Prosecutors have charged four consul tants with ripping off $80 million from a program to develop an electronic-timesheet system for municipal employees.
Yet still on the loose is the guy responsible for a possible loss on the project of nearly 10 times that sum.
This would be Mayor Mike.
After all, work on CityTime — an automated time-tracking system for city employees, started just before Mike took office — was supposed to cost $63 million. Its current price tag?
A staggering $722 mil lion.
And the project still isn’t done.
Where’s Michael Bloom berg been?
Hizzoner prides himself on his managerial prowess. And he recently said, with characteristic, um, modesty, that he should be in the running for best New York City mayor ever.
But just as Ed Koch had to live for years with the Parking Violations Bureau scandal of the late ’80s, Bloomberg is going to be wearing this albatross for a very long time indeed.
The busts included “quality assurance” consultant Mark Mazer plus three colleagues, his wife and mother. US Attorney Preet Bharara said they used the city “as their own personal cash cow.”
The group steered payments to phony firms that kicked back cash and even submitted (get this!) fake timesheets.
“In an ironic twist,” Bharara said, “a project intended to prevent payroll waste, fraud and abuse was itself allegedly bilked in part by fraudulent time-keeping.”
Yesterday’s suspension of Payroll Administration boss Joel Bondy was a no-brainer. As was the transfer of the project to another agency, with Deputy Mayor Stephen Goldsmith overseeing it.
Now the mayor has to cut loose all city officials in charge of the project.
And it can’t end there.
For starters, Mike needs to quit his oh-so-cute flirtation with presidential politics and resign himself to the reality of being mayor.
After all, didn’t he twist the city’s term-limits law into a pretzel to glom a third term? Let him serve it.
For sure, that won’t be easy.
Already, critics are blasting him for negligence: “The cost . . . is way beyond $80 million,” City Councilwoman Letitia James said. “We can save all of the proposed layoffs” of city workers for that money.
She’s got a point.
Let’s face it: Being mayor of New York requires laser focus; Gotham, remember, spends some $65 billion a year.
Yet Mike remains fixated on pedestrian plazas, bike lanes and “not running for president.” Plus, of course, his “bipartisanism” bushwa.
All at New York’s expense, it seems.
Fact is, the city needs him right here.
Doing his job.
When $722 million goes up in smoke and nobody notices, there has been a fundamental breakdown.
Mike needs to fix it.