Prompted by a New York Focus article last week, Governor Kathy Hochul’s administration is seeking investigations into the mysterious funding behind a $10 million campaign targeting the governor’s plan to remake New York’s home care industry.
As first reported by Gothamist, State Health Commissioner James McDonald sent a letter on Friday to Attorney General Letitia James and Sanford Berland, executive director of the state Commission on Ethics and Lobbying in Government, urging a formal inquiry into “what appears to be a concerted effort to shield who is bankrolling a lobbying campaign to spread misinformation and lies” about the governor’s transition plan.
Hochul is facing fierce opposition to her overhaul of New York’s popular but pricey home care program, which allows people with chronic medical issues to choose their own caregivers and pay them through Medicaid. McDonald’s letter takes aim at one of the program’s most vocal critics — The Alliance to Protect Home Care.
The Alliance is a social welfare nonprofit that spent $10.6 million last year — the second-biggest lobbying campaign of the year — on a public relations campaign alleging Hochul’s plan puts “lives at risk.” However, the source of that money is unclear: the Alliance’s donations are being routed through another nonprofit, created on the same day as the Alliance, called United CDPAP.
As a result, only United CDPAP — not the individual donors — appears in the Alliance’s lobbying disclosure reports.
The lack of disclosure could run afoul of state lobbying regulations, which prohibits the use of a pass-through entity to hide sources of funding.
“We urge you to investigate United CDPAP, Inc. to determine whether its sources of funding are legal and to ensure that these shady entities are exposed to sunlight,” McDonald wrote.
McDonald’s letter also accuses United CDPAP of failing to register as required with the attorney general’s charities bureau. An online search of the office’s registry turns up no record of the group, though the Alliance believes that United CDPAP has registered.
“Our understanding is they’ve followed all the appropriate reporting and disclosure rules,” the Alliance’s executive director, Bryan O’Malley, told reporters Monday, according to Gothamist. “And that’s really where it is. I can’t say anything more about a separate organization.”
In his letter, McDonald also questioned whether a third nonprofit, Consumer Directed Action of New York, had run afoul of state law governing nonprofits by “hiring its own executive director” — O’Malley — to run the Alliance.
At least one of the requested investigations won’t be happening anytime soon. James’s office told Gothamist that it cannot currently probe the matter because it would be a conflict of interest. That’s because James’s office is already defending the Hochul administration in lawsuits filed by home care companies.
The McDonald letter also seeks an investigation by the state ethics enforcement agency, which has declined to comment on the matter. McDonald alleges United CDPAP violated state law by failing to file semi-annual lobbying reports, and that United CDPAP should have disclosed its donors.
The Hochul administration argues that the $9 billion Consumer Directed Personal Assistance Program has been riven with waste and fraud. Under the program, the state has used over 600 separate “fiscal intermediary” companies to serve as middlemen administrators, performing tasks for caregivers like wage and benefits processing.
Last spring, Hochul pushed language through the state budget that would replace those intermediaries with a single statewide one. Hochul said the shift would save taxpayers $500 million annually, and in September, after a hurried bidding process, her administration awarded the contract to Public Partnerships, LLC.
O’Malley previously told New York Focus that United CDPAP was a nonprofit that supports the Alliance’s mission, but didn’t address questions about the routing of its funds.
In its incorporation document, United CDPAP described its purpose as educating the public about the “importance of quality home care for seniors and disabled residents” and advocating for laws protecting quality home care. The group does not appear to have a website.