MTA hire’s bad DOE record

The Summer of Hell just got worse.

David Ross, the director of contracts for the city Department of Education since 2004 who oversaw millions of dollars in wasteful and fraudulent school contracts, is headed for the MTA.

Despite a track record that critics call disastrous, Ross is joining the embattled transit agency as chief procurement officer, The Post has learned.

“He’s a nice guy, but he didn’t man- age the procurement rigorously enough,” said Patrick Sullivan, an exmember of the DOE’s Panel for Educational Policy. “As a result, there were cases of fraud that could have been prevented.”

Under Ross, the DOE in 2009 approved a $54 million four-year contract extension with Future Technology Associates despite many red flags. In 2011, investigators found the firm had ripped off the city for at least $6.5 million with the help of a DOE official who was romantically involved with an FTA co-owner.

“David was too quick to give the benefit of doubt to questionable vendors and to overlook poor practices by his staff,” Sullivan said.

The MTA said it “conducted a thorough and exhaustive search that resulted in the hiring of a career professional with a history of hard work serving NYC’s schoolchildren,” and formerly as an MTA operations officer.