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Bloomberg: My Bad About That Whole $740 Million CityTime Mess
By
Garth Johnston
Published Jun 28, 2011
Modified Jun 28, 2011
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By
Garth Johnston
Published Jun 28, 2011
Modified Jun 28, 2011
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Last month Mayor Bloomberg said he thought his administration had done "a pretty good job," handling the criminal cash cow that is the city's automated payroll system CityTime. But that was before the U.S. Attorneys office brought forth another indictment in the case that called the program "one of the largest and most brazen frauds ever committed against the City of New York" which "served as a vehicle for an unprecedented fraud." So, yesterday at an unrelated presser Bloomberg at least admitted, “We should have watched it more carefully and hopefully we learn and don’t make the same mistake again."
“Certainly nobody paid as much attention to it as they should have, from me on down, and we’re going to find out who did what,” Bloomberg told reporters. Despite the fact there is already some evidence that officials had been concerned about the program—whose budget ballooned from $60 million to more than $722 million—for years, it is nice to see Bloomberg at least finally admit there was a problem on the part of his team.
Which isn't to say hizzoner didn't take time to point out, again, that despite all of its financial woes at least the CityTime system is in use and now finally appears to be working. "The real thing, the important thing is, looking forward, we now have a system that from all reports is working very well," he said.
And further, he insists the money is gone, but not lost: "I don't know when all is said and done how much fraud there will have been in terms of how much money we really lost," he said. "Because a lot of the monies you will get back. People who stole it didn't spend it, and we'll recover a lot of that. It'll be a long time."
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citytime
fraud
mayor bloomberg
payroll
Garth Johnston
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