The $760 million CityTime scandal should have been no surprise to Mayor Bloomberg and his inner circle.
One of Hizzoner’s top aides was sounding alarms about the fraud-ridden payroll system more than four years ago, The Post has learned, and the response from City Hall was silence.
The warnings came from Paul Cosgrave, the mayor’s commissioner of information technology and telecommunications at the time, according to three people with direct knowledge of the discussions. And Cosgrave brought his concerns directly to Bloomberg’s senior staffers — who are supposed to have Hizzoner’s ear.
Cosgrave “was of the mind that, frankly, they should have just shut the project down,” one source at the meetings in 2007 told The Post. “They were just spending money without a clear management process in place.”
Bloomberg’s aides responded to Cosgrave by saying, “We’ll look into it,” and never got back to him.
Cosgrave was the highest-ranking official to voice concerns about CityTime at the time, but lower-level officials had already started sounding alarms.
CityTime is a massive automated payroll system set up and installed by Science Applications International Corp.
Envisioned as a way to save the city millions in personnel costs and cut down on inflated overtime pay, CityTime ran hundreds of millions over budget. The city official who oversaw CityTime was forced to resign, and federal prosecutors are continuing their investigation, which has so far resulted in the indictment of 11 contractors and consultants for ripping off $94 million.
By the time Cosgrave voiced his concerns, CityTime was already years late and hundreds of millions over budget.
Cosgrave declined to comment.
Bloomberg spokesman Marc La Vorgna declined to discuss Cosgrave’s warnings. He said only, “The system works, and it’s already providing value and is going to provide value for years and years to come.”
Councilwoman Letitia James, who has been the most vocal critic of CityTime on the City Council, said Bloomberg deserves all the blame.
“They were warned,” James (D-Brooklyn) said. “They allowed it to get to the point where taxpayers are paying millions and millions of dollars. The administration was put on notice.”