State officials met with the ultimate winner of a $1 billion Medicaid contract two weeks before the Legislature authorized bidding on the job as part of the state’s 2024-25 budget, an email obtained by the Empire Center shows.

The email, obtained under the state Freedom of Information Law, sheds further light on the Hochul administration’s much-debated push to overhaul the rapidly growing Consumer Directed Personal Assistance Program (CDPAP) – and to name Public Partnerships LLC as its new statewide manager.

In the email, dated April 4, 2024, the Health Department’s No. 2 Medicaid official, Amanda Lothrop, invited representatives of Public Partnership, known as PPL, to an on-line meeting with her and three other state officials.

“Thanks so much for taking time to connect,” Lothrop wrote. “We look forward to continuing the discussion about your FMS experience and our NY considerations.” 

FMS is short for “financial management services,” a term that includes the type of work PPL now provides for CDPAP under a five-year contract worth just over $1 billion.

CDPAP is a form of home-based care for Medicaid recipients with disabilities. The patients choose their own caregivers, who can be friends or family members, and Medicaid pays their wages. It has been one of the fastest-growing parts of the Medicaid budget, covering some 280,000 people at a cost of $11 billion as of last year.

The state formerly employed hundreds of companies known as “fiscal intermediaries” to handle payroll processing and other
CDPAP-related duties. In the name of cutting costs, Governor Hochul and the Legislature decided last year to consolidate those administrative functions under a single contractor.

Lawmakers approved the consolidation plan along with the rest of the budget in mid-April 2024. The Health Department opened bidding in June and named PPL as the winner in September. Despite multiple lawsuits seeking to block the transition, PPL began taking over in April 2025.

That was roughly one year after the consolidation concept first emerged during closed-door budget negotiations.

A week before Lothrop’s email, on March 29, Politico reported that New York officials were considering switching to a single statewide fiscal intermediary. A week after the email, on April 11, the New York Post reported that the statewide job might be awarded to PPL without competitive bidding.

On April 19, 2024, legislation authorizing the consolidation plan as a last-minute budget amendment in the Legislature – part of a larger bill on health-related matters. It passed both houses later that same day, leaving virtually no time for public comment on its details.

The final plan did require the Health Department to solicit competing proposals, but on limited terms. Among other requirements, applicants had to show that they already had a similar statewide contract in another state, a rule that eliminated all but a few companies.

At a Senate hearing in August of this year, witnesses said they had heard rumblings that PPL would win the bid since early in the process. A co-chair of the hearing, Sen. James Skoufis of Orange County, displayed what he said was draft budget language that would have awarded the contract to PPL without bidding at all.

When pressed by Skoufis, a PPL representative, Patty Byrnes, testified that the company had never discussed CDPAP with state officials before passage of the budget. In a letter the next week, however, Byrnes acknowledged that the she had been wrong, and that company had indeed been in “general communications with DOH staff” in “late March and early April.”

Also at the hearing, Health Commissioner James McDonald testified that he had no “direct knowledge” of any early contact with PPL. The newly released email indicates that two high-ranking members of his department – Lothrop and Medicaid Director Amir Bassiri – were part of the April 4 meeting.

Also listed as attending the meeting were two advisers to Governor Hochul: Angela Profeta, the governor’s deputy secretary for health, and Jack Marzulli, the former assistant secretary for health, who has since left state government.

The Empire Center obtained a copy of the email from the governor’s office under a Sept. 8 Freedom of Information Law request. A request submitted to the Health Department is still pending.

In October, the center filed appeals arguing that the state was improperly delaying both requests. The governor’s office answered that appeal by committing to produce its records by early December. Its response consisted of the single April 4 email. The Health Department has not yet committed to a firm release date.