“We submitted the proposal in writing, met with the state staff members about it, then testified for our two minutes at a hearing,” Ms. Wessler said. “Then in the written summary of all the 4,000 proposals, they twisted the wording of ours so that it would be impossible to implement. Then they said it was not viable, so it wasn’t even put up for a vote.”

State officials acknowledged that the proposal had been drastically changed from its original meaning, but did not explain how that happened. In an e-mail exchange provided by Ms. Wessler, Jason A. Helgerson, the state’s Medicaid director, apologized “for not having had the time to do all we wish to do.” Mr. Helgerson was not available for an interview on Tuesday, a spokeswoman said.

The subject of executive wages would have been familiar to the task force, many of whose members came from the health care industry. One had worked as a consultant for Mount Sinai Medical Center, which received $250 million in Medicaid and paid its chief executive $2.7 million in 2008. A co-chairman of the task force, Michael Dowling, was paid $2.4 million in 2008 by North Shore-Long Island Jewish Health System, which received about $220 million from Medicaid.

UNDER current policies, the State Health Department monitors executive salaries, though much of the compensation data the hospitals provide to the state do not jibe with the tax forms that they must file. In any event, the state does not regulate the salaries, viewing them as decisions that are entirely up to the hospitals’ boards.

“Basically, the state does not set compensation rates for private businesses, even if taxpayer funding is a major revenue stream,” said Claudia Hutton, a spokeswoman for the Health Department. “We don’t have any authority to set compensation levels or even to advise.”