While the LA Unified School District payroll mess is one sorry affair, what is even worse is what has happened in Philadelphia. This from a 20 August 2007 press release from Philadelphia's City Controller Alan Butkovitz:

Since the late 1980â¿¿s the City of Philadelphia has spent an estimated $35 -$40 million on four separate attempts to replace its 30 year old Customer Billing Information System used for generating monthly water bills. All of these attempts have failed. The City is currently in the process of its fifth attempt, the â¿¿newâ¿¿ Project Ocean, at an additional cost of another 6.7 million dollars.

For a full report on the situation, you can go here.

ComputerWorld has good historical coverage of the issue beginning with a recent story posted here.

Controller Butkovitz did say that:

I want to put the City on notice that any sign of failure in the future, will trigger an immediate hold by me on future payments to this and any vendor involved in this project.

One can only hope - but given past failures I wouldn't bet on it.