New York Dems have their own ugly take on Rahm Emanuel’s infamous dictum “You never let a serious crisis go to waste”: They seize on crises to get away with waste.
For proof, look no further than their outrageous COVID boondoggles.
First up? A damning new audit from the City Comptroller’s office reveals that, under then-Mayor Bill de Blasio, a medical staffing and services company won a contract allowing it to take taxpayers to the cleaners as it overstaffed vaccination sites and overcharged for the shots themselves.
Executive Medical Services charged as much as $2,423 for some jabs — and an insane $937 for some COVID tests.
That’s because the city’s $390 million deal with the firm was set up to encourage precisely this behavior.
That’s more than poor oversight. It’s a blatant invitation to grab as much cash as possible before the gravy train leaves the station.
But it lines up 100% with what was going on at the state level.
Such as Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s much-hyped Excelsior Pass vaccine-tracking app, part of his Orwellian social-control measures in response to the pandemic.
Besides recalling the worst excesses of authoritarian China, the app — which was pointless from the start, as most New Yorkers simply used phone-taken snaps of their vax cards for proof of vaccination — cost taxpayers $64 million over the last two years, far beyond the Cuomo administration’s initial (clearly fake) estimate of $2.5 million.
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The cost balloon was driven in part by hefty payouts to topline consultants, payouts now under investigation by the state’s Inspector General.
Don’t hold your breath on Cuomo suffering any repercussions.
That eye-watering price tag and shady record were doubtless why now-Gov. Kathy Hochul was so whisper-quiet about setting a sunset date for it.
Not until July 28, though; gotta squeeze every last penny out of the rubes . . . er, hardworking citizens!
And Hochul knows from squeezing.
She’s the one who set up a sweetheart deal for major campaign donor Charlie Tebele, under which New York paid $637 million in no-bid contracts for COVID tests from Tebele’s firm — contracts enabled by special provisions in Hochul’s endlessly extended COVID “emergency” order.
Empire Staters ended up paying Tebele more than twice what other states paid for the exact same brand of test.
More than enough to bring a tear of pride to Rahm’s eyes (he’s a Chicago Democrat, after all).
But a grave injury to taxpayers and their misplaced trust in New York’s public “servants.”
