Congressman Ritchie Torres Raises Alarm on New York State’s Mismanagement of Early Intervention Program

On Sunday, Congressman Ritchie Torres (NY-15) wrote to New York Governor Kathy Hochul, Commissioner of New York State Department of Health James V. McDonald, and Director of the New York Bureau of Early Intervention Raymond Pierce regarding the catastrophic mismanagement of the New York State’s Early Intervention Program.

On Monday morning, Rep. Torres hosted a press conference in the Bronx and was joined by early intervention providers Tracy Harris and Lacie Schweigart. Videos of this morning’s press conference can be found here.

The full letter reads as follows (PDF available here):

“I am writing to express alarm about your catastrophic mismanagement of the Early Intervention Program (EIP), which serves the most vulnerable children in New York State—children under the age of 3, infants and toddlers, with disabilities and developmental delays.

“According to the Office of Special Education Programs (OSED) in the US Department of Education, New York has the single worst early intervention program in the nation, ranking 50 out of 50. The New York Early Intervention Program (NYEIP) has been plagued by decades of disinvestment—as well as decades of depressed reimbursement rates. Working-class EI providers, who have gone two decades without reimbursement, have been pleading for an 11% reimbursement rate increase, only to be repeatedly rebuffed by your Administration. The chronic under-investment in EI and the chronic under-reimbursement of EI providers have led to severe workforce shortages, which in turn have led to an ever-expanding waiting list for early intervention services. There are presently 10,000 children with disabilities on the waiting list for early intervention. Since 2020, the waiting list has grown by a staggering 500%.

“Even though the broken system of early intervention long predates your time in office, you have broken the broken system to an extent not seen before, plunging the nation’s worst EIP into a state of complete chaos, confusion, and crisis. The Governor’s mismanagement of early intervention has been destabilizing to both cash-strapped counties (as well as cities like New York) and working-class providers— destabilizing to cash-strapped counties because the Governor has withheld millions of dollars in revenues from the covered lives assessments; destabilizing to working-class providers because the Governor has poorly managed the transition to a new software system known as EI-Hub.

“The transition from NYEIS to EI-HUB—which began on October 14, 2023–has been so poorly managed by the Hochul Administration that it has led to untold service disruptions and payroll disruptions. There are families whose disabled children have not gotten federally mandated services. There are working-class providers who have not gotten paid. Imagine being a working-class provider who is unable to get paid and therefore unable to afford the cost of transportation and housing; the cost of gasoline; the cost of rent, maintenance, mortgage, and utilities; the cost of Thanksgiving in November and the holidays in December. The economic insecurity the Hochul Administration has brought to working-class families and providers is hard to overstate.

“The NYS Comptroller had wisely warned the Hochul Administration not to prematurely decommission the old system, NYEIS, without ensuring that the new system, EI-HUB, was fully operational and ready to go. The Governor ignored the Comptroller’s warning, causing the loss of services for disabled children and the loss of economic security for working-class providers. The Comptroller had the wisdom to predict a crisis but unfortunately for New York families and providers, you did not have the wisdom to prevent one, despite having been warned.

“In 2020, the State of New York awarded Public Consulting Group (PCG) a $53 million contract to implement the transition to EI-HUB. PCG has fundamentally failed to ensure that EI-HUB is fully operational, despite having four years to set the stage for a smooth launch. The concerns about PCG are hardly confined to a single program. The executives of Public Consulting Group (PCG), which is mismanaging the early intervention program, has an ownership interest in Public Partnership LLC (PPL), which is in danger of mismanaging the $9 billion CDPAP program. When seeking the contract for CDPAP, PPL committed a lie of omission, neglecting to disclose its financial ties to PCG, which plays a contractual role in the “Medicaid reform” process that led to the selection of PPL, the very entity PCG co- owns. The conflicts of interest here are as staggering as the billions of dollars at stake.

“I am calling upon you to fix the broken system of early intervention, which you have broken further; to radically reduce the workforce shortages and waiting lists that have gotten worse under your watch; to stabilize working-class EI providers with an 11% reimbursement rate increase; and to stabilize cash- strapped counties with their fair share of revenues from the covered lives assessment.

“The time has come for you to end your dubious distinction of presiding over America’s worst early intervention program.”