TIMING EYED IN KAT PAYDAY
Staff checks go out as hosp donation in
Campaign staff for Gov. Hochul had their post-election salaries effectively covered by the hospital industry — even as its top lobbying group pursued preferential policies in her proposed state budget.
A total of 43 campaign staffers began getting paid by the state Democratic Party on the same day the Greater New York Hospital Association gave $125,000 as part of nearly $1 million in gifts last year to the party’s so-called “housekeeping” account, The Buffalo News revealed Tuesday.
Good-government groups say the unusual arrangement, while not illegal, shows how election law allows murky arrangements between elected officials, state parties and powerful interest groups.
“It’s just Gilded Age politics, and New York’s elected government is just completely submerged by dark money and payto-play,” John Kaehny, executive director of Reinvent Albany, said on Tuesday.
Money began flowing
Existing rules limit contributions to elected officials but not the housekeeping accounts that are intended to help parties and legislative campaign committees run their day-to-day expenses.
“The housekeeping account is the loophole that swallows New York’s already too weak campaign contribution limits,” said Blair Horner, executive director of the New York Public Interest Research Group.
Not a single staffer was paid by the state Democratic Party housekeeping account last year — at least until the November election ended and money began flowing to people who worked on the Hochul campaign.
Hochul staffers made even more money from the party than the campaign itself — with the total costs increasing from roughly $250,000 a month to about $363,000 — while the campaign continued paying for ex-staffer health care costs through the end of 2022, according to The Buffalo News.
State Party Chairman Jay Jacobs did not respond to a request for comment on Tuesday.
He told The Buffalo News that the influx of hospital cash and outgoing payments to ex-staff was “strictly coincidental.”
Hochul’s ex-campaign manager Brian Lenzmeier made $18,000 in his first month on the party payroll compared with the $12,100 per month he made while overseeing the campaign in the closest gubernatorial election in a generation.
And a final $125,000 donation from the Greater New York Hospital Association arrived in party housekeeping coffers on the same day the ex-campaign staffers began getting paid from that same account.
The hospital industry meanwhile had billions of budgetary asks for the governor, who held a mystery meeting last September with a well-connected donor tied to the health care industry after he gave heavily to her campaign.
GNYHA spokesman Brian Conway declined to answer questions Tuesday about why the group gave so heavily to the state party and whether the largess was requested by the governor.