Tell your legislators to stop NY's reckless effort to close the hundreds of FIs we work with and instead, enact the CDPAP Accountability Act, sponsored by Senator Gustavo Rivera and Assemblymember Al Stirpe.
Over 1,500 messages have already been sent to the Legislature, but it is not enough.
Why is this so important? NY's effort to replace the hundreds of community-based FIs that we have worked with for years with PPL has been a disaster.
PPL and the Department of Health are telling us that "starting or completing" less than 8% of the almost 300,000 people using CDPAP one-third of the way through this process is a huge success.
Onboarding workers, a job that has always been done by FIs, will have to be done by consumers now. This means consumers will collect I-9 documents, tax documents, and worker agreements. If the consumer can't do this, then PPL says the consumer isn't capable of using CDPAP (even if they have been successfully using the program for years!!).
Consumers calling PPL are routinely hung up on by call center staff.
Other consumers who need to speak a language other than English cannot get translators. One person seeking a Polish translator was told that PPL "does not support Polish." Another seeking a Spanish translator was transferred to an Italian translator instead.
When consumers do actually get through to a PPL support person, they cannot get basic questions like wage and benefit information for PAs answered. Instead, they are met with threats like "Well, if you want to continue to receive services, you need to switch." or, "Well, if your workers want to get paid, they'll switch." The message is clear, "We don't care - you have no choice."
PPL made the private information of every PA in its system, including social security numbers and more, visible to all its subcontractors for at least 10 days. Their solution was to ask their subcontractors, essentially, "Please don't look."
Tens, or even hundreds, of thousands of workers are likely to go without pay or even lose their jobs because of the program mismanagement by PPL.
Tens of thousands, or over 100,000, consumers will likely see services disrupted.
We need to let our elected leaders know:
There is a better choice.
We can still stop this, but to make that happen your Legislators need to hear from you today. We are being told time and again that your Senators and Assemblymembers don't think this is a problem because they are not hearing from you - their constituents. So please, take one minute and email them to let them know that PPL is a disaster for NY and ask them to support the CDPAP Accountability Act, S1189(Rivera) and A2735 (Stirpe) and prioritize it in the budget.
