New Yorkers Deserve Answers on CDPAP. Albany Isn’t Giving Them Any.
By Drew Warshaw
Miranda is a home care worker in New York. She isn’t asking for much. She just wants to get paid for the work she does day in and out.
“I am gonna lose my house, my car,” she testified to state officials earlier this year. “I can’t feed my kids. I’m freaking out and all they say is ‘wait till next week’.”
Miranda isn’t alone. Across New York State — from the Bronx to Buffalo, from Queens to Johnstown — thousands of home care workers and disabled and elderly New Yorkers they care for are living through a slow-motion catastrophe.
Albany’s response? A shrug.
For decades, the Consumer Directed Personal Assistance Program gave hundreds of thousands of disabled and elderly New Yorkers the power and dignity of hiring and directing their own caregivers inside their homes rather than being warehoused in institutions. It worked precisely because it put people in charge of their own care.
Then, in 2024, the State handed a private equity-owned company called Public Partnerships LLC (known as, “PPL”) a billion dollar, taxpayer-funded contract, through a process that is now reportedly under federal investigation, to replace — overnight — a network of trusted local administrative agencies as the single, exclusive payroll and benefits administrator for the entire program. One year later, the results speak for themselves — or rather, they would, if those in power were willing to listen.
According to data published by the State Department of Health and by community-based organizations, at least 150,000 home care workers and 80,000 consumers have fled CDPAP since the transition. The Fiscal Policy Institute has found that whatever cost savings the state is claiming come not from rooting out fraud — the stated justification for the overnight overhaul — but from enrollment decline. In other words: we’re spending less because fewer sick, elderly and disabled people are getting the care they need.
That’s not savings. That’s abandonment.
The human toll is staggering. Workers like Sheila, a personal assistant in Queens, lost not just wages but an entire way of life. Her old administrative agency offered decent paid holidays and vacation. PPL offers just six or seven days per year. “That is the difference,” Sheila testified, “between being working class and now working poor.” James, a parent and personal assistant in Queens, calculated that PPL’s systematic miscounting of his hours costs him roughly $5,600 a year in lost wages — money that should be legally protected under New York’s wage parity laws.
Consumers aren’t faring better. Nearly two out of every three CDPAP participants surveyed say PPL has made it harder for them to live independently. Tabitha, a Manhattan consumer who relies on a ventilator, spent months fighting to ensure her aides could be paid for hands-on training shifts — the kind of training that teaches someone how to safely move a person, position a wheelchair, help a person breathe. PPL’s idea of “training,” she learned, was watching their app tutorials. Dana, a parent looking for home care help, was told that PPL’s onboarding process was so complex that a prospective aide simply gave up and found another job. “Every aide that leaves,” Dana wrote, “is a death knell.”
Meanwhile, the Governor’s administration claims PPL saves New Yorkers more than a billion dollars. They won’t show the math. No public audits. No detailed financial reports. No independent verification. Just unverified claims while the program crumbles.
This is what happens when public money flows into a private black box with no strings attached and no one watching the door.
As a candidate for New York State Comptroller, we need to speak plainly about this: this is exactly the kind of situation the Comptroller’s office exists to address. The Comptroller has audit authority. The Comptroller can demand records, can launch investigations, and can compel transparency from state contractors. While the legislature may have removed the comptroller’s office from reviewing the process to procure the PPL contract in the first place, it did not remove the comptroller’s office from auditing the contract once it has been put in place. Yet the current comptroller refuses to act. He has had a year to act — to audit the program and PPL’s performance.
He hasn’t. I would.
On day one, I would launch a comprehensive audit of PPL’s finances, business controls, payroll systems, customer service performance, compliance record, and ownership structure. New Yorkers have a right to know where their money is going, whether the fraud PPL was hired to prevent has actually been curtailed, and why the savings we were promised look suspiciously like cuts to care.
But audits take time. That’s why this year’s budget must also include the Home Care Transparency Act, legislation that would require PPL to regularly and publicly report how CDPAP dollars are spent — quarterly and annually, covering finances, payroll, consumer access, and fraud prevention. This is the most basic accountability measure imaginable and would not even be necessary if the Comptroller were doing his job. If PPL’s performance is as good as the Governor says, they have nothing to hide. And if it isn’t, New Yorkers deserve to know so we can fix it.
The Comptroller’s office is not an accounting department that follows the orders of the Executive. It is an independent financial watchdog — one with teeth, if the person in that office chooses to use them. We can’t treat the oversight of a program serving some of our most vulnerable neighbors as someone else’s problem. Disabled New Yorkers waiting for aides who never come. Elderly New Yorkers pushed into nursing homes against their will. Workers going weeks without pay, asking their churches to help them buy groceries.
These are not accounting abstractions. These are lives. These are New Yorkers.
It is time the Comptroller acts like it. It is time he uses the power he already has. Not point fingers at others, not shrug and pretend there’s nothing he can do. He must demand answers, follow the money, and fight for the people this program was built to serve.
Drew Warshaw is a Democratic candidate for New York State Comptroller.
