In another black eye for the Bloomberg administration, a contractor for the scandal-scarred CityTime electronic-payroll system yesterday admitted the project’s manager ripped off the city by cheating on his own time sheet.
Officials at the contractor, Science Applications International Corp., said they will reimburse the city the $2.47 million that project manager Gerard Denault unfairly billed when he worked on the massive project to switch city employees to the system.
In a letter to the executive director of the city’s Financial Information Services Agency — which now oversees CityTime — SAIC’s senior vice president said it was impossible to determine how many hours Denault should have been paid for.
Instead, the company decided to reimburse the city for the entire amount he was paid during one phase of the project.
Virginia-based SAIC also fired Denault — and, in an amusing twist, asked that his termination be kept confidential. Hours after receiving the news, City Comptroller John Liu held a press conference to announce it.
“By their own admission, this latest development now implicates for the first time in this scandal SAIC, the prime contractor,” Liu said. “The very company entrusted by our city to build a timekeeping system for city employees has grossly mismanaged their own timekeeping.
“Obviously, New Yorkers can see a great deal of irony in this . . . The person in charge of developing a timekeeping system to keep track of New York City employees . . . bilked New York City taxpayers by not keeping [his] own time.”
Liu’s office said the city still owes SAIC a balance of $42 million for the $720 million CityTime project, and he asked that the final payments be held back until the Department of Investigation completes its review.
The comptroller — a likely 2013 mayoral candidate who has latched onto the CityTime scandal as an opportunity to blast the mayor — also said he believes “there are still large, outstanding questions, and the total amount that should be returned to the city is far larger than [$2.47 million.]”
Marc LaVorgna, a spokesman for Mayor Bloomberg, disputed Liu’s number, saying SAIC is owed $32 million.
“We will withhold any and all payments until the completion of the Department of Investigation’s ongoing review, which includes a forensic accountant we added last year,” LaVorgna said. “The project is essentially fully online and operational.”
SAIC’s contract for the project ends June 30, at which point the city will not need an outside contractor, LaVorgna said.
Federal prosecutors in December arrested six people for stealing $80 million in taxpayer funds from the CityTime project. A former city commissioner involved in the project, Joel Bondy of the Office of Payroll Administration, was forced to resign.