In the three months between November 2020 and January 2021, 1,118 people — an astounding number — died in Colorado’s nursing homes from COVID-19.
Those nursing homes had been provided with faulty COVID tests from a $90 million, no-bid contract given to a start-up company funded by someone who contributed to Gov. Jared Polis’ political campaign. Last month, Democrats on the legislative audit committee refused to permit even a discussion of an investigation into that scandalous and deadly situation. They want it to remain swept under the rug.
I am willing to bet you have heard more about opt-in plasticware at restaurants than you have about this scandal. Here is the background.
The rate of nursing home bed deaths in our state from Thanksgiving to Christmas 2020 — — was double the national average. Our nursing homes became COVID killing fields unparalleled in all of America. One possible reason for the runaway number of deaths, as uncovered by Markus in his investigation, was the complete failure of the testing system adopted by Polis’ health department.
Shortly after Colorado and the world were beset by the pandemic, Polis appointed Kacey Wulff — his hand-picked senior advisor for COVID-19 Response — to secure reliable COVID testing for the most vulnerable Coloradans. Gary Lauder — of the Estee Lauder cosmetic dynasty — was an investor on a COVID-19 start-up called Curative. He was also a decade-long friend and supporter of Polis. Curative was run by a 25-year-old college dropout. Over the weekend of July 11, 2020, showed that Lauder hosted Wulff and her husband for a weekend at his house.
At 8:31 PM on Sunday, July 12 — shortly after Kacey Wulff and her husband left the Lauder mansion — Lauder sent an email directly to the CEO of Curative, Inc., connecting him to Wulff and specifically referencing Colorado “trying to augment its testing capacity.” The following day, Curative’s CEO responded to Wulff, thanked Lauder and expressed Curative’s interest in pursuing a relationship with Colorado. On September 4, 2020, less than three months later when the state’s testing labs were unable to keep up with testing, Colorado awarded Curative a no-bid contract for $89 million lasting through March 31, 2021.
But the tests were untrustworthy. On January 4, 2021, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued a Safety Alert: “alerting patients and health care providers of the risk of false results, particularly false-negative results….” It took Polis’ CDPHE seventeen more days to publicly announce that the state: “will no longer be using Curative testing.”
Despite the termination of the use of Curative’s tests more than two months early, Curative still found a way to bill and collect from Colorado $89 million, nearly every penny for a contract that was not supposed to expire until March 31.
There are myriad questions to be asked about how such a dumpster fire of governmental decision-making and mismanagement occurred, but Polis and his health department provided few answers to the public.
Enter transparency and accountability-seeker state Sen. Rob Woodward from Larimer County. Woodward has made five requests to get the Legislative Audit Committee to look into the no-bid contract for faulty COVID tests, as well as a separate $56 million state contract to distribute 2 million rapid at-home tests, which were never distributed, even when there was a statewide shortage of rapid at-home tests during Omicron. That is nearly $150 million dollars in wasted taxpayer monies.
The Audit Committee — on a party-line vote — chose to do nothing.
Woodward’s July 2021 urgent audit request was not brought up for hearing for two months. Then, Democrats on the Legislative Audit Committee stalled on ant vote, claiming that they needed more time to review the request. Last month- five months after the urgent audit request was submitted- Democrat leaders of the Audit Committee quickly called up the request and voted to do nothing.
In defending their decision to allow the truth to remain hidden from the public (during an election year), state Rep. Dafna Michaelson Jenet summed up her opposition to the audit by quoting the head of the state’s testing program who testified that the failed decision-making was “made on the best science and data available at the time.” In voting to look no further into this outrageous matter, Michaelson Jenet stated “I don’t know that there is more that can be done with continuing forward in this audit request.”
Come again? Colorado taxpayers spend $11 million dollars per year to fund the 74 employees at the State Auditor’s office. If this is not the kind of issue for which they exist, then letap fold up the auditor’s tent and stop pretending that they exist for transparency and accountability.
In refusing to review these questionable and failed contracts, the see-no-evil, hear-no-evil Democrats on the legislative audit committee are participating in a cover-up of mismanagement by the Polis administration that could have contributed to the deaths of some of the most vulnerable Coloradans.
There is still time for the committee to change its mind and Coloradans should demand the legislature do just that.
George Brauchler is a former district attorney from the 18th Judicial District in Aurora and is a regular columnist for The Denver Post.
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