Jeanette Foxworth, 52, of New Orleans, was suspended last year from her role in the troubled Project Ocean initiative, which is two years late and has so far cost the city $18 million -- more than twice what it was expected to cost. In a separate matter, Foxworth was indicted in April by a federal grand jury in Connecticut on charges of paying a state senator $3,000 to help her win consulting contracts. She pleaded not guilty and faces trial in November.
Foxworth, president of Acetech Inc. in New Orleans, could not be reached for comment, nor could her attorney, Andrew Bowman, of Westport, Conn.
Foxworth was paid $150 an hour and averaged more than 82 hours a week for 13 consecutive weeks between December 2001 and March 2002 while working on Project Ocean. She was also working on an IT project in Connecticut in December 2001, according to a July 13 letter by Philadelphia City Controller Alan Butkovitz, who looked into the matter and detailed his findings in a letter to Philadelphia CIO Dianah Neff (download PDF from The Philadelphia Inquirer: http://inquirer.philly.com/pdfs/2006/projectocean713.pdf).
"It seems highly improbably that any person could sustain those kinds of hours for three consecutive months without any break," Butkovitz wrote. He said both the city and an IT recruiting firm handling her payroll for the city, Arcus LLC in Harrisburg, Pa., should have questioned the legitimacy of the billable hours.
Butkovitz also questioned whether Foxworth had the qualifications and credentials to effectively implement the water billing system, listing a series of possible exaggerations on her resume.
In an interview, Neff said Foxworth's services were suspended last October -- along with the services of about five other consultants. Project Ocean has been a "difficult project," Neff said, adding that she has no reason to doubt Foxworth's ability to work on the project. Neff said she and Foxworth know each other through occasional meetings regarding Project Ocean.
"I didn't have any reason to doubt her ability for the work she was hired to do," Neff said in an interview. "I do not feel she didn't deliver, but whether she worked those hours, I can't say."
Neff said "there may have been three to four months" where she signed Foxworth's time sheets, although she could not be sure.
Neff said that in general, her department, the Mayor's Office of Information Services, helped institute a program 18 months ago to qualify vendors and consultants using pre-established requirements and guidelines. Prior to the new process, the process of verifying contractor timesheets "was not being tightly monitored ... but has been corrected and is being followed diligently today," Neff wrote in a July 26 response to Butkovitz regarding his concerns about Foxworth (download PDF from The Philadelphia Inquirer: http://inquirer.philly.com/pdfs/2006/controller_july262006.pdf).
"As far as I know, at the time Ms. Foxworth was hired, the city had no standard practice requiring background checks for consultants," Neff wrote.
Foxworth told The Philadelphia Inquirer in a story published last week that Butkovitz's report was "fictitious and a lie" and said she should not be blamed for problems with Project Ocean, which she had tried to warn the city about.
It was not clear what actions the city may take as a result of the report. Two calls to the mayor's spokesmen were not returned.