Public Employee Press

Victory over contracting out
Union workers will take over from the CityTime contractor whose overdue payroll project went $780 million over budget.

By GREGORY N. HEIRES



City Comptroller John Liu and the Bloomberg administration have agreed to end contracting out for the CityTime payroll and timekeeping system, capping a long-campaign by DC 37, which raised the alarm about the billion-dollar boondoggle.

Liu and Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg announced Sept. 28 that the city would end its contract with Science Applications International Corp. by June 30, 2011. After that, city employees will take over the work on the troubled system.

"The CityTime project is a classic example of out-ofcontrol contracting out," DC 37 Executive Director Lillian Roberts said. "Getting rid of the contract will allow city workers to do the job more efficiently."

The computerized CityTime system was originally supposed to cover 165,000 municipal employees at a price of $68 million. But the project has cost the city $780 million since it was launched 10 years ago - a 1,000 percent cost overrun - and still covers only 73,000 of the city's 300,000 employees.

The Bloomberg administration planned to pay SAIC an additional $110 million this year. The agreement with Liu chops that to $32 million, only for maintenance and support, which means the city will save about $80 million.The city will fine SAIC $3 million for each month it fails to meet the June deadline.


Stop overpriced contracts

"New York City taxpayers are sick and tired of being milked by multibillion dollar corporations for grossly overpriced and overdue projects," Liu said. "We New Yorkers refuse to be taken advantage of. We will not give SAIC a penny more to build CityTime!"

Liu and Bloomberg's joint announcement came a week after Local 375 held a news conference in which union leaders and five City Council members called for scrapping the deal. The Council members included Contracts Committee Chair Letitia James, who exposed SAIC's cost overruns at committee hearings.

DC 37 made CityTime a centerpiece in its campaign to expose the vast waste in contracting out work that union members could do more effi ciently, and Local 375 battled the project for years through court cases, demonstrations and media outreach.

In particular, the local attacked the intrusiveness of the system, which allows for monitoring of employees through hand-scanners. Under the Liu-Bloomberg agreement, workers will have the option of using a "computer time clock" rather than a hand-scanner.

"With the city laying off workers and cutting services, we don't need a $1 billion boondoggle," said Local 375 President Behrouz Fathi. At the news conference, DC 37 Associate Director Oliver Gray called City-Time "a huge taxpayer-funded giveaway to consultants."

Assistant Associate Director Henry Garrido, who heads the union's white paper project on contracting out, called the contract cancellation "a victory for good government." He noted that a series in the New York Daily News by Juan Gonzalez revealed that up to 230 SAIC consultants were paid an average of $400,000 a year.

Garrido said he hoped that the CityTime example will lead to closer scrutiny of the city's $10 billion annual procurement budget, which includes nearly 18,000 contracts with consultants and vendors.

DC 37 Political Director Wanda Williams said the City-Time victory points to the importance of reaching out to political leaders, such as Liu and James, who are committed to making the government work more effi ciently without bashing public employees.

Robert D. Ajaye, president of Electronic Data Processing Personnel Local 2627, whose members will take over the project, noted that SAIC pays consultants about four times what Local 2627 members earn in salary and benefits.

Local 2627 is encouraging its members to use the local's education benefi t for training as Information Technology Developers and to become certified in the webbased Java computer language CityTime uses.

Protecting taxpayers and members

The contract cancellation was especially sweet to Delegate and former 1st Vice President Jon Forster, who was Local 375's tireless fi ghter in the CityTime campaign.

"We are really proud to have pursued this fight for five years," Forster said. "The union has protected the taxpayers from this outrageous misuse of public funds and succeeded in bringing the work back in-house."

"By stopping this tremendous financial waste, Comptroller Liu has done a great service for all New Yorkers," Roberts said. "DC 37 applauds him and the many City Council members, like Letitia James, who were courageous enough to do the right thing and rein in this costly private contract."