By LILLIAN ROBERTS
Executive Director
District Council 37, AFSCME, AFL-CIO

As we approach the November 5th election, Mayor Bloomberg's contracting-out policies are on trial in federal court along with the actual defendants in the largest corruption case in New York City history.

DC 37 blew the whistle on the vast waste and fraud in the CityTime payroll project - which zoomed in cost from $63 million to $720 million without raising an eyebrow in the mayor's office. Comptroller John C. Liu's 2010 audit was the first official review of the operation in 12 years, and U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara indicted 11 consultants who overcharged the taxpayers and stole hundreds of millions of dollars.

One defendant died, two fled the country and the rest pleaded guilty, except for the two criminal masterminds on trial. But the real finger of blame points clearly at the mayor's payroll office, which gave the thieves free rein to run the project with no checks and balances to protect the public's money. The billionaire mayor's policies so favored the wealthy and the private sector that contracting out ballooned from $5 billion a year to $11 billion during his term in office.

The court of public opinion has already found the administration guilty and decisively rejected Bloomberg's policies by voting overwhelmingly in the primaries for Bill de Blasio for Mayor and Letitia James for Public Advocate. Both have been enthusiastically endorsed by DC 37, along with Scott Stringer for Comptroller and candidates for City Council and other offices (DC37 Endorsements, Elections 2013).

Bill de Blasio and Tish James showed bold leadership by battling Bloomberg's perverse priorities and the resulting layoffs and pushing to save neighborhood hospitals and improve basic services in the outer boroughs. Bill has made it clear that he is no friend of privatization, and in the City Council Tish led the fight against contracting out and championed the needs of NYCHA tenants, who include 15,000 DC 37 members. Unlike Bloomberg, whose fiscal irresponsibility has deprived public service workers of pay increases for four years, Bill de Blasio has studied our white paper on revenue that is available without increasing people's tax burden, and he is open to working with the unions to find the funds to negotiate the overdue raises.

Republican Joe Lhota tilts toward his right-wing pro-Tea Party funders, who pushed for the recent government shutdown. He calls spending on public services "reckless," aims to slash the city workforce by 60,000 positions, and would surely match Bloomberg's favoritism toward the wealthy 1 percent and turn the clock back toward the divisive days of Giuliani.

So I am not surprised that pollsters say Bill de Blasio has a substantial lead. But opinion polls don't elect mayors - only real voters who come to the real polls on Election Day, November 5, can do that. After the pain the current administration has put us through, our members and their families cannot stay home and let this chance for real change slip through our fingers.

We need a mayor who will treat labor fairly and consider the working class and the diverse communities of our city as partners in change, not commodities to be exploited for private profits.

By maximizing our vote, we can give Bill de Blasio a mandate he can use to reverse the destructive Bloomberg era policies that have plagued our city with record homelessness, the nation's worst economic inequality and an educational system that fails the majority of our children. We need to put him in City Hall with a resounding mandate that Albany can't ignore when he calls for a small tax increase on the super-rich to invest in our future by giving all children a head start toward literacy in pre-kindergarten classes.

Bill de Blasio stands for the change we need, and our votes can give him the powerful mandate he needs to make that change.