New York Governor Kathy Hochul paid a New Jersey-based company $637 million for COVID tests during the Omicron wave.
The company, Digital Gadgets, received up to $13 per unit – some companies charge as low as $5.
The company is tied to almost $300,000 in donations to Hochul’s campaign.
Gov. Kathy Hochul had New Yorkers pay twice as much for COVID tests from a company tied to nearly $300,000 in donations to her campaign compared to other state vendors, a new report details, raising fresh concerns of alleged pay-to-play behavior ahead of the Nov. 8 election.
“Whether it was pay-to-play or total incompetence – New York taxpayers and then the federal taxpayers got massively ripped off,” John Kaehny, of the good-government group Reinvent Albany, said of the Digital Gadgets deal funded by New York taxpayers with the help of federal relief aid.
