Bronx Rep. and potential gubernatorial hopeful Ritchie Torres touted himself as a critic of shady Albany politics Tuesday while calling for a probe into Gov. Kathy Hochul’s massive $9 billion home-care program.
But the outspoken congressman — zeroing in on a change Hochul made to the program — refused to criticize a powerful state healthcare union that heavily advocated for the revision.
Torres called for state and federal authorities to investigate Hochul’s Department of Health over accusations it illegally steered a lucrative contract to a firm involving its Consumer Directed Personal Assistance Program, or CDPAP.
CDPAP had been operating with the help of hundreds of private businesses and nonprofits working as payroll agents between Medicaid and the caregivers — with minimal oversight.
The change pushed by Hochul was designed to get rid of the hordes of unchecked middlemen and instead hire a single company picked by the DOH to consolidate the work and hopefully end potential fraud.
But as The Post previously reported, the state was accused of rigging the bidding process to award the contract to Public Partnerships LLC, or PPL. The winning company’s competitors have made the claims alleging impropriety.
Subsequent reporting also showed that the powerful and well-funded healthcare union 1199SEIU allegedly played a hand in the overall process.
The union worked behind the scenes to guarantee that the prospective bid-winner would unionize the nearly 250,000 personal-care aides involved in the program and advocate for increasing their wages.
“I’m not interested in a popularity contest,” said Torres, who has been on a recent tear against Hochul, to reporters Tuesday. “I’m not an Albany insider. I’m not a creature of Albany. I’m not here to go along to get along. I’m here to be a teller of hard truths.
“The governor is effectively creating a state-sanctioned monopoly for CDPAP, and she assures us that the state-sanctioned monopoly will lead to cost savings for taxpayers,” Torres said.
“But the nature of a monopoly is not to cut costs or to contain cost, the nature of a monopoly is to raise prices, because that’s what monopolies do.”
Yet the congressman was less eager to levy his criticisms and extend his call for an investigation into 1199SEIU’s alleged actions.
“No, we’re calling for an investigation into the whole administration’s handling of a $9 billion contract,” he said.
A rep for 1199SEIU didn’t respond to a request for comment. The union’s reps have previously expressed clear support for Hochul’s changes.
The middlemen firms, called fiscal intermediaries, have spent millions of dollars trying to blow up PPL’s contract since April and are now relying on a number of ongoing lawsuits to undo the deal.
A rep for Hochul told The Post in a statement Tuesday, “If Ritchie Torres had done some basic research or read the New York Post, he’d know that hundreds of unnecessary, administrative middlemen are exactly what caused taxpayer spending on CDPAP to increase by billions of dollars.
“Now, along with his many false claims, he wants to protect the middlemen instead of protecting the taxpayers and the home care users who need CDPAP to be financially sustainable.
“He’s just not making any sense on this one. We’ll continue to stay focused on delivering a stronger and more effective CDPAP as part of the transition that will take effect by April 2025,” the representative said.
