Metro

Liu signs deal with same firm he says is ripping off city

Comptroller John Liu has blasted a major city contractor for allegedly cheating taxpayers of $163 million — but that wasn’t enough to stop Liu’s office from quietly doing business with the same firm, The Post has learned.

Liu excoriated the Bloomberg administration last year for allowing overbilling in its $2 billion-plus contract with Hewlett-Packard for the massive 911 call center project, and he recently threatened to reject future contracts with the company — all while quietly inking his own deal with HP.

Two months after issuing a searing audit charging HP with $163 million in overbilling, Liu awarded the company a $550,000 no-bid contract for printing services.

“Odd that, for some reason, he does not put out a glossy press release every time he inks a no-bid contract with a company he publicly trashes,” said Bloomberg spokesman Marc La Vorgna, when told of the contract. “Typical of the daily hypocrisy you see coming out of that office.”

Liu’s spokeswoman, Eve Kessler, defended the comptroller’s contract.

“Why is this news? Of course, we have a contract with HP. Many city agencies do, which is how, as a city, we’re spending around $80 million a year with the company. That’s exactly what gives us leverage in calling for a boycott if HP doesn’t pay the $163 million it owes NYC taxpayers,” she said.

Liu’s 2012 audit of the 911 project, formerly known as the Emergency Communications Transformation Program, claimed outrageous examples of overbilling, including a software engineer who actually wrote “called to kill a waterbug” on his time sheet.

The comptroller concluded the 911 project is more than $1 billion over budget.

On Wednesday, he fired off another letter to Bloomberg, saying a recent analysis by his office discovered further “serious billing errors similar to those noted in the 2012 audit report, as well as further instances of improper practices.”

He even went on to list big-money contracts HP has with various city agencies — of course omitting his own.

“We must not permit HP to exploit New York City’s taxpayers. Doing business with the city of New York is a privilege, not a lifetime guarantee. Let’s be clear: HP is not the only vendor the city can use to purchase printers, laptops and servers,” he wrote in the letter.

Liu, a Democratic hopeful for mayor whose campaign is battling legal troubles, said recovering the $163 million from Hewlett-Packard would help the city stave off budget cuts.

“Last year’s budget was balanced in large part because of the half-billion-dollar settlement with Science Applications International Corp. for its mismanagement and fraud connected with the CityTime project,” he wrote in his letter to Bloomberg.

“The nearly $163 million HP owes would help restore the 20 fire companies, more than 30,000 child-care slots, and nearly 1,000 school teachers that face elimination in the upcoming year’s budget.”