How Top N.Y. Officials Helped a Lobbyist Cash In on State Government

In the midst of the pandemic in early 2021, New York state officials were hashing out how to build a mobile app to display users’ vaccination status when an unfamiliar face suddenly started joining the conference calls.

The new participant, Michael Balboni, was a former state lawmaker and appointee of three previous governors, and more recently had been working as a lobbyist in Albany for Google, Oracle and other prominent clients. He was also a close friend of a top official in the budget office, the agency overseeing the app's rollout.

Soon after, one of the contractors overseeing the app’s development, Deloitte Consulting, signed Mr. Balboni up as a consultant, then as a lobbyist, paying him more than $300,000 over the next two years.

It was just one example of how the top state budget official, Sandra L. Beattie, and another high-ranking state leader aided Mr. Balboni and his lobbying firm, RedLand Strategies, according to a letter by New York State’s inspector general, Lucy Lang.

The letter, which was sent to the state ethics commission and has not been previously reported, details how the relationships between the officials and the lobbyist were at the heart of a state investigation that Ms. Lang’s office completed in March.

Throughout its 16 pages, it offers glimpses of the inner-workings of high-dollar state contracting during the desperate years of the pandemic — and how two officials apparently helped a savvy political operator make the most of it.