If, last month, you had been on line to receive free Passover food at a Coney Island Jewish charity you might be surprised to look up and find you were receiving it from our Taiwan born former Comptroller, John Liu or later you might have discovered him helping to celebrate the Nepalese New Year in Queens.
Indeed, since he lost the mayoral race (he came in 4th) West View News (and we assume The New York Times) has been receiving Mr. Liu’s daily schedule which, as he confessed with a smile at a meeting at 69 Charles, is “far less than during the campaign” but nevertheless looks a lot like hard political campaigning.
“What, oh what is he running for?” was the e-mail question I kept sending him as I received notice that I might catch up with him at Korean Anti-Sexual Assault Rally in Queens. Finally I suggested he come by for coffee and indeed he did in a chauffeur-driven black SUV with tinted windows and walked into my kitchen in shirtsleeves.
In person, Bronx Science graduate, 38-year old Liu, exudes muscular power and talks very loud as if he were addressing a large crowd.
He began with his first encounter with Bloomberg the day after election when the mayor invited him to pose for some press photos.Liu asked if he might have a meeting first to discuss the state of the budget he was inheriting but Bloomberg dismissed this and repeated his request for just a quick “photo opportunity” and after several verbal go-a-rounds Liu acquiesced – the next morning the press carried the story that Liu refused to meet with the Mayor.
By far the most dramatic parting was over the biggest scandal, “City Time”, which Liu described as “an attempt to computerize the time keeping for city employees – which is not rocket science – but for whatever reason the city agreed to pay $63 million to SAIC, an international defense contractor, to build this system for the city. Liu says, “By the time I became Comptroller, the city under Bloomberg had paid over $700 million dollars. I was aware of the contract as a city council member and three weeks after I became Comptroller I got another contract to approve with more millions attached and I rejected the contract which caused the mayor (chuckle) a substantial amount of consternation.”
The City Time contract came up for a renewal and as Liu balked, Bloomberg argued according to Liu “since we have paid so much already, it was a waste not to finish the contract.” Liu quickly followed up “which of course is very flawed logic” and “I was surprised that such a successful businessman was not aware of the concept of sunk costs.”
Liu described his relationship with the Bloomberg administration as troubled from the start. “The day after the elections,” he said, “when I was tagged for refusing to meet with the mayor (how dare I) to the City Time mess which turned out to be the biggest scandal under the Bloomberg administration – people went to prison for that – it became a very strained four year relationship – from the get go they accused me of being political and trying to make the mayor look bad and using the office to run for mayor.”
“In my fourth month,” Liu further explained, “I issued an audit against the Economic Development Corporation that they had hid $120 million dollars that should have been returned to the city’s treasury and it made the front page of the New York Times – the mayor’s office said I didn’t know what the hell I was talking about and I was running for office but two months later they started to give the money back. It was a non-stop battle.”
Liu spoke of the ongoing battle saying, “I found the bureaucracy useful because they had this institutional knowledge – they knew where the bodies were buried and I was looking for the bodies. I was very close to city workers going back to my days on the City Council. I always found you never got a straight answer from a commissioner.”
Despite the fact that the Commissioners were supposed to be given free reign, Liu saidBloomberg had very tight control and “what they could say publically was pretty well monitored.”Liu told me, “You would have one commissioner testifying and five babysitters from the mayor’s office sitting in the front row watching.”
Another gripe: getting the “real story.” “I could never get a straight answer,” he explained, “whether it was the Department of Education or the Department of Transportation, which I oversaw directly as the head of the transportation committee, or consumer affairs issues, health issues, building issues but if I wanted to get the real scoop I would go to the workers in the agency and ask what’s happening.”
When asked about the greatest waste in the Bloomberg administration, Liu answered, “All these outside consultants doing work that we had perfectly good city employees ready and able to do. That cost the city billions over the 12 year period.”
And when asked if this has ended under the de Blasio administration, Liu said,
“De Blasio said, as I did, he was going to get rid of a lot of the consultants.The consultant situation got so bad it was like a new Tammany Hall – this is where all the patronage jobs were coming for outside contractors with armies of consultants.”
As I ushered John Liu to the door I asked again “What office are you running for?” And he responded, “I’m young– plenty of time to run for office.”
It seems that Liu believes in a long running start.
