Public Employee Press

Factsheet
Liu fights contracting out

By GREGORY N. HEIRES

A native of Taiwan, New York City Comptroller John C. Liu immigrated to New York City with his family when he was 5 years old. His mother worked in a sweatshop, instilling in Liu a strong identity with working people.

He is a product of the city's public school system and earned his college degree at the State University of New York at Binghamton.

He served in the City Council before running successfully for comptroller in 2009 with support from DC 37.

Throughout his political career, Liu has remained close to unions and established a liberal record of supporting same-sex marriage, city workers' right to reside outside the five boroughs, low-wage workers' struggle against exploitation and fast-food workers' organizing efforts. Liu has constantly fought wasteful spending on city projects and contracting out public services for private profit.

Profits for pensions

As comptroller, Liu has supervised the city's pension fund investments, gaining 40 percent in cumulative returns over three years. He established a program to study retirement issues, which have attracted great interest nationally as it has become clear that millions of baby-boomers will lack sufficient funds when they retire because employers have abandoned traditional pensions and 401(k) plans have failed as an alternative.

Liu shares DC 37's concern about how the city's spending of billions of dollars on contracting out has evaded civil service requirements, created a shadow army of consultants on the municipal payroll, and wasted millions of taxpayers' dollars.

Liu stood out as the highest-ranking city official to criticize and investigate the contracted-out CityTime automatic payroll project, whose cost mushroomed from $73 million to more than $700 million over 10 years. More than 10 of the consultants were indicted for fraud, the contractor was forced to return $500 million to the city and municipal employees are now doing the work under an agreement Liu negotiated with the mayor. He has also exposed other mismanaged, over-budget projects like the 911 Call Center.