When Will ACS Be Fixed?

Once you get over the sticker shock from the news that the city’s paying up to $550 an hour to the consultants probing the city’s Administration for Children’s Services, consider the big question: When does ACS get set right?

Kudos to WNBC-TV for breaking the news of the fees to Kroll Associates, under an open-ended contract that could continue for years.

And shame to Mayor de Blasio for making this necessary.

The mayor ignored years of reports of trouble at ACS from the city and state comptrollers, the Department of Investigation and Public Advocate Letitia James.

Warning after warning of pervasive mismanagement went unheeded, as de Blasio stuck by ACS Commissioner Gladys Carrión. Even a series of front-page headlines about small children dead on ACS’ watch didn’t bring action.

Finally, the state Office of Children and Family Services intervened, ordering an outside monitor for the agency. Even then, the mayor tried to pretend it was his idea.

The state chose Kroll — though City Hall, for the record, negotiated the contract for payment. (Kroll’s apparently giving a 20 percent discount on its usual fees.)

Meanwhile, Carrión announced her resignation — though she stayed on the job for weeks afterward. The mayor eventually named David Hansell, an experienced technocrat, as her replacement.

We have high hopes Hansell can turn the agency around — especially with Kroll working the problem from the outside.

But the public deserves to know what’s changing, and how fast. And when the experts expect the nearly $3 billion agency to be fixed, its culture of dysfunction replaced with one of competence.

Children’s lives are at stake.