Those looking for evidence of the Tweed Trust’s aversion to accountability might want to run their eyes over a letter that the chairwoman of the City Council’s education committee, Eva Moskowitz of Manhattan, fired off to Schools Chancellor Klein last week. In it, Ms. Moskowitz takes the former trustbuster to task for failure to comply fully with the School Construction Accountability Act, Local Law 24, which passed in April over Mayor Bloomberg’s veto.

The bill, aimed at strengthening oversight of the troubled School Construction Authority, requires Mr. Klein to report quarterly to the City Council as to school construction projects — a reasonable enough requirement now that the council has been charged with approving the school system’s $7 billion, fiveyear capital budget. However, in the first of these reports, the chancellor has failed to live up to the law’s requirements, according to Ms. Moskowitz’s letter. The law requires seven categories of information on ongoing projects, yet a number of these categories receive short shrift, she avers.

The law requires a “clear explanation” of the reasons for any actual or projected cost overrun of 10% or more. According to Ms. Moskowitz’s letter: “Renovations at Curtis HS are 455.4% over budget,” “Structural repairs at P.S. 83 are 187.9% over budget,” and “work at I.S. 14 is “132% over budget.” Still, “The Quarterly Report provides no explanation.”

The law also requires a clear explanation of the reasons for any delay of 60 days or more of any part of a project. Again, to go to the letter: “Exterior work on P.S. 29 is 231 days overdue” and “Work on I.S. 319 is…148 days delayed.” Again, no explanation is forthcoming.

The seventh category of information required by the law is, “the name, office phone number and e-mail address of the project manager.” According to Ms. Moskowitz’s letter, “The Quarterly Report provides no project manager contact information for any project.”

This is all the more glaring given that the School Construction Authority has a history — it overran its budget by almost $3 billion in 2001 and had to stop construction on 19 schools — and the oversight the City Council is trying to provide is obviously needed. “The work product was utterly unprofessional and unacceptable,” Ms. Moskowitz told The New York Sun yesterday.” It’s a two-page law. It’s not very complicated.” Ms. Moskowitz’s office has even whipped up a model quarterly report, with model one and two sentence descriptions of reasons projects might be over budget or behind schedule. “Any good manager of these projects needs to know this information,” Ms. Moskowitz said. “Aren’t they troubled that there are projects there that are 100% over budget?” Ms. Moskowitz has asked Chancellor Klein to submit a revised report, along her guidelines, by July 1.