Spectrum News 1: CDPAP: Company awarded state contract admits to 'conversations' with state officials after denying them under oath
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BY Jack Arpey New York State
PUBLISHED 9:18 PM ET Sep. 05, 2025
It was revealed Friday that Public Partnerships LLC admitted in a letter to state lawmakers that a key aspect of their testimony during at a legislative hearing two weeks ago looking into New York’s troubled CDPAP transition was inaccurate.
Patty Byrnes, PPL's vice president for government relations, had testified under oath during questioning from Senate Investigations & Government Operations Committee Chair James Skoufis on Aug. 21 that there were “no conversations” between the company and state Department of Health officials in the weeks leading up to the passage of last year’s state budget and the revamp of the Consumer Directed Personal Assistance Program.
She now says that there were conversations, but details on those talks or what if any impact they had on the process remains unclear.
The state consolidated management of the once unwieldy Medicaid home assistance program into a single fiscal intermediary as part of last year’s budget process. In addition to various logistical snags, the transition down from hundreds of individuals companies has been plagued by accusations that the process was set up by the Hochul administration to favor PPL.
“There’s a lot of smoke here that is very concerning,” Sen. Skoufis said in an interview Friday afternoon.
At the August hearing, Skoufis questioned Byrnes over those early contacts, sharing draft legislation from last year’s budget process from Hochul's office naming PPL as the chosen company to oversee the program. A separate draft named a second company, Maximus.
“When was the first communication between your company, your executives, and state government officials about consolidating fiscal intermediaries in New York?” he asked.
“There was no conversations, we were just following the legislative process,” Byrnes replied.
In a letter dated Aug. 29 and addressed to Skoufis and Health Committee Chair State Sen. Gustavo Rivera, Byrnes amended that testimony, acknowledging that there were discussions between the company and state officials, but insisted she was unaware of them.
“I was asked several questions about the existence and timing of communications between DOH and PPL,” she wrote. “I now understand that my responses to lines of questioning by Senators Skoufis and Rhoads, who asked me whether there had been communications between DOH and PPL before the enactment of the budget, were not accurate. There were general communications with DOH staff (of which I was unaware at the time I testified) in late March and early April when NY was considering the possibility of moving to a single FI program.”
Skoufis said he was “flabbergasted” by Byrnes’s initial testimony in light of the draft budget language, and called the admission “disturbing” given Byrnes’s role.
“How is it that your primary point of contact to deal with the Legislature, to deal with inter-gov, wasn’t aware of these highly important, highly relevant conversations which you are now telling us did take place?” he asked.
Skoufis declined to speculate as to whether Byrnes truly wasn’t aware of the discussions, but said the “inappropriate” timing of the talks adds fuel to speculation that the governor's office “steered” the bid process toward PPL before a formal bidding process could take place, a process which the Senate advocated for during budget negotiations.
“Now we know these conversations are taking place, I want to know were there other companies that the department of health was reaching out to around that time to have similar conversations, or was PPL the only one?” he said.
At the hearing, Health Commissioner Dr. James McDonald claimed to be unaware of the draft, and Gov. Kathy Hochul’s office continues to insist the process was fair, sending Spectrum News 1 an identical statement to the one received on the day of the hearing:
“The shift to a single fiscal intermediary went through a standard procurement process at DOH, following the law passed by the State Legislature – and no State officials knew who would be selected until the procurement process was complete. The bottom line here is that New York saved CDPAP from a fiscal crisis by removing hundreds of wasteful administrative middlemen – including one who recently pled guilty to a $68 million fraud scheme,” a spokesperson said.
Allegations that the process was rigged failed to stand up in court earlier this year, but Skoufis stressed the letter only added to lawmakers’ determination to dig further into the issue and next investigative steps will be forthcoming.
“A letter that describes these conversations as ‘general conversations' without any addition information — which by the way if these conversations were innocent in nature I would assume that the context, the nature of those conversations would have been provided. Given that it wasn’t, it leads me to have further concerns that perhaps these weren’t innocent conversations,” he said, adding: “I and Sen. Rivera, we’re meeting with Senate leadership in the coming days to determine what exactly those next steps are, but there will be next steps.”
Skoufis added that the saga has been a lesson in omitting comptroller oversight when it comes to state contracts.
Spectrum News 1 reached out to PPL with specific questions regarding the nature of the conversations between PPL and DOH as well as how the inaccurate testimony came to be, but a spokesperson directed us back to Byrnes’ letter.
The CDPAP saga has generated strong reactions among advocates and individuals who use the program. Caring Majority Rising, an organization of older and disabled New Yorkers, family caregivers and home care workers, claimed the correction was evidence the process was ‘rigged.’
“These new revelations demand immediate action from Albany. Senators Rivera and Skoufis must subpoena all communications between PPL and DOH to uncover the full extent of the corruption behind the bidding process,” said Political Director Ilana Berger. “Meanwhile, Governor Hochul must immediately restore trusted local providers and provide consumers with reliable alternatives as PPL’s scandal-ridden contract grows increasingly untenable. If she refuses to act, legislators must step in to protect New Yorkers from this shameful betrayal of public trust.”