Citytime payback

From Crain's:

The company at the center of the CityTime corruption scandal has agreed to a half-billion-dollar settlement with the city and federal prosecutors.

Virginia-based Science Applications International Corp. said the agreement would allow the company to avoid criminal charges related to the federal investigation of the timekeeping project the contractor oversaw for the city. SAIC had faced only one criminal count, but in the case of Arthur Andersen that was enough to take down a huge company.

The settlement will ultimately net the city $507 million—offsetting most of the nearly $700 million it spent on the 12-year CityTime project to automate how the city counts the hours worked by 163,000 municipal employees.

Federal prosecutors in Manhattan said SAIC agreed to pay $370 million in restitution to the city and a $130 million penalty. The city will receive $466 million of that and won't have to pay an outstanding $41 million invoice from SAIC for CityTime-related services.

In response to this scandal, the City Council passed a joke of a law that requires the City to report to them any large unanticipated increases in spending. While it sounds good on the surface, there actually are no consequences if the City fails to report cost increases and none if it does. It's just Quinn posturing for her mayoral run, which a lot of morons support. We get the government we deserve.