Hurricane Sandy didn’t just tear up New York’s coast. It also revealed that the state’s Office of Emergency Management is its own disaster zone.
Days after the storm, the agency’s boss, Steven Kuhr, was axed for sending an emergency crew to clean his Long Island driveway. But just two weeks later, as The Post’s Susan Edelman reported last Sunday, it was pumping more money into his pockets — via a $415,000 contract with a company he founded and that his wife still ran.
Kuhr swore he had divested from Strategic Emergency Group when he got his government job. But his wife owns and operates it as CEO from their Northport home.
After The Post contacted state officials about the story, Gov. Cuomo voided the contract and sicced the state inspector general on Kuhr’s case.
That still leaves plenty of questions, though: Why did Kuhr’s business face so little scrutiny when he was hired by the state? Why did it take questioning from The Post to uncover what he did?
And just how jumbled up is the state’s emergency-management office?
These questions took on added urgency last week, after a veteran federal official hired by OEM to help run Sandy procurement efforts revealed that he was let go for whistleblowing.
Thomas Sadowski joined OEM after Sandy as a consultant and auditor. The Albany Times-Union reports that he claims to have discovered millions of dollars worth of equipment was “nearly impossible to track once put into the field” — and OEM was “unsure what it owned, leased or lost during the immediate response” to Sandy.
There were further oversight problems involving state credit cards and questionable purchases, which Sadowski noted in a report to his superiors.
His reward: He was escorted out of OEM headquarters. State officials then shuffled around his report without action — “they wanted to sweep things under the table,” he says — until reporters made a stink.
Now we hear the IG is on the case, and Cuomo hired an auditor to probe Sadowski’s claims. That’s an improvement, but it shouldn’t take digging by journalists to bring about accountability at OEM.
Twice in one week the storm-tossed state agency embarrassed itself, giving New Yorkers good reason to worry about what might happen when the next storm hits.