NYC 911 System Debacle

New York City's 911 emergency system will be 7 years late and $1 billion over budget, and the Mayor of NYC is focused on ensuring that the public does not have the opportunity to read the report that explains what went wrong.

911 System - $1 billion of Additional Costs

Our city already faces the burden and the embarrassment of the City Time Scandal in which the Mayor ignored warnings from his subordinates and allowed the City to suffer a $740 million loss on what was supposed to be a $60 million project to improve payroll management for city employees. In one of the strangest moments of the Mayor's 10 years in office, he stated that the $740 million loss represented a "pretty good job" by his administration.

Now, we have learned that the Bloomberg administration's poor (or nonexistent) oversight of the implementation of a new emergency 911 system is going to cost an additional $1 billion and take 7 years more than original planned.

Mayor Bloomberg sought a third term based on an argument that he possessed superior management skills, yet his mismanagement of the city's funds is one of his clearest "accomplishments" of his 10 years. His failure to control the city's funds will create challenges for his successors and for our city's residents for many years to come.

Hiding the Report

Predictably, the report on the investigation into Mayor Bloomberg's $1 billion of mismanagement of the city's emergency system is being held captive by the Bloomberg Administration.

Bloomberg, talking to reporters Tuesday, defended response times to emergencies — though the unions and City Hall have long sparred over how the times are computed.
“Obviously, things are working. Can we always do it better? Sure. We’ll look at everything, and anybody that’s got suggestions, we'll be happy to take them in,” Bloomberg said, adding that the report will come out when the time is right.
“It’s a preliminary report and we’ll put it in when we get a final report that pulls together all the relevant data.”
The system has 911 operators handle most incoming emergency calls and dispatch them electronically into the police and fire response system. Callers used to have to talk to as many as three operators. The new framework also gives the operator a digital map of where the caller is located.

In February, a Manhattan Supreme Court judge ordered the report to be released, but the city recently made an 11th-hour appeal, charging that the document’s release would inhibit city bureaucrats from properly analyzing the system.

Bloomberg is once again opposing the judicial system as the judicial system attempts to hold him accountable.

Bloomberg Mismanagement Reigns Down on NYC

NYC Mayor Bloomberg's mismanagement cost lives last week, and it has cost all of us hundreds of millions of dollars in government waste. Ironically, Mayor Bloomberg's argument for changing the City Charter to give himself a third term as Mayor was that our city needed him as its leader. It turns out, we cannot afford to keep him as our leader.

City Time Costs Us More than $600 million in Mismanagement and Fraud

New York City hired a company to oversee its "City Time" project for the re-engineering of the city's payroll systems. The cost was expected to be $63 million, but it has now cost $722 million - more than ten times the planned cost.

But, it gets worse. The firm that was overseeing City Time was permitted to choose its own watchdog. In essence, NYC decided that no one would watch a $63 million project, and the project is going to likely end up costing $1 billion.

The Bloomberg Administration also allowed more than $80 million to be stolen from a $63 million project.

The four people accused of stealing the $80 million are going to be prosecuted, but Mayor Bloomberg is not being held accountable for all of the mismanagement represented by the cost over-run of more than $600 million or for the policies and approaches that allowed $80 million to be stolen.

If these things keep happening, we'll have to have Public Advocate Bill de Blasio take over for the Mayor. We simply cannot afford for the Mayor to misplace nearly a billion dollars of our money every once in a while for three more years.

Snowy Week

The snow defeated Mayor Bloomberg last week.

Previous Mayors have succeeded in preparing for and managing worse snow storms, but Mayor Bloomberg was caught off guard, even though there was plenty of warning of the coming snow storm. City Hall has refused to address whether Bloomberg was in NYC during the blizzard. He regularly spends weekends in Bermuda and likely was not in NYC at the critical moment.

The Bloomberg Administration got started late, made poor decisions that were inconsistent with previous, successful efforts to combat snow storms, and failed to adequately adjust to its own missteps. The cascade effect of their multiple major errors overwhelmed them, and the overall effort collapsed. Instead of benefiting from Bloomberg's experience in his third term, we are suffering from his arrogance and his lack of attention to our city. Bloomberg is a cliche and a caricature - the excuse often cited for term limits - a poor leader who is elected reluctantly and whose performance declines from mediocre to disaster after a long period in power. The December 26 snow storm disaster is a warning sign. We have three years more of Bloomberg, and the cracks are becoming clearer and clearer.

We cannot afford the current trend to continue.