The MTA sure can pick’em.
Last week, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority awarded a $105million contract to upgrade subway-patrol cops’ radio systems to telecommunicat–ions giant Alcatel-Lucent, which just months ago agreed to pay the feds $147million after getting caught bribing foreign officials to land business.
It wasn’t the first time the MTA had awarded the subway-radio contract to a firm embroiled in a major scandal.
Last December, state Comptroller Tom DiNapoli rejected the MTA’s decision to award the contract to what was then the low bidder: Science Applications International Corp., the firm responsible for New York City’s scandal-plagued CityTime payroll system.
“It seems we can’t find anybody who doesn’t have some problem,” Susan Lerner, executive director of Common Cause New York, told The Post yesterday.
“Government is just having difficulty finding people who are honest.”
The MTA board unanimously awarded the four-year contract to Alcatel on Oct. 26.
Suprisingly, deep within agency documents the MTA acknowledged that a background check of Alcatel had “revealed … issues with a foreign subsidiary” that could render the company ineligible.
The agency said it was “reviewing the relevant information … no award will be made unless [Alcatel] is found to be fully responsible.”
The fact that the MTA went ahead with the contract award before completing the review was odd, Lerner said.
“If you’re buying a home or an apartment, first you get the inspection,” she said, “then you conclude the contract.”
Alcatel spokeswoman Denise Panyik-Dale insisted that the company’s bribery scandal is just ancient history.
“We fully regret what happened in the past and have in place today a zero-tolerance approach to any unethical practices.”
Three Alcatel subsidiaries pleaded guilty. The company paid fines of $92million to the Justice Department, $45 million to the Securities and Exchange Commission and $10 million to the Costa Rican government to settle charges of bribing foreign officials to win contracts in Costa Rica, Honduras, Malaysia and Taiwan.
MTA spokesman Kevin Ortiz declined to discuss Alcatel’s history or whether MTA board members took the bribery scandal into account in making their decision.
He said only that “the board has approved the contract, but the contract is up for review by the Office of the State Comptroller.”
That review can take up to 90 days.
Last December, DiNapoli surprised the MTA when he rejected its first choice, SAIC, the massive, Virginia-based defense contractor that had run CityTime.
At the time, DiNapoli said, “New York can’t afford another scandal like CityTime.”
Touted as a way to streamline city payroll operations and cut down on fraud, CityTime was supposed to cost $63 million.
By the time it was finally complete — 10 years after the project began — CityTime had cost taxpayers $760 million and become a fraud-ridden boondoggle that was a major embarrassment for Mayor Bloomberg.
Federal prosecutors and the city Department of Investigation are still trying to unravel the fiasco. So far, 11 people have been implicated in the scandal, including the top SAIC executive on the project. Also, the city official who oversaw CityTime has been fired.