NYC Comptroller John Liu: Dangerous Delays in Women’s Health Care at Some City Hospitals

Audit Finds Women Wait Months for a Mammogram at Some Health and Hospitals Corporation (HHC) Facilities

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City Comptroller John C. Liu uncovered dangerously long waits for women in need of mammograms at some City hospitals, according to an audit released today.

The audit examined the ability of nine HHC hospitals to provide two types of mammograms: screening and diagnostic. Screening mammograms are initial checks for cancer, usually for women age 40 and older. Diagnostic mammograms however are more urgent and are scheduled when a lump or other potential sign of cancer is found.

At some City hospitals women had to wait more than three weeks for the next available diagnostic mammogram appointment. At Elmhurst Hospital in Queens, patients faced a wait of 50 working days.

“For years, City policy has emphasized the need for women to get mammograms. Unfortunately, significant shortfalls and lapses at City hospitals have undercut that intent and worse yet placed women in jeopardy,” Comptroller Liu said. “The HHC has performed admirably in the wake of private hospital closures, and shrinking budgets and reimbursements. This audit nonetheless uncovers problems that require attention and resources so that women’s lives and health are not put at risk.”

LONGEST WAITS FOR A DIAGNOSTIC MAMMOGRAM
50 working days	Elmhurst Hospital	Queens
28 working days	Woodhull Hospital	Brooklyn
21 working days	Kings County Hospital	Brooklyn
20 working days	Gouverneur Hospital	Manhattan
17 working days	Bellevue Hospital	Manhattan

“For a woman who is worried she might have breast cancer, a 50-day wait for a diagnostic mammogram can be agonizing and could delay urgently-needed treatment,” said Lois Uttley, co-founder of Raising Women’s Voices for the Health Care We Need, a national initiative based in Manhattan. “Many of the women who depend on HHC facilities are uninsured and cannot afford to go somewhere else for a mammogram.”

“The real danger and focus of greatest urgency needs to be on women who present with a suspicious finding and don't receive a diagnostic mammogram immediately. This is where lives can potentially be saved,” said Alice Yaker, Executive Director, of SHARE: Self-help for Women with Breast or Ovarian Cancer, a survivor-led 35-year-old breast and ovarian cancer organization. “While controversies about efficacy surround the screening of healthy women, there is no controversy about the need for a diagnostic mammogram in a woman who presents with a lump in her breast, for example. This requires our urgent attention, budget cuts and hospital closings notwithstanding."

The HHC currently has no guideline on how quickly a woman with potential breast cancer symptoms should receive a diagnostic mammogram appointment. It does have a guideline of 14 days for a screening mammogram. Nevertheless, patients at three HHC facilities had to wait more than one month for a screening mammogram appointment.

LONGEST WAITS FOR A SCREENING MAMMOGRAM
148 calendar days	Elmhurst Hospital	Queens
49 calendar days	Queens Hospital	Queens
41 calendar days	Woodhull Hospital	Brooklyn

Breast cancer is the second leading cause of cancer death after lung cancer and in 94% of cases is diagnosed in women ages 40 years and older, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Early detection through breast cancer screening saves lives, reducing the risk of death by 17 to 30 percent the CDC has determined.

Long waits for a mammogram carry an added patient risk because the longer the wait, the higher the odds they will miss their appointment, according to the National Institutes for Health. Auditors noted a high number of missed mammogram appointments at Elmhurst Hospital, where the waits were the longest.

Officials at Queens Hospital and Elmhurst Hospital said that several hospital closures in recent years and budget cuts have left them overwhelmed and unable to meet the HHC’s 14-day guideline. In addition to having the longest waits, Elmhurst Hospital also conducted the most mammograms: 11,425. Queens Hospital performed 10,544 mammograms, the second highest of HHC facilities.

The remainder of the nine HHC hospitals in the audit did offer prompt mammogram appointments during Fiscal Year 2009. The audit also determined that HHC radiologists read and interpreted mammogram exam results in a timely manner.

Audit Recommendations:

§ Create a guideline for the number of days in which women will receive diagnostic mammogram appointments

§ Ensure all facilities provide screening mammogram appointments within 14 days

§ Ensure all facilities send patients reminders of scheduled appointments

HHC Response:

§ HHC is reviewing the creation of a performance standard for offering diagnostic mammograms appointments with a target date of September 2011

§ HHC is currently reviewing its 14-day performance standard for offering screening mammogram appointments and seeking to improve the wait time where it is able

§ HHC facilities are individually reviewing their ability to place appointment reminder calls to patients with a target date of June 2011

Comptroller Liu credited Deputy Comptroller for Audit H. Tina Kim and the Audit Bureau for presenting the findings. The full report is available at http://comptroller.nyc.gov/audits.

NYC Parents Union Sues Bloomberg for $100 Million for Cathie Black "Crony" Appointment

For disclosure purposes, I am a member of the NYC Parents Union

"This Mayor Has Committed Misfeasance and Our Children Have Suffered" 

Advocates for Justice, a public interest law firm, today filed initial papers for a civil lawsuit against Mayor Michael Bloomberg on behalf of a class of all New York City public school parents . The Mayor is charged with committing "misfeasance of office" through the appointment of Ms. Cathleen P. Black as Chancellor of the New York City Department of Education and thereby damaging the education of public school children in the City of New York.

The 14 Claimant parents, along with the newly formed New York City Parents Union, are demanding $100 million in compensatory damages from Mr. Bloomberg personally as the individual now held accountable under New York State's education law for the performance of the public education system, as well as a public apology from the Mayor for his handling of Ms. Black's appointment and brief tenure in office.

A Notice of Claim setting forth the nature of the lawsuit was filed today by Advocates for Justice with the Office of New York City Comptroller John Liu. This legal action -- possibly the first of its kind in the history of New York City -- claims that the Mayor had or should have had full knowledge of Ms. Black's inability to perform at an appropriate level in the position of Chancellor.

Section 3(f) of the Notice Claim states that "Michael Bloomberg, as Mayor, has a fiduciary obligation to act with the utmost of prudence and responsibility in running the New York City school system. He either knew, or should have known, that the appointment of Black was not in the best interests of the system, but he appointed her nonetheless. By so acting, Michael Bloomberg breached his fiduciary duty to the parents of all school children in New York City public schools and is guilty of 'misfeasance of office.' "

The parents want Mayor Bloomberg to place $100 million of his own money – or approximately $1 million for each day of Ms. Black's nearly 100-day tenure -- into a fund used exclusively for the training and development of teachers and supervisors as compensation for the damage to the morale and performance of staff and teachers, which therefore impaired the education of students.

Arthur Z. Schwartz, attorney for the Claimants, emphasized that the Notice of Claim was a precursor to a lawsuit against Bloomberg personally, not one against the City of New York. "The Mayor's ego, and his insistence on 'selling' the school system rather than building it from the ground up, led to this disaster. The Mayor took a lot from the City's school childrenn with this error, and he should be required to make repairs - in a sum that he is uniquely qualified to do."

Ms. Mariama Sanoh, an active Brooklyn parent who is a Claimant and a founder of the New York City Parents Union, said that Mayor Bloomberg abused his power. "When outraged parents stated that Cathie Black was unqualified to be Chancellor, Mayor Bloomberg accused us -- the real stakeholders in our children's education – of playing politics. But it was Mayor Bloomberg who abused his power by appointing someone with no education experience to lead the nations largest public school system. And it was Mayor Bloomberg who played politics with the New York State Education Commissioner to get unqualified Cathie Black approved for the job. The Mayor has committed misfeasance and our children have suffered. There have to be consequences for these bad choices."

Ms. Shino Tanikawa, a Claimant and member of Manhattan's Community Education Council 2, demanded consistency in how education matters are treated. "Accountability has been the foundation of Mayor Bloomberg's alleged "reform" agenda, yet he himself has not been accountable to us for any of his misguided decisions. Our children have suffered his arrogance and egotism enough, and we, the parents, demand that the Mayor now be held accountable."

Central Brooklyn parent Muba Yarofulani is a founding member of the New York City Parents Union, Co-President of the Coalition for Public Education (CPE), and President of the District 18 Presidents Council. She objected to Mayor Bloomberg's dominance over the public education system. "The 1.1 million students in New York City's public schools deserved a qualified Chancellor. Mayor Bloomberg refused to hear the cries of parents from communities like mine; we knew that Cathie Black should not be appointed. This Mayor's dictatorship over our education system is failing our children, and I am one of those mothers who will continue to battle his wealth and political might. Mayor Bloomberg must be held accountable for his failures. Our children must see that there are consequences for the rich just as there are for the poor."

Ms. Mona Davids, a Bronx charter school parent, and a founder of the New York City Parents Union, pronounced Mayor Bloomberg's behavior as corrupt. "Outside of New York City, when an elected official appoints a friend, family member or crony with no relevant experience to a high profile job, it is called 'graft' and an abuse of power," said Ms. Davids. "Mayor Bloomberg's appointment of his friend, Cathie Black, without first conducting a national search or ensuring that she had the

qualifications to lead the nation's largest school system, was pure corruption and disrespectful to NYC parents, students and educators. Mayor Bloomberg's appointment showed our children that, even when you are not qualified for a job, it's not what you know but who you know."

Hon. Chris Owens, a Brooklyn Claimant and former Community School Board President, focused on the need for unorthodox measures. "This Mayor has bought three elections, including a third term in office! The political process has not provided recourse for concerned parents because the Mayoral elections have been corrupted by the power of money. So we have to do something to show everyone that the disastrous ramming of Cathie Black down our throats warrants more than a few days of critical media stories. The Mayor owes this City and he has the means to compensate our public education system for a portion of the harm that he inflicted upon it."

Ms. Julie Cavanagh is a teacher in Brooklyn who supports the parents' lawsuit. "I am glad to see legal action being taken directly against Mayor Bloomberg. Mayor Bloomberg speaks about accountability for schools, students and teachers, but never is he held accountable for the disastrous and devastating decisions he has made for our schools and our children. It is time for this Mayor to be held accountable. As if over-testing, overcrowding, and overtly ignoring the voices of stakeholders were not enough, Bloomberg appointed and vigorously defended a Chancellor we all knew was unqualified for our children. The Mayor's actions have caused irreparable harm to our school system, and it is time for him to answer to the people he was elected to serve."

A copy of the Notice of Claim may be requested by contacting Chris Owens.

New York City Comptroller John C. Liu Statement on Theft Charges Against DOE Consultant

New York City Comptroller John C. Liu stated the following in response to questions about today's announcement by the Office of the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York levying charges against a private DOE consultant for stealing $3.6 million:

“Federal charges once again, that a consultant has stolen millions from the taxpayers are infuriating enough. Even more disconcerting, however, are indications that corporations with billions of dollars in City business have aided and abetted and profited from the scam. As with the CityTime scandal, oversight of subcontracting is acutely needed right now.”

Comptroller Liu has directed a review of contracts with vendors implicated by Special Commissioner of Investigation for the New York City School District, Richard Condon. The Comptroller’s Office is currently auditing a number of technology projects also involving some of the same vendors, including ARIS, Future Technology Associates, iZone, and E911.

NYC Comptroller John Liu Statement on Dept of Education Contract Rejection

New York City Comptroller John C. Liu stated the following in response to inquiries about his rejection of a $20 million teacher recruitment contract for the Department of Education (DOE):

“Twenty million dollars to recruit teachers as the DOE insists on laying off thousands of teachers seems curious at best,” said Comptroller Liu.

The five-year contract, with the “New Teacher Project,” was submitted in early February. The DOE was seeking the contract to “recruit, select, train and provide job search support to non-traditional candidates to become public school teachers.”

The contract submission comes at a time when agencies are being asked to cut services, including the DOE’s plan to lay off 4,600 teachers.

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