The CityTime scam might be a blight on the record of Mayor Michael Bloomberg, but that's ok. When life gives Bloomberg blights, he makes blightenade! At least, that's our explanation for hizzoner's defense yesterday of the trouble-plagued program that aims to unify the city's payroll systems. Because where we see a bloated mess hundreds of millions of dollars over budget and year's over due, Bloomberg sees something a little different:
CityTime, for example, is only doing 175,000 employees out of 300[,000], and we're ahead of schedule. We said it would be done by June, and last time I checked in two weeks ago, we're way ahead of schedule.
And that's not all! You better get used to seeing CityTime-like projects from the city. At the same event yesterday (which was to introduce a new consolidated data center in Brooklyn that will handle the computer load for 40 city agencies over the next four years) Bloomie promised that "We're going to take on more and more of these projects. What a shame it would be if we walked away because we're afraid of a bad story." Which is actually true. But let's just all agree that the next time the city decides to accept bids on similar multi-million-dollar contracts that it is a little more careful in choosing its contractors.
