New York State Health Budget

Former New York Budget Chief Robert Mujica’s Consulting Sparks Revolving Door Questions

New financial disclosures show when Mujica began consulting for the Greater New York Hospital Association.

Chris Bragg · October 29, 2024

Former state budget director Robert Mujica sits at a table with a name card wearing a suit.

Robert Mujica at one of Andrew Cuomo's daily briefings in September 2020. | Lev Radin / Alamy

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Former state budget director Robert Mujica’s consulting work for a powerful hospital lobbying group this year raised questions about his adherence to a law seeking to limit the revolving door between public servants and outside interests.

New financial disclosures show Mujica began consulting for the Greater New York Hospital Association (GNYHA) two months ahead of its multimillion-dollar lobbying blitz to pressure Governor Kathy Hochul to increase Medicaid spending — and before the group held multiple lobbying meetings with Mujica’s former agency, the Division of the Budget.

New York law prohibits recent state employees from being paid to assist behind the scenes in influencing “any case, proceeding, application or other matter” before their former agency. The rule is meant to guard against former state employees using inside information to gain a favorable outcome, and it applies for two years after an employee leaves a state agency.

Mujica was long one of Albany’s most powerful unelected officials, first as chief of staff to multiple Republican Senate majority leaders, then as state budget director for seven years under two Democratic governors. He left Hochul’s administration at the end of 2022. He is now the executive director of the fiscal control board overseeing Puerto Rico’s troubled finances, with a $625,000 salary, and the board allows him to take on outside clients.

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The state’s ethics oversight panel declined to say whether it’s reviewing the Mujica matter, and Mujica did not answer a question about whether he’s heard anything from the agency.

A spokesperson for Mujica’s current employer told New York Focus that he had not used inside information to assist his client.

“Mr. Mujica provided the Greater New York Hospital Association with insight into the current financial conditions of the New York State Government based on publicly available data and his analytical expertise gained through decades of work with budgets,” said Matthias Rieker, the spokesperson for the Financial Oversight and Management Board for Puerto Rico.

Former state employees are prohibited from assisting with the “creation or development” of a “plan or strategy intended to influence a decision by your former agency,” according to the state’s ethics oversight commission.

Kenneth Raske, GNYHA’s president, told New York Focus in January that Mujica’s work was related to the organization’s efforts to convince Hochul’s administration to fund billions more in state Medicaid spending. (Rieker declined to comment on whether this was the case.)

“Look at the cash position of New York state,” Raske said in January, arguing that the state’s extensive cash reserves could fund the spending. “This is, like, astronomical. And we have as an adviser to us a former New York state budget director.”

Rieker said that Mujica had “proactively informed” the ethics commission of his work for the hospital association, but declined to say when — or if the ethics agency granted approval for that work.

The recently released disclosure form shows Mujica began working for the group on September 1, 2023 — soon before the push for the billions began, and ahead of at least two GNYHA lobbying meetings with the Division of the Budget.

Greater New York Hospital Association President Kenneth Raske sits at a table and gestures with a pen in front of an American flag.

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In the final two months of 2023, after Mujica had been retained, at least one in-house lobbyist for GNYHA lobbied a Division of the Budget official, Jillian Kirby, concerning “Medicaid Budget Savings Ideas” and funding for “safety net” hospitals that treat many Medicaid patients.

At least one in-house GNYHA lobbyist also lobbied Division of the Budget director Blake Washington concerning the “state budget,” according to lobbying records.

Raske has said he spent the final two months of 2023 pleading for the administration to adopt his plan to hike Medicaid spending. He framed the plan as being especially needed in communities that rely on struggling safety net hospitals.

“We tried to make the case for two months before (Hochul’s) budget was released,” Raske told New York Focus in January. “We sat down with them. We made the plea.”

Late last year, after Mujica’s hiring, GNYHA and the state healthcare workers union also began a joint multimillion-dollar television ad campaign to boost Medicaid spending.

Hochul proposed $1.2 billion in cuts to Medicaid programs in her 2024 budget proposal, but won only $400 million in cuts in the final state budget passed in April. Medicaid funding for hospital services, meanwhile, increased by $525 million. The final agreement also included a budgetary trick meant to bring in billions of extra Medicaid dollars from the federal government.

GNYHA is the state’s highest-spending lobbying group, boosted by more than $1 billion it reaped from selling off businesses that served as middlemen buyers to its member hospitals.

Fiscal control board disclosures show that over the final four months of 2023, Mujica made somewhere between $100,001 and $1 million working for the hospital association.

Mujica is also consulting for a bidding group headed by Mets owner Steve Cohen, which is pushing for a casino license at a site near Citi Field in Queens.

Unlike GNYHA, the casino bidding group has disclosed Mujica’s work as an expense in state lobbying disclosure filings. Those filings state that for the gaming client, Mujica is being paid $30,000 a month for “civic engagement/community organizing.”

The casino siting matter will be decided by a board associated with the state Gaming Commission, not the Division of the Budget. Mujica’s work for the bidding group was first reported by the Albany Times Union.