WON’T BE BACK: City officials have been using Bloomberg Terminals for free under Mayor Bloomberg — but the fee waivers will end once he leaves office. (
)
The free Bloomberg Terminals the mayor brought with him to City Hall will be leaving when he does, The Post has learned.
If Mayor Bloomberg’s successor wants to use the data-rich computers, taxpayers will have to pay the going rate of $20,000 per terminal per year.
With 60 terminals throughout the government — including 35 at City Hall — the tab would come to $1.2 million a year.
A spokesman for Bloomberg LP, the mayor’s information-services firm, said the fees for 25 of the terminals, which were already being used by the city’s financial departments, were waived when he took office in 2002.
That’s because Bloomberg wanted to add 35 terminals for his inner circle at City Hall, and paid for those himself to avoid creating a conflict of interest, officials said.
“The city was a paying client before Mike Bloomberg became mayor, and to remove any possible conflicts, the company agreed to provide free terminal use as long as he remained in office,” said spokesman Ty Trippet.
“We don’t expect that would continue after he leaves office” in December.
Trippet didn’t respond when asked why Bloomberg wouldn’t continue donating the terminals to the city.
The city Comptroller’s Office, its Finance Department and the mayor’s budget office were paying customers before Bloomberg’s election, using their 25 terminals to crunch financial information.
The “Bloomberg Boxes,” as the terminals have come to be known, are found in banks and on trading desks around the world.
Using six monitor displays, they offer subscribers real-time market data and a way to submit trades electronically, as well as news and Web browsing.
Bloomberg added 35 of the terminals for his “bullpen” at City Hall, where he and his senior aides work.
“The economic-development and budget teams people use it for financial data,” said his spokesman, Marc La Vorgna.
“I use it for its news-aggregation capabilities. It has better real-time news delivery and aggregation abilities than anything I’ve ever used. Some people just use it for the dual-monitor feature, which can really help your productivity.”
The next mayor will have to determine whether the terminals are worth spending taxpayer dollars to maintain.
Bloomberg LP’s more than 315,000 terminal subscribers account for 85 percent of its revenues.
Last year, the company took in $7.9 billion while holding to its policy of not giving discounts for multiple accounts.
Two months ago, The Post disclosed that reporters for Bloomberg News, the journalism arm of Bloomberg LP, were accessing terminal log-in information to snoop on traders at Goldman Sachs.
Officials at Bloomberg LP confirmed the reporters had used the terminals for years to monitor when subscribers were logged on and what types of sites they were looking at.
After a complaint by Goldman, Bloomberg LP cut off reporters’ access to private client data and Bloomberg News editor in chief Matt Winkler apologized, calling it an “inexcusable” error.