of action.''

In reaction to the news that Wal-mart is working with Nelson, African-American elected officials roundly criticized Wal-mart and called for them to drop him, again:

Said Council Member Charles Barron: “First Wal-mart in its racist ways has been known to discriminate against African-American, black and brown workers. Wal-mart has been known to discriminate against women. And now to work again with a professional known race baiter is unacceptable. Wal-mart must not come into New York City.”

Said Council Member Letitia James: “It’s unbelievable that Wal-mart would work with a firm tied to someone like Nelson after firing him once for one of the worst ads in our lifetime. Wal-mart needs to sever the relationship once and for all and never bring him back."

Nelson has a long history of transgressions. Aside from being behind one of the most widely condemned political ads in recent memory, Nelson also:

• Was affiliated with the 2002 phone jamming scandal in 2002 in New Hampshire
• Was involved in, although not indicted for, the Tom Delay money-laundering transactions

NY City Council Hearing on the Living Wage Bill - May 12th, 2011

Click here to view these pictures larger

Over 400 people turned out to the high-energy rally. Kimberly Ortiz, a member of the Retail Action Project, testified about working at a concession stand at the Statue of Liberty for $9.00 an hour. "Does that sound like life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness to you?" she asked. Council Member Darlene Mealy, who hosted the hearing as Chair of the Contracts Committee said "Our rents keep going up, food keep[s] going up, gas keep[s] going up, but our salaries don't go up." The rally culminated in a powerful moment of prayer during which the clergy marched across to 250 Broadway and the crowd turned to face the building. We raised up our hands and shouted for the walls of oppression to come tumbling down like the walls of Jericho, while the Shofar sounded seven times.

An extraordinary number both supportive and undecided council members participated in the hearing, a testament to the importance of this issue. For two and a half hours they went toe to toe with Bloomberg's representative Tukombo Shobowale. Citing the bogus million dollar study, he painted a doomsday scenario of tremendous job loss and stalled development in the outer boroughs. Council members did not buy it. Brad Lander called the study a “$1 million whitewash.” Charles Barron said "Wall Street profits, while we suffer. The study is a lie. You can alter a study to say anything." And Robert Jackson asked the Economic Development Corporation to try living on a salary of $20,000 a year.

Our team provided powerful testimony. Linda Archer, a McDonald's worker who was only given a 20 cent raise and a "rising star" t-shirt for her stellar job performance at the fast-food chain told the council they would be "rising stars" if they passed the bill. We also heard from Caitlin Kelly, author of the book "Malled: My Unintentional Career in Retail," Rev. Stephen Phelps of the Riverside Church, Dr. Ray Rivera of the Latino Pastoral Action Center and our excellent team of policy experts, including an expert from LA, testified that this law will help lift people out of poverty without all the negative consequences Bloomberg claims. Scroll down for links to media coverage.

Upcoming Event in Queens:

Town Hall about the Queens Center Mall: 

Mall Workers Speak Out for a Living Wage!

This Saturday May 21st, 3-5pm

St. Paul The Apostle Church

98-16 55th Ave., Corona

M/R train to Woodhaven Blvd

Media Coverage:

NY Daily News: Poll Finds NY Voters Support Living Wage

Bronx BP on Huffington Post: Why New York City Needs a "Living Wage" Law

NY1: Controversy Heats Up Over Living Wage Bill

"Inside City Hall" on NY1: Living Wage Debate

NY Times: Bloomberg Administration is Criticized on Wages

Politicker: Living Wage Fight Comes to City Hall

Crains: 'Living Wage' Backers Storm City Hall

Gotham Gazette: Living Wage Gets its Hearing

Elected Officials, Parents, Advocates and Providers Call on Mayor and Council to Fully Restore Child Care Funding in Final Budget

Coalition Commends Mayor for Finding $40 Million for Child Care as a “Good First Step” But Says the Mayor and Council Must Fully Save Child Care

In response to Mayor Bloomberg’s announcement that his Executive Budget will include $40 million more to avoid some of the drastic cuts to child care made in the Mayor’s preliminary budget proposal, the Emergency Coalition to Save Child Care called on the Mayor and City Council to find the money to fully save child care. The coalition noted that the money marks a step in the right direction, but said that the cuts to child care will still have devastating effects on children and families across the city – especially in the city’s most struggling communities.

While exact details of the Mayor’s proposal are murky, and should be clarified in the coming days, the coalition of elected officials, parents, advocates and providers noted that the Mayor only restored $40 million of the original $91 million cut to child care. In addition, in the revised budget, hundreds of early childhood classrooms remain at risk, family providers will still lose slots, and 9 day care programs remain slated to close. Furthermore, the city hasn’t provided a clear guarantee that every child currently receiving care will still be served.

“We are encouraged by the fact that the Mayor recognizes the importance of child care, but this budget still means that children around the city will be deprived of care, parents will be forced to choose between child care and going to work, and child care teachers and providers will lose their jobs,” said The Rev. Dr. Emma Jordan-Simpson, Executive Director of the Children’s Defense Fund – New York. “The City Council and the Mayor must ensure that no child loses child care and that we maintain critical early childhood capacity in our most under-resourced communities.”

The Emergency Coalition to Save Child Care, made up of organizations representing thousands of city residents, says it will continue fighting for all children from low-income, working families who are in danger of losing child care. The Coalition, which released a report last month detailing the unequal impacts of the Mayor’s cuts, maintains that the city can’t afford to cut a single child care slot. This care allows working parents to keep their jobs, stay off public assistance, and provide their children with a strong foundation for school success.

"While it is a step in the right direction, it is unclear if what the Administration has put on the table is really an appropriate solution to the significant reduction of funding to the child care system," said Council Member Annabel Palma, Chair of the General Welfare Committee. "More conversations and details are needed since it is unclear how services can remain intact for all 16,500 children with $40 million instead of $91 million; it is also unclear what the impact will be on existing out-of-school programs, providers, child care centers and classrooms."

“This seems to be a good first step,” said Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz. “But until we see all the details of how child care will be maintained for children of working families, I remain concerned. We must restore all of the funding for these critical early education services because the future of New York City depends on it.”

“All our city’s children deserve access to safe, affordable, and educational child care,” said Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer. “These proposed cuts are destructive not only to children, but to parents and other family members who would have to bear an even tougher economic burden in the days ahead. The Mayor and City Council must make fully funding child care a priority in the final City budget.”

"The Mayor's proposal is still $50 million short of what is needed to maintain child care for 16,500 children, said Council Member David Greenfield. “The Mayor's plan would provide enough funding for only 4,400 children to attend safe, city subsidized child care programs next year, leaving 10,000 children with a fraction of the child care services and thousands more with no child care at all. Our children deserve more – they deserve a complete restoration of child care funding."

“Without child care, I don’t know what I’m going to do,” said Kim Sandy, a single mother whose 3-year old son attends The Educational Alliance’s Lillian Wald Day Care Center. “I won’t be able to keep my job and provide for my family. So many parents depend on this care – for the Mayor to continue to cut child care just doesn’t make sense.”

“The City Council is committed to fighting for the children of this great city,” said Council Member Steve Levin. “We are proud to stand together and say we cannot cut child care for even a single child.”

“The Mayor has taken an important first step towards both recognizing the importance of early childhood education and restoring funding for our child care system,” said Jennifer March-Joly, Executive Director of Citizens' Committee for Children. “But unfortunately significant capacity will still be lost and, in the final budget, the Mayor and City Council must ensure that child care centers and family day care providers remain fully funded and that capacity remains in place for future generations of children.”

“The city already has high unemployment, and cutting child care means more people out of work,” said Raglan George Jr., Executive Director of AFSCME District Council 1707. “Parents without a safe place to leave their child while they work would be forced to quit their jobs, and child care professionals would be laid off. The Mayor and the City Council must protect working families by restoring the cuts to child care in the final budget.”

“The Mayor has said himself that child care and early learning programs are critical to our children’s success,” said Council Member Brad Lander. “Now more than ever, we need to ensure that all children have access to safe, education child care that hard-working parents can afford.”

“The Mayor’s cuts to child care would hit some of New York City’s most struggling communities the hardest,” said Council Member Tish James. “In places where unemployment is already high and school achievement is already low, the last thing we should do is cut child care for working families.”

ABOUT CHILD CARE

New York City’s public child care system provides subsidized care to 47,887 children from low-income families. These families are not eligible for public assistance but are defined as working poor, with an income of less than 200% of the poverty level ($36,620 for a family of three). The City’s own Community Needs Assessment released in 2008 found that the city was serving only 27 percent of eligible children in city-funded programs, and only 37 percent of all children under the age of six were being served in any early childhood setting. The Mayor’s proposed changes come on top of 14,000 child care slots that have already been lost since 2006.

Victims of Gun Violence to Mayor Bloomberg: Condemn Wal-mart for Increasing Gun Sales

Wal-mart’s Cure For Struggling Sales? Reverse its Decision to Stop Selling Rifles, Shotguns and Ammunition at Many U.S. Stores

Communities and Families Plagued by Gun Violence Call on Mayor Bloomberg, a Strong Anti-Gun Advocate, To Tell Nation’s Largest Seller of Firearms it is Not Welcome in NYC

Victims of gun violence and leaders and families in communities plagued by gun violence, along with New York City elected officials, today denounced Wal-mart’s decision to sell more rifles, shotguns and ammunition at hundreds of stores nationwide after removing them from many stores five years ago.


Wal-mart’s decision comes after 7 consecutive quarters of same store sales declines in the U.S., which has spurred the retailer to pursue an aggressive urban expansion plan into New York City including a location in East New York, a neighborhood plagued by gun violence.


In 2008, Wal-mart enjoyed a major public relations boost when it announced it would participate in Mayor Bloomberg’s Responsible Firearms Retailer Partnership- a move even the NRA derided as nothing more than a “public relations stunt.”


The families of gun violence victims urged the Mayor to be as serious as he says he is about preventing firearm deaths before they happen, by telling the nation’s largest firearms dealer that it is not welcome in New York City.


Jackie Rowe Adams from Harlem Mothers Save said, “The mayor needs to step up and renounce Wal-mart’s awful decision. We have seen what guns have done to our communities, and bringing in a Wal-mart to our communities would send the wrong message- that we condone their gun sale policies which put people’s lives in danger.


Parents United to Rally for Gun Violence Elimination (PURGE), founder Freddie Hamilton said: “I hope a strong anti gun advocate like Mayor Bloomberg will recognize a disastrous decision when he sees one and calls on Wal-mart to stop. We need fewer guns on the streets, and Wal-mart’s decision will only mean more guns on the streets.


Public Advocate Bill de Blasio said:"As the largest seller of firearms and ammunition in America, Wal-Mart does not belong in New York City. I urge Mayor Bloomberg to continue his leadership on gun control by joining the fight against Wal-Mart coming to our City.”


Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer said:“The Wal-mart charm offensive ends today with news that the conglomerate plans to expand considerably the sale of weapons and ammunition. We know that the bullets that killed six people and wounded a United States Congresswoman in Arizona were purchased at Wal-mart, and now the retailer wants to make ammunition more accessible in both rural and urban markets. If the city wants to remain a leader on gun control, we need to take a hard stand against Wal-mart’s decision and make it clear that any corporation that looks for new markets to sell guns and fosters a culture of violence is not welcome in New York."


Councilmember Tish James said: “Any commercial establishment that sells guns by the truck-load does not belong in New York City. Guns are a scourge in New York City and no one sells more guns than Wal-mart, they don’t belong in our city.”


Councilmember Charles Barron: "East NY is plagued by the scourge of gun violence. And at the same time that Wal-mart is trying to buy their way into New York, they are quietly starting to sell guns and ammunition again. This is Wal-mart once again going back on a promise they’ve made because of their terrible sales, what other promises will they break?"


Councilmember Jumaane Williams said: "The gun violence in my district cannot be ignored and it cannot be accepted. Wal-mart bringing stockpiles of guns and ammo into our city would be a public safety hazard of the most heinous kind. This is the opposite of what we need to end gun violence in my district and in the City. Wal-mart is a company that will put lives in danger in order to turn a profit and I will not stand by and watch this happen without a fight."


When it comes to gun control and gun violence prevention, Wal-mart doesn’t appear to share New York’s values:

• Firearm sales: Wal-mart is the # 1 seller of fire arms in the US and takes in millions in profits from gun sales.
• Arizona: Wal-mart sold Jared Lee Laughner the ammunition he used in the Arizona shooting earlier this year, as was widely reported in the news media.
• Evading Laws: Wal-mart has a history of not complying with gun laws. In 2004, Wal-mart paid more than $14 million to settle a lawsuit brought by the California Attorney General alleging that the company committed thousands of violations of California state gun safety laws, including selling ammunition to minors and selling firearms to convicted felons, as was reported by the news media at the time.
• Wal-mart’s Responsible Firearms Retailer Partnership is a sham: The partnership relies on voluntarily compliance, and there are no actual obligations for Wal-mart to comply.

Disclose the Details: Cloaked City Technology Contracts Result in $185K for a Help Desk Operator by Juan Gonzalez - New York Daily News

Read original...

New York City's private computer army keeps mushrooming under Mayor Bloomberg - and no one has any idea of its exact size.

What we do know is the city's overall contract spending has doubled to more than $10 billion in the last five years - and a huge part of the increase is for technology contracts.

Those computer armies can be found inside every city agency. Its foot soldiers sit at city desks.

They carry city ID cards. They spend all their time - often years - devising and maintaining huge information systems with Orwellian names like NYC WIN, ECTP, ACRIS, NICE, CitiServ.

Yet the outside contractors remain a world apart from the ordinary civil servants of our city. The techies routinely bill taxpayers for enormous salaries.

Since their salaries often come out of the city's capital budget, their names, titles and pay rates rarely appear in any expense reports the mayor makes public.

Last week, Brooklyn City Councilwoman Letitia James took a bold step. She introduced a bill that would require an annual report on the size and cost of outside contractors.

"This period of budget deficits is not the time to increase outsourcing," James said.

This column has documented for more than two years the runaway costs of such contracts. They include:

• The 63 consultants from a little-known Florida-based company, Future Technology Associates, being paid an average of $250,000 a year to develop a new financial accounting system for the Department of Education. All of this money went to a firm that had no office and operated out of a mail drop.
• The 230 consultants from defense giant SAIC who were paid an average of $400,000 a year - some of them for a decade - to design and install the infamous CityTime payroll and timekeeping system.
• The nearly 200 Hewlett-Packard consultants who spent years overseeing the $2 billion upgrade to the city's 911 system, known as ECTP. Before Hewlett-Packard was bounced from the job for repeated delays and cost overruns, most of its consultants were being paid between $300,000 and $400,000.
• The $500 million paid to Northrop Grumman to erect NYC WIN, a wireless network for first responders that has been dogged by problems. On top of that initial expense, the city pays Northrop $37 million annually just to maintain NYC WIN.

Under Northrop's contract, a low-level help desk operator is paid $185,000 annually. Meanwhile, a help desk operator directly employed by the city receives $46,000. Throw in pension and health insurance and the cost of that city employee barely reaches $70,000 - about a third of what Northrop charges.

In 2009, lawmakers in Albany required every state agency to provide annual reports on the number and cost of all outside contracts. Consultant costs have plummeted ever since.

James wants the same thing for the city, but Christine Quinn, the Council's powerful speaker, is bobbing and weaving. A close ally of the mayor, Quinn says she supports legislation to better track outside contracts, but she has yet to back making public the actual number of consultants per agency and their salaries.

Why the hesitation?

Taxpayers have a right to know how many $400,000-a-year consultants it takes to build one of these troubled computer systems.

jgonzalez@nydailynews.com

More Elected Officials Announce Their Opposition to Wal-mart

Wal-mart Faces Growing Resistance As More Sign Up to Say ‘No’ To Job Killing Megastore

Wal-mart Free NYC today announced today that Councilmembers Letitia James, Robert Jackson, Dr. Mathieu Eugene and Jumaane Williams have declared their opposition to Wal-mart and will fight to keep the job-killing mega store out of New York City.

The elected officials join a growing list of elected officials, community leaders, clergy, and small businesses throughout the borough who oppose the Arkansas-based big box retailer’s plans to move into Brooklyn, and displace homegrown stores and good local jobs. 

Just this week National Organization of Women’s New York City chapter announced their opposition to Wal-mart saying ,“This is an employer who takes advantage of its workforce at every opportunity. The women of New York City deserve better.”

Councilmember Letitia James said: “Small businesses are the engines of the New York City economy, creating jobs, spending locally and keeping our dollars in the community. Wal-mart could put those small businesses out of business, costing us valuable jobs, as well as hurting our economy while doing so. For these reasons, New York must say no to Walmart.”

Councilmember Robert Jackson said: “Mom and pops need Wal-mart about as much as New York needs another blizzard. Wal-mart puts small businesses out of business, especially in tough times like these.”

Councilmember Dr. Mathieu Eugene said: “We need to do everything possible to help small businesses thrive. I am concerned that Wal-mart coming to Brooklyn will hurt businesses already struggling in this tough economy.”

Councilmember Jumaane Williams said: "Wal-mart is selling false promises. They promise jobs, but they kill three jobs for every two they 'create.' And the jobs they 'create' pay, on average, 18 percent less than the jobs they destroy. My community deserves jobs with livable wages. They shouldn't have to settle."

Studies have shown that Wal-mart destroys small businesses and jobs when it opens up in urban neighborhoods. A study published by the Center for Urban Research and Learning Loyola University Chicago found that after a Wal-mart store opened in the Austin neighborhood in 2006, over 25% of area businesses closed. Stores that were near Wal-mart were “more likely to go out of business eliminating the equivalent of about 300 full time jobs—about as many as Wal-mart initially added to the area.”

An author of that study found that, Wal-mart stores absorb sales from other city stores without significantly expanding the market.” In addition, the study found that there was no increase in retail activity or employment opportunities.

About Wal-mart Free NYC

Wal-mart Free NYC is a coalition of workers, small business owners, community leaders, clergy and elected officials who are committed to increasing economic opportunities, preserving local businesses, and creating more jobs in communities across New York’s five boroughs.

Wal-mart IMPACT STUDIES

“The Impact of an Urban Wal-Mart Store on Area Businesses: An Evaluation of One Chicago Neighborhood’s Experience.” Davis, Julie, David Merriman, Lucia Samayoa, Brian Flanagan, Ron Baiman, and Joe Persky, December 2009. Center for Urban Research and Learning Loyola University Chicago.

Available online at http://luc.edu/curl/pdfs/Media/WalMartReport21010_01_11.pdf.

“The Effects of Wal-mart on Local Labor Markets.” David Neumark, Junfu Zhang, and Stephen Ciccarella. October 2005. Public Policy Institute of California.

Available online at: http://www.businessweek.com/pdfs/2005/david_neumark.pdf

“The Effect of Wal-mart on Businesses in Host Towns and Surrounding Towns in Iowa.” Kenneth Stone. Iowa State University. November 1988.

Available online at: http://www2.econ.iastate.edu/faculty/stone/Effect%20of%20Walmart%20-%201988%20paper%20scanned.pdf

NYC's Computer-System Cash-Dump Disaster By Graham Rayman - Village Voice

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Photo-Illustration by Andrea Levy

In January 2009, a tantalizing and disturbing comment materialized on an Internet bulletin board about an expensive and controversial Bloomberg administration project to automate the city's payroll system, known as CityTime.


The anonymous author alleged that the project was hopelessly corrupt and out of control and had been for years. The writer, who claimed to have been employed on the project, went on to name three people he alleged were responsible for that corruption.


The commenter accused a consultant, Mark Mazer, of being "the most crooked person on the team," and said consultant Scott Berger was building a home in Florida at city expense.


"Mark Mazer and Scott had ONLY one main intent . . . to pocket the $/hr for themselves for as long as possible @ taxpayer expense," the commenter wrote. Referring to the former consultant later appointed to oversee the project, the commenter added, "The project in its 5th year was a failure and should have been canned, but Joel Bondy for some reason or another decided it must go on for another 5 yrs."


The comment went on to lay out in more or less clear terms exactly what was taking place in the CityTime project.


That posting appears to have disappeared into the depths of the Internet, but it turned out to be prescient.


Berger, who worked for a CityTime consultant called Spherion, Mazer, and four other people were indicted last month for defrauding the city of $80 million—a theft that made the Mafia's $6 million Lufthansa heist in 1978 look like a bodega stickup job.


Supposedly acting as "quality assurance" consultants, Mazer, Berger, and their accomplices are instead accused of falsifying payments to shell companies, pocketing the proceeds, and making up phony time cards for work they never performed. The defendants have pleaded not guilty.


Bondy, meanwhile, was suspended without pay following the indictments and forced to resign as the head of Bloomberg's Office of Payroll Administration. He could face indictment as well. Bondy, it emerged, not only was a former CityTime consultant, but had also worked with Mazer in the past, yet he didn't disclose those ties until years later.


Originally slated in 1998 to cost $63 million over five years, CityTime has cost the city more than $760 million over its 12 beleaguered years of existence. Despite all that expense, the system is operating in only about a third of all city agencies.


The cost overruns were caused by the vast complexity of the project and changes to the plans, claim Bloomberg officials and the company responsible for building the system, Virginia-based Science Applications International Corp.


Nonsense, says a union official who represents city architects and engineers, and has closely tracked the project.


"There's no way that any problems or changes they had could justify a cost increase of more than 10 times," says Local 375 vice president Jon Forster, who believes SAIC should face criminal investigation. "In 12 years, we haven't changed the number of agencies or the number of employees. My sense is that someone saw a gravy train here, and they said, 'Let's go for it.' "


Last week, federal prosecutors issued subpoenas to SAIC for documents related to the project—presumably to determine just what happened to all that money. There are, records show, a couple hundred other consultants on the project, and you have to wonder what they were doing.


But even after a year of revelations about CityTime, a lot of questions remain unanswered: How much money was wasted or stolen? How did this happen, in spite of red flags dating back to at least early 2003? And how did the city miss it for so long?


Mayor Bloomberg's comments on the scandal have been less than satisfying. Over the years, for one, his administration lowballed the true total cost of the project. And so far he has yet to offer a coherent explanation of how CityTime went bad. It didn't happen by accident, as the mayor appeared to suggest in some of his comments, especially when he called it a "disaster."


The definition of "disaster" generally includes a component of misfortune—as if the project was beset with bad luck. But in this case, there was intent. The indictment makes that clear enough.


In saying he wished he spent more time with the project, Bloomberg appeared out of touch, which is fairly disturbing for a man who cloaks himself as a great manager and technology expert.


He also suggested that the city's trust had been "misplaced." It was almost as if he was characterizing city government as a lover shocked to find out his spouse had cheated on him. The credo "Trust, but verify" comes to mind.


In December, once again seeking to minimize the scandal, he said, "Nothing goes without some problems, whether it's in your family, your company, your government, [or] the world."


Moreover, throughout his administration, Bloomberg repeatedly cut agencies, shrunk city staff, and recited this mantra: "We have to do more with less." But on the CityTime project, he or his aides appeared to have decided it was OK to do less with more.


And for that matter, what does it say about the city comptroller's office, which also had an oversight role on the payroll agency?


In fairness, the current comptroller, John Liu, has aggressively raised questions about CityTime. He was the one who persuaded Mayor Bloomberg to stop the open-ended payments to SAIC, and forced them to agree to a real deadline.


That decision magically accelerated the pace of the project. By last September, just 73,000 employees were on the system. By December, the number had shot up to 100,000 employees, proving that there's nothing like a little work incentive to get things done.


But Liu's success only makes one wonder why questions weren't raised much sooner by his predecessor, William Thompson.


Records indicate that along with the mayor's office, the comptroller's office approved all of the contract increases, but didn't audit CityTime until this year. 


That audit found, among other things, that the project was plagued by "poor management decisions." It was so bad, in fact, that there was no way to figure out just how many dollars were wasted, the audit said.


Forster, the Local 375 official, tells the Voice that his people approached Thompson's office in 2007 to request an inquiry on CityTime, but were politely rebuffed.


"It just seemed like they had too much on their plate at the time to take on something so massive," Forster says. "And then there was the election and that was sort of it."


Moreover, an SAIC competitor told the New York Post that he had been raising red flags for years, saying he spoke to both Comptroller Thompson's office and the mayor's office about his concerns.


Comptroller spokeswoman Sharon Lee said she couldn't comment on the Thompson era.


And what does the scandal say about the Department of Investigation?


DOI commissioner Rose Gill Hearn has been aggressive in pursuing CityTime this past year. According to the federal indictment, the investigation began in June 2010, when a former consultant told DOI he was being paid by a company that hadn't been approved to work on the project. The federal case appears to rely heavily on the DOI investigation.


But you have to wonder what, if anything, was done before then. It's hard to believe that not one person approached DOI between 1998 and 2010 to complain about the internal workings of the project.


In fact, in 2007, the Voice has learned, DOI did investigate CityTime, including interviewing several CityTime consultants and a few payroll affairs people.


In addition, the probe examined a Department of Defense Inspector General investigation into a number of former SAIC employees who had formally complained that after they blew the whistle on improper billing practices, SAIC retaliated against them by firing them, records show.


What DOI did with the information that was gathered remains unclear.


DOI spokeswoman Diane Struzzi declined to comment on any specifics because of the current, ongoing investigation into CityTime. "There have been a series of allegations going back several years—some have borne fruit and some have not," she said. "There is not a single complaint that came into this department that laid out the kickbacks, the money laundering, or the shell companies. DOI uncovered those crimes."


And, of course, there's the January 2009 anonymous Internet posting, which should have piqued someone's curiosity. It wasn't all that hard to stumble across it.


And then there's the City Council—the supposed check on the mayor's spending habits. While some Council members—like Letitia James and Joseph Addabbo—have sought answers, where was the council in the years when the project grew out of control? Isn't the council supposed to approve big contract increases?


While the council voted to approve the initial contract, James says that it did not get a chance to approve or disapprove the subsequent and sharp cost increases. In essence, she claims, the Bloomberg administration was able to do an end run around on the council's oversight role. Can it really be true that the council had no idea what was happening in the project?


Jamie McShane, a spokesman for Council Speaker Christine Quinn, did not respond to Voice questions.


In many respects, the local media was also behind the curve. Part of the reason was that the Bloomberg administration kept the true cost of the project under wraps. As a result, there was confusion in the press about just what the project cost. A New York Times article in January 2007, for example, set the project cost at $180 million, when, by then, the true expense was already much higher.


It wasn't until Daily News columnist Juan Gonzalez began in late 2009 what would become a series of probing columns that the story began to emerge from the shadows.


Of course, CityTime isn't the first high-tech city project to go horribly awry—just the most expensive and allegedly the most corrupt.


City Comptroller Liu said in May that there were a series of high-tech city projects with cost overruns, missed deadlines, and incomplete or ineffective systems. A city personnel tracking system, for example, mushroomed from $66 million to $155 million.


Just last week, Liu said that a project to create two new 911 emergency systems for the police and fire departments had swelled from $380 million in 2005 to $666 million with no major alterations of the project plans. The project is one year overdue, and has been troubled by poor management and oversight by the contractor, his office said.


He rejected a new $286 million contract request from the Bloomberg administration and demanded a review. The central issue, he charged, was that, similar to CityTime, the project allows a kind of open-ended spending.


"This type of vague budgeting formula allows outside consultants to bill on an hourly basis and collect exorbitant fees, as in the case of the CityTime project," Liu said. "The program was troubled by findings of poor management and less than satisfactory oversight by the original vendor."


The history of CityTime goes back to 1996 and the Giuliani administration. The goal was to computerize the city's payroll system, which covers close to 160,000 workers. After another bidder dropped out, the contract was awarded to MCI Systemhouse. After two years, Systemhouse came up with a thick, heavily detailed, and comprehensive technical plan, or "scope of work," for the project, and estimated that it would cost $63 million and take five years.


In other words, it wasn't like someone just came up with the $63 million budget on a cocktail napkin. A great deal of thought and work went into it.


The proposal contained detailed deadlines that made clear the contractor felt it was possible to complete the job in five years, plus lists of thousands of pieces of high-tech equipment that needed to be purchased and dozens of deadlines listed in 30-day increments.


Even at $63 million, the contract provided fairly lavish pay rates for the contractors: more than $300 an hour for top managers, more than $200 per hour for mid-level people. Even the word processors would get $80 an hour. (A percentage is, of course, kicked to the company.)


Even taking the cost of inflation into account, if the project took 10 years, the finished product still should have cost only about $84.5 million.


Moreover, the contract contained a key provision that levied money damages for missed deadlines—a standard incentive that was irresponsibly eliminated a few years later.


But Systemhouse was bought by WorldCom and dropped the project, transferring its CityTime unit to a new firm, Paradigm 4.


In 2000, the city decided to add new elements to the plan, chiefly switching to a system with one central Internet server, rather than a separate server in each agency. The second of a dozen contract amendments increased the budget to $73 million.


The following year, the city hired Mazer's firm, Spherion, to do something called "quality assurance"—essentially to keep an eye on the project. That contract started at a cost of $3.4 million. Since then, it has been changed a dozen times and has ballooned to $51 million. As the Mazer indictment suggests, not only were they not watching the contractor, no one was watching the watchers.


For some reason, the contract was changed after five months to drop a requirement that Spherion examine and approve each piece of the project. As a result, the last record of such a review dates back to 2001, the comptroller's audit says.


Spherion was also supposed to supply regular summaries of the project's progress. The comptroller could not find any such summaries after 2001.


About a year later, the role of project manager was added to Spherion's contract. That meant that the auditor was now also involved in managing the project, according to the 2010 comptroller's audit—a clear conflict of interest.


By the time Mayor Bloomberg was elected, Paradigm 4 was out of the picture and SAIC had taken over the project. When the contractors changed, critics have said, the council should have had a chance to review it. There was no such review. SAIC was selected without competitive bidding.


And in a critical, and ultimately unfortunate, move, the contract was changed from one that levied penalties for failure to hit milestones to a more open-ended method of monthly payments based on hours worked. Ironically, the move was supposed to "streamline" the process. It caused the opposite effect, giving the contractor no incentive to make deadlines.


SAIC has won many millions in government contracts over the years, but it has also racked up its share of fines. In 1995, the company paid a $2.5 million fine for defrauding the government over a computer system for jet fighters. In 1998, the company paid a $1.1 million fine to the Defense Department.


A group of former employees accused the firm of retaliating against them for complaining about questionable billing practices on another job.


In January 2002, perhaps true to form, SAIC officials had the brilliant idea of trying to hire the city official overseeing them, Richard Valcich. In a letter uncovered from the city comptroller's office, Valcich expressed his dismay at the overture, published reports said.


Valcich said he was sorry "if I seemed rude and abruptly shortened your discussion on a future post city-employment position with SAIC." He added: "It is inappropriate to discuss any post employment with a company that I do business with."


By November 2002, another amendment made more changes to the project, and the approved cost rose again from $115 million.


Meanwhile, things between Valcich and SAIC weren't going so well. In what should have been an enormous red flag to the comptroller and the mayor, Valcich slammed SAIC's job performance in a February 19, 2003, letter released by the comptroller's office.


Valcich accused the company of cutting the city out of the project, creating needless delays, and wasting time and money. He said key personnel weren't showing up at meetings and records weren't being updated. He said the company repeatedly stopped work to "review" progress. He even questioned SAIC's credibility.


"SAIC's commitment to quality is almost nonexistent and is reflected from the top down," Valcich wrote. "This lack of commitment to quality permeates matters both great and small."


He added, "It appears to the city that SAIC seems to think [it] could take as long as possible to finish an activity. . . . The city of New York has spent approximately $35 million on CityTime and does not have a tangible system to show for it."


Despite the almost angry tone of the letter—written by the city's point man on the sprawling project, the man who had been shepherding the project since 1995—it did not appear to have any impact. No one from either the mayor's or comptroller's offices appeared to have jumped in to light a fire under SAIC.


The system kept becoming more complex, and at some point SAIC began to resist going forward. SAIC hired a consultant, Ariel Partners, who warned that the technology the city had paid for couldn't handle all the things the city wanted it to.


SAIC finally said it would go forward, but only if it was paid on an hourly basis, rather than a flat rate per piece of the element. The city agreed, which meant SAIC now had a kind of green light to spend whatever it wanted to make the system happen.


By 2004, Valcich had retired from the payroll post, to be replaced by Joel Bondy, a former consultant with Spherion, the company supposedly vetting the project for the city. Bondy had also worked with Mazer, the recently indicted Spherion consultant, at the city's foster-care agency.


The effort to redesign the system took two more years. An SAIC spokeswoman was now saying the two sides were "working well together, and approved our personnel, approach, and overall architecture."


In 2005, with the redesign complete, the city had a chance to walk away from the project. The city instead turned to Spherion for advice, and, of course, the conflicted firm said, "Let's keep going," the comptroller's audit said.


With a rough squiggle, Bondy signed off on a contract extension that gave SAIC another three to six years to finish the project. The amendment justified the extension only by saying it was needed because of unspecified "delays."


By February 2006, the official contract cost was now at least $225 million, triple the original project cost. This time the increase was blamed on "a major increase in the cost of deployment."


Meanwhile, the alleged fraud involving the Spherion consultants had already begun, the indictment said.


Mazer awarded big-money contracts to friends, who then kicked back $25 million to him. They billed the city for phantom work and squirreled the money away in shell companies. He and his accomplices allegedly pursued this fraud for the next five years, eventually stealing some $80 million.


Meanwhile, the public focus was on the effect of the payroll system on city employees. From 2006 through 2009, unions mounted a campaign to limit the system, especially palm scanners, which were seen as potential health hazards. They also charged that the system violated civil rights, and imposed unfair demands on employees. They held demonstrations, testified at City Council hearings, and spoke to the media. Forster's union filed an unfair labor complaint.


Also in 2007, a former SAIC employee on a federal contract alleged that he and several colleagues were fired for going to the feds to complain about improper billing practices by the company.


A city Vendex form indicated that in June 2007, the Department of Defense Inspector General began investigating SAIC based on those allegations.


Did that disclosure, now more than three years old, trigger any concern about SAIC in city government? It is unclear.


In May 2008, Bondy testified before the City Council. In his written remarks, tellingly, he expended not a word on the cost of the project. Not one word.


But behind the scenes, he repeatedly gave project contractors high performance evaluations in 2008 and 2009, The New York Times reported.


Over the objections of unions and some council members, Bloomberg kept the project going.


In January 2009, the anonymous letter floated onto that CNN bulletin board. In September 2009, Bloomberg added another $140 million to the CityTime budget—bringing the total to more than $700 million.


And then, columnist Juan Gonzalez started writing articles about the project, reporting on December 4, 2009, that Spherion consultant Mitchell Goldstein made $490,000 that year. The top 11 consultants, he wrote, made an average of $307,000 a year through 2012.

Living the good life: CityTime’s former overseer, Joel Bondy

On December 17, he reported that Bondy convinced Spherion to hire Goldstein—a possible conflict of interest because the two men had been business partners.


Gonzalez quoted a former consultant who said he hardly did any real work, but got paid $120,000 for it. "The unwritten rule was to keep billing for the hours you showed up, not the work you did," this consultant told Gonzalez.


And even after the disclosure that Bondy had close ties to the people he was supposed to be overseeing, Bloomberg left him in office for another year.


In January of last year, Gonzalez reported that a tech consultant who used to work for the city got millions from CityTime while running a full-time lobbying firm.


Public pressure began to take hold, and the story started to move forward rapidly.


In February, Liu rejected an $8 million Spherion contract, and launched an audit of CityTime. The budget was now $722 million. He called on the mayor to freeze all contracts, calling it a "money pit."


In March, Bloomberg made his admission that the project was a "disaster," but insisted such projects were rarely successful. A few days later, he said he wished he had "focused on it more."


On March 26, Gonzalez reported that the CityTime project manager made $650,000 in 2009, and there were 39 other people making at least $500,000 a year. He noted that the city laid off 510 public school aides to save $12 million, while earmarking $24 million to pay CityTime consultants.


"How can anyone justify firing $18,000-a-year school aides while hiring half-a-million-dollar computer geeks who can't even deliver a good product?" Gonzalez wondered.


But Bloomberg's people continued to defend the need for the project and granted it an extension through September.


In June, the DOI investigation began, with that complaint from the consultant paid by a company not approved to work on the project.


By last August, Bloomberg and Liu were sparring over the contract. Liu didn't want to approve another $176 million in spending; Bloomberg was threatening to withhold paychecks.


The city Independent Budget Office reported then that $641 million in capital funds were either spent or planned, along with $232 million in spent and planned operating funds. That added up to more than $873 million.


Last September, Liu refused to pay $32 million to SAIC until next June unless the company finished the project by then. Finally, there was a penalty attached to missing a deadline: $3 million per month.


The indictments came down on December 15. The six defendants were released on bail. Authorities seized some $850,000 from safety deposit boxes.


Bondy was suspended the following day and resigned three days before Christmas. The Spherion contract was suspended. The Department of Education suspended a separate Spherion contract. Bloomberg ordered a review of technology projects.


The state comptroller jumped on the bandwagon, rejecting an SAIC contract. 


And now, with the federal and city investigations still ongoing, more indictments could be coming. But taxpayers have already paid for everyone else's mistakes, inattention, and misbehavior.


grayman@villagevoice.com

Senator Addabbo: Statement, Timeline on CityTime Scandal

Held City Council Hearing Back in 2008; Warnings Were There Years Earlier

NYS Senator Joseph P. Addabbo, Jr. (D-Queens) released the following statement in reaction to the erupting scandal involving New York City’s use of CityTime, the automated payroll system used since 1998 for the city’s employees. The Senator, who questioned the system as a City Councilman back in 2005 and held public hearings on it in 2008, also provided a timeline of events:

"Back in 2008 when I was still serving on the New York City Council as Chair of the Civil Service and Labor Committee, I had a public hearing at which other elected officials, labor leaders and city workers grilled Office of Payroll Administration (OPA) officials about the CityTime program’s cost, duration and efficiency. The CityTime system was then 10 years old, and OPA thought it would save the city $60 million a year by this new method of tracking city workers’ time and attendance using a new payroll system that was supposed to move city employees from paper to computer timesheets by 2004 for a $63 million cost,” Addabbo stated.

Addabbo went on to explain that as costs rose, Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s Office of Management and Budget wanted a review and ordered agency heads to monitor CityTime closely, because it was running over budget, though no one then alleged any fraud. In April 2008, CityTime was shown to be a $410 million project, which the Daily News investigated, raising questions in a series of newspaper articles. The mayor called the system “far more complex” an operation than was anticipated. In May 2008, Addabbo held a committee hearing responding to municipal unions’ complaints that it wasn’t worth the cost and their questioning how lead contractors SAIC and Spherion were hired. At the same time, the Department of Investigations (DOI) was sent a detailed complaint. That December, newspaper reports focused on bloated payments to CityTime consultants, and Councilwoman Letitia James (WFP-Brooklyn) co-chaired with Addabbo another public hearing.

The mayor finally admitted CityTime was “a disaster” in March 2010. Six months later, NYC Comptroller John Liu’s scathing audit of CityTime found seven years’ worth of reports from CityTime’s quality assurance contractor were missing, from January 2001 to May 2008. The project was running amok, so Bloomberg assigned Deputy Mayor Stephen Goldsmith to give it “high-level attention”. DOI began its secret criminal probe after another CityTime consultant told the agency about billing irregularities. The probe discovered shady shell companies and foreign bank accounts. The secretary for Local 375, a union for architects and engineers who objected to CityTime in 2005, said the city had failed to keep tabs on its expensive consultants, calling the electronic system “an incredible waste of taxpayers’ money” and calling for a review of that contract and every other contract out there.

“Here we are at year-end 2010, with Bloomberg saying multi-millions ‘slipped through the cracks’, Daily News investigative reporter Juan Gonzalez saying CityTime is ‘still eating up city money’, and the warning signs were there for years. Only now have arrests finally been made after the scandal broke and revealed the names of the corrupt consultants who masterminded an $80 million scam through phony billing and kickbacks,” Addabbo continued. The director of the city agency with oversight of the project was suspended without pay and DOI has seized bank accounts and $850,000 in cash from safe-deposit boxes.

“In 2008, while facing a looming city budget deficit of $4 billion, I wondered if we were at a point after a decade of using CityTime, whether we were throwing good money at a bad program. Because of the inflated cost and undetermined duration, I called for at minimum, a halt on payments and work under the contract,” said Addabbo. The then City Council Member believed that there was enough evidence, inefficiency and questionable facts to justify further investigation, and while being investigated, to have a moratorium. Now, the State Senator asks, “I wonder what we could have done with the millions of dollars wasted if the Mayor’s Administration had only realized it back in 2005 when we first raised the issue about CityTime, and possibly could have prevented hurting employees, making education cuts and closing firehouses.”