A powerful Democratic governor is facing serious allegations of corruption from a Democratic member of Congress who may be looking to take their job in the next few years.

Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY) has called for investigations of Democratic New York Gov. Kathy Hochul and allegations that she rigged the bidding process to select a company to oversee the state's Medicare-funded and fraud-plagued $9 billion home health care program, the New York Post reported.

Torres and others have alleged that Hochul pre-selected the winning company, Public Partnerships LLC, before a legally required bidding process was conducted to pick an entity to manage the state's Consumer Directed Personal Assistance Program, which allows and pays for patients to hire and receive in-home health care from relatives.

There is "something rotten" in Gov. Hochul's New York

On Monday, Rep. Torres sent a letter to New York Inspector General Lucy Lang and U.S. Health and Human Services Inspector General Christi Grimm to raise his concerns about the alleged lack of a bidding process in awarding Public Partnerships LLC an exclusive contract to oversee the $9 billion CDPAP.

"I am writing to call upon the federal and state Inspector Generals to investigate alleged attempts by the Hochul Administration to put the $9 billion CDPAP program in the hands of a single out-of-state vendor with a questionable track record and to do so under false pretenses," Torres wrote.

"There may be something rotten in the state of New York under Governor Kathy Hochul," the congressman continued as he cited a sworn affidavit from a health care provider who claimed that state officials admitted that the Hochul administration had chosen PPL before the bidding process for a contract to be the statewide Fiscal Intermediary (FI) even began.

"The pre-selection of PPL was the worst kept secret in Albany, and the bidding process that arose afterwards has since been exposed as a dog-and-pony show with a predetermined outcome," Torres said. "The designation of PPL as the sole FI appears to be the fruit of a poisonous tree -- the product of a Potemkin procurement process."

State comptroller exempted from reviewing contract award process

That's not all, though, as Rep. Torres went on to further allege that Gov. Hochul "ppears to have rigged the process in more ways than one," in that in addition to pre-selecting PPL for the contract award, her administration also exempted that award from being reviewed by the state's comptroller.

"The State of New York is contracting with PPL to be the single FI for a $9 billion program. Blocking the Comptroller from reviewing a contract that implicates billions of dollars in taxpayer money -- as the Hochul Administration has done so shamelessly, suspiciously, and surreptitiously -- is evidence of a broken system," the congressman wrote. "The obstruction of an independent audit is a sign that the Hochul Administration might have something to hide."

"Governor Hochul’s multi-billion dollar boondoggle merits an independent investigation," he added. "The Inspector General may be the only hope for bringing transparency and accountability to a high-stakes process that has neither but needs both."

State lawmakers unlikely to investigate, IGs offer no comment

Spectrum News reported that Rep. Torres also held a press conference on Tuesday, during which he said, "If the governor insists that the bidding process was genuinely competitive, then she should release every single one of those bids and disclose the process by which each of those bids was evaluated."

The outlet noted that, as Torres suggested, the New York Health Department oversaw the procurement process while the state's comptroller was exempted from the process, and that was further confirmed by a spokesperson for Comptroller Tom DiNapoli, who acknowledged, "We have no insight into the selection of the vendor."

Unfortunately for Torres and others who share his concerns about what occurred, multiple state lawmakers have indicated that they have no desire to investigate the matter and instead are content to ignore the alleged issue.

Both Spectrum and the Post reported that the state IG confirmed that Torres letter had been received and the alleged matter fell under their jurisdiction, but declined to comment any further. The Post noted that the federal HHS IG declined to comment altogether about whether they had even received the congressman's letter, much less that they would look into the allegations.