The summer of hell may have just gotten worse.
David Ross, the director of contracts and purchasing for the city Department of Education since 2004 who oversaw millions of dollars in wasteful and fraudulent school contracts, is headed for the MTA.
Despite a track record critics call disastrous, Ross is joining the embattled transit agency as its chief procurement officer, The Post has learned.
“He’s a nice guy, but he didn’t manage the procurement rigorously enough,” said Patrick Sullivan, an ex-member of the DOE’s Panel for Educational Policy, which rubber-stamped contracts that Ross recommended. “As a result, there were cases of fraud that could have been prevented.”
Under Ross, the DOE in 2009 approved a $54 million four-year contract extension with Future Technology Associates despite many red flags. In 2011, investigators found the firm had ripped off the city for at least $6.5 million with the help of a DOE finance official who was romantically involved with an FTA co-owner.
In another blunder, the DOE in 2015 was set to award a $1.1 billion contract to Custom Computer Specialists, a tech firm caught up in a prior city probe into a kickback scheme and theft of $3.6 million perpetrated by DOE consultant Willard “Ross” Lanham. Under pressure from watchdogs and the press, City Hall negotiated a last-minute price cut to $635 million, then yanked the deal entirely. A dozen other vendors were hired to do the work for just $472 million.
“David was too quick to give the benefit of doubt to questionable vendors, and to overlook poor practices by his staff,” Sullivan said. Ross’s salary was $198,187.
DOE Chief Financial Officer Ray Orlando gave a statement calling Ross “a dedicated and talented public servant, who has worked tirelessly for more than a decade to ensure our 1.1 million students and 1,800 schools get the services and materials they need.”
The MTA said it “conducted a thorough and exhaustive search that resulted in the hiring of a career professional with a history of hard work serving NYC’s schoolchildren,” and formerly as an MTA operations officer. A spokesman would not reveal Ross’s salary.