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Did nursing home company buy Schumer's help?

First of two parts

BY MICHAEL AMON AND RIDGELY OCHS | michael.amon@newsday.com
ridgely.ochs@newsday.com

September 23, 2007

Faced with a crisis over complaints about its treatment of Filipino nurses, Long Island nursing home group SentosaCare turned for help last year to a friendly politician it had supported in the past -- Sen. Charles Schumer.

The Democratic senator then wrote four letters over the course of two months to Philippine government officials, including President Gloria Macagapal-Arroyo. They asked the officials to meet with SentosaCare's executives or to "consider reviewing" the Woodmere company's case after the country suspended the company's affiliated recruitment operation. Macagapal-Arroyo's former chief of staff said the Schumer letters were unprecedented.

Shortly after two Schumer letters sent the same day, the Philippine government lifted the suspension. SentosaCare's Filipino recruitment pipeline was back in business. Over the next two months, a national campaign fund headed by Schumer received nearly $75,000 from investors, attorneys and vendors for SentosaCare-affiliated nursing homes.

The involvement of New York's senior senator triggered a storm of controversy 8,500 miles away in the Philippines that also has reached Long Island. Amid the dispute, Suffolk County District Attorney Thomas Spota agreed to meet in private with SentosaCare's principals and their lawyer. They asked him to investigate the 10 nurses at a Smithtown nursing home who were among 26 who prompted the uproar when they resigned abruptly from SentosaCare facilities in New York City and Long Island.

An investigation followed immediately, and 10 months later the Smithtown nurses were charged for endangering patients when they quit without notice. The indictment is apparently the first of its kind in the state.

The results of its appeals to Schumer and Spota illustrate the ready access to power enjoyed by SentosaCare, which has quietly emerged as the largest for-profit nursing home group in the state. More than one in seven nursing home beds on Long Island are at SentosaCare facilities.

In the last decade, its executives, investors and subcontractors have donated more than $750,000 to political campaign funds for both major parties. Nearly $198,000 of the largesse went to Schumer's re-election campaign and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee -- led by Schumer and credited with restoring Democratic control of the Senate after the 2006 mid-term elections.

Howard Fensterman, SentosaCare's chief attorney, is Schumer's Long Island finance chairman and a top fundraiser for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, chaired by Schumer. Fensterman, along with the SentosaCare executives he represents, said they had supported Schumer for years, well before he acted on their behalf.

The senator's role in the Philippines episode began in April 2006, shortly after 26 Filipino nurses and a physical therapist resigned en masse from five SentosaCare facilities in New York City and Long Island. Many complained they had contracted with one nursing home only to be assigned to another, and disputes over pay, benefits and hours were routine. They filed formal complaints in Washington and the Philippines.

The Philippines suspended Sentosa Recruitment Agency -- a Manila-area company that finds nurses for SentosaCare facilities -- on May 24, 2006, to prevent further "exploitation," according to the suspension order. The order was lifted without a hearing on June 8, 2006, six days after Schumer wrote to the two Filipino labor officials responsible for the action, Philippine records show. Normally, officials said, companies are suspended for months as investigations and hearings are conducted.

This month, the Philippines dismissed the nurses' complaints for "utter lack of merit." The nurses are appealing, but Fensterman said the decision was "vindication" for SentosaCare.

Just trying to help

Schumer said his letters were a natural product of his ongoing efforts to assist health care companies as they address the nationwide shortage of nurses. The letters had "no connection whatsoever" to political donations made by SentosaCare's executives, he said, and they did not ask for the suspension to be lifted, only that the matter be examined closely.

"The letters simply ask for due process for a New York company," Schumer said. "There are many times that a company will call us up and say a foreign country is treating it unfairly. I regard it as part of my job to help New York companies."

He also said the letters were handled "on a staff level" -- though Fensterman said Schumer asked detailed questions about the issue at a meeting in Washington, D.C., last year about a week before the June 27 letter to Arroyo.

Schumer's actions struck at least one expert in campaign finance as unusual.

"Members of Congress certainly write letters for constituents all the time. I think the difference here is they don't always write letters to foreign governments, and they don't always try to intervene in the way he did," said Bill Allison, a senior fellow at the Sunlight Foundation, a Washington, D.C., group that pushes for open government. "It's very difficult to say ... but whenever you have a big contributor and a member working on their behalf, it does raise questions. Members are supposed to be open to everyone. The question is, is he going to these lengths for people who don't have money?"

Schumer's letters became front page news in the Philippines. A political furor erupted when Senate Minority Leader Aquilino Pimentel last September charged that the Philippine president's chief of staff, Michael Defensor, had intervened on Sentosa Recruitment Agency's behalf following Schumer's letter.

Support for nurses

Filipino immigrant groups and lawmakers have rallied behind the 26 nurses and a physical therapist who quit with them. They have dubbed them the "Sentosa 27," demanded investigations of Schumer's involvement and called for the suspension's reinstatement.