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Months after securing a $26 million city contract to provide teletherapy to teens, digital health company Talkspace hired former City Hall chief of staff Frank Carone’s lobbying firm to sway city and state officials on health care issues, records show.
The Upper West Side-based teletherapy company will pay Oaktree Solutions $10,000 a month to lobby city and state governments on health matters through December. The deal, which was finalized in early March, marks the first time that Talkspace has entered into a lobbying agreement.
The deal comes just a few months after Talkspace launched its New York City pilot teletherapy program, Teenspace, which was designed to give teenagers unlimited access to text message-based therapy and monthly phone or video sessions.
Talkspace hired Oaktree Solutions to assist it with “raising awareness at key government agencies of the need for increased access to mental health care, and subsequently identifying appropriate opportunities to help,” a company spokesperson said in a statement. The spokesperson did not answer a question from Crain’s about specific legislative efforts it seeks to sway officials on.
A spokesperson for Oaktree Solutions did not respond to questions from Crain’s about what areas the firm plans to focus on nor which agencies or elected officials it will target.
Carone, who served as Mayor Eric Adams’ chief of staff through September 2022, launched Oaktree Solutions a few months after departing from his post at City Hall, sparking ethics concerns over whether he’d use his political connections to lobby on behalf of private sector interests. Since its launch in 2023, Oaktree has hired a handful of former public officials, including former state commissioner for temporary and disability assistance Daniel Tietz and Hochul’s former chief of staff Jeff Lewis.
Although Talkspace is a client of Carone’s firm, the former chief of staff isn’t one of its lobbyists, according to records filed with the state agency that oversees lobbying. Carone was barred from lobbying city officials for a year after he left office, and registered to lobby only on the state level due to ethics concerns. Carone subsequently rescinded his registration and said he has no interest in becoming a lobbyist, according to a report from the New York Daily News.
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Amanda D'Ambrosio , 2024-05-02 11:33:04
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