In case you had trouble following Guiliani’s star turn at the 9/11 hearings this week, or why firefighter and police familes were so upset, Breslin sums it up nicely:
On April 3, Alan Hevesi, then the city comptroller, wrote, “I am told that the practice in the Fire Department was always to carefully test all new equipment with the cooperation of the union. This was not done with these radios. There was no competitive bidding. They didn’t go out into the market to see what was available and pick the best. To avoid competition, the Fire Department bought the new radios using an existing contract that was used to buy replacements for no more than $2.9 million. They used this contract to buy an entire new communications system for $14 million.”This is why political careers are so enchanting to the needy. A no-bid contract is the best way to buy a new house.
Whatever they bought, whatever they paid, the Fire Department tried using these great radios on Sept. 11 and found the only thing you could hear on them was the death march.
Yesterday, almost three years since men working for this city died while they stood in a building lobby and never knew what hit them, a group of cops were standing outside the New School and one of them said:
“We still don’t have a system that works today.”
