ALBANY — In March 2016, the state awarded $25.4 million to Crystal Run Healthcare, a major campaign donor to Gov. Andrew Cuomo, to build two facilities the company was already constructing without taxpayer subsidies.

The Orange County firm has since tried to spend the funds on eyebrow-raising items including expensive artwork, two $59,000 "mood music" systems, and an "artificial flower arrangement" to adorn a lobby, according to documents obtained by the Times Union.

While the Cuomo administration has not repaid the company for those purchases, it did reimburse Crystal Run — one of New York's fastest-growing private medical firms — for $1.2 million in corporate office furniture.

The Department of Health has so far paid out $6 million in total reimbursements to the doctor-owned company: $3 million for a project that was already being completed without taxpayer funds in West Nyack, Rockland County, and $3 million for the project that was already under construction without subsidy in Monroe, Orange County.

Health care experts questioned why taxpayers are picking up the expenses of the thriving business.

"These are routine businesses investments, of the very same kind that other medical practices pay for with their own money every day," said Bill Hammond, director of health policy at the fiscally conservative Empire Center for Public Policy.

"Crystal Run itself has built multiple office buildings before — and filled them with computers and furniture and equipment — on its own dime," Hammond said. "Why this apparently successful company should be granted such extraordinary support from taxpayers has never been adequately explained."

The company was also seemingly flush with cash after the 2013 sale and lease-back of $141 million of its properties.

Taxpayers have now paid $1.8 million to reimburse the company for IT equipment purchases from Aeon Nexus Corp.; about $60,000 paid to Hologic, a medical technology company; $3 million to Siemens Medical Solutions for medical equipment; and about $1.2 million paid to Right Price Companies, which bought the office furniture.

"The goal of this program – as enacted by the Legislature – was to expand primary care services to avoid hospital and emergency room visits," said Department of Health spokesman Gary Holmes. "To do that there are certain items which are necessary for any effective care facility – IT infrastructure, medical equipment and, yes, even office and waiting room furniture."

Following a series of Times Union articles last year, the Manhattan U.S. Attorney's office and FBI are investigating Crystal Run over its manner of giving $400,000 in campaign donations to Cuomo. The investigation has brought charges of "pay-to-play" from the governor's electoral challenges this year, and was featured in a recent television ad run by Republican Dutchess County Executive Marc Molinaro.

Cuomo, who unsuccessfully sought to pull the ad from the airwaves, maintains the prodigious campaign giving of Crystal Run and other donors – totaling $49 million for his current reelection bid – never impacts state policy decisions.

The ongoing criminal investigation of Crystal Run is examining whether its officials were reimbursed by company bonuses for a flurry of $25,000 donations they made to Cuomo's campaign in 2013 – a potential violation of state election law.

The Times Union has also learned details of subsequent Crystal Run campaign giving: Records indicate that Crystal Run CEO Hal Teitelbaum was invited to attend a Cuomo fundraiser at the Plaza Hotel in Manhattan on June 18, 2015.

Four days later, Cuomo's campaign reported receiving a $50,000 check from Teitelbaum.

A Crystal Run spokesman did not respond to requests for comment about whether Teitelbaum did attend the event. A Cuomo campaign spokeswoman also failed to respond.

Cuomo himself did not attend that high-dollar fundraiser, which was scheduled to occur the day after the 2015 legislative session was to end.

That session did not end as scheduled, however, and New York's crucial rent regulation and affordable housing subsidy laws expired. The optics were bad enough — with millions of tenants in limbo — that Cuomo stayed in Albany to hash out legislative deals rather than attend the fundraiser, which was being protested by tenant advocates. (Also on the invite list for that fundraiser were officials from the New York City real estate industry who were highly concerned with the details of that housing law renewal — including Newmark Knight Frank CEO Barry Gosin, who gave Cuomo $50,000.)

The timing of the $50,000 donation from Crystal Run's Teitelbaum is significant because it landed in the middle of the bidding process for $1.2 billion in state money the Department of Health was awarding in capital health care grants. The initial deadline for those bids was in May 2015, about a month before the Cuomo fundraiser.

Ultimately, that scoring process resulted in Crystal Run winning the $25.4 million in grants for the two projects, despite having broken ground on both in the fall of 2016, about six months before the awards were made.

The two projects were fully built and open to the public before Comptroller Tom DiNapoli's office signed off on the contracts allowing the company to be reimbursed for its building expenses in December 2016. Under the terms of those contracts, the company was allowed to seek reimbursements from state taxpayers for its expenses back to October 2015.

The Department of Health made decisions about which Crystal Run expenses to reimburse in October 2017, according to the agency.

Under the state grant program, construction costs and capital expenses, including health information technology, were eligible. Costs such as personnel, supplies and non-capital equipment were not.

Of the original grant amount, $19.4 million has still not been paid out to Crystal Run.

Beyond the $6 million, Holmes said that, "No other invoices have been approved for payment." He said it was still possible under Crystal Run's contract, however, that it could receive future payments.

Crystal Run in July 2016 purchased more than $33,000 in artwork to decorate the Monroe facility from Giardina Fine Art in Albany, which the company then unsuccessfully tried to get taxpayers to refund.

Also for the Monroe facility, Crystal Run also sought taxpayer funds for a $34,000 in "TV Installation," $1,425 for "artificial flower arrangements" for the lobby and about $59,000 for a "mood music system."

Crystal Run reported making similar purchases for the West Nyack facility for which it also unsuccessfully sought taxpayer reimbursement.

"Items such as artwork, mood lighting, artificial plants and TV installation do not qualify for grant reimbursement in the Capital Restructuring and Financing Program as outlined by the (request for applications). DOH rejected Crystal Run's invoice for those items," said Holmes.

Crystal Run also sought taxpayer reimbursement to pay for employees of an interior design firm, Fine Dzign Commercial Interiors, to travel to and meet with Jennifer Teitelbaum, the wife Crystal Run's CEO, about interior design matters.

Jennifer Teitelbaum is not a Crystal Run employee, but was among the spate of $25,000 donors to Cuomo's campaign in 2013.

The Department of Health awarded the $1.2 billion for capital health care projects in March 2016. It received 396 applications and made 63 awards totaling $547 million for projects that competed against one another outside New York City. Of those winning applicants, all were nonprofits, with one exception: Crystal Run.

"As we have said repeatedly, Crystal Run Health Care was awarded (state) funding through an open and competitive procurement process aimed at expanding primary care services to reduce avoidable hospital and emergency room visits, improve population health, and transform New York's health care system," said Holmes. "Funding applications were submitted by health care providers and graded by civil servants using a clear, objective methodology. Any suggestion that this funding may have been awarded outside of this procurement process is completely false."

As the Times Union recently reported, email records show that after an initial $25,000 Crystal Run donation to Cuomo's campaign in October 2011, Teitelbaum got a direct line about his business concerns to a former top Cuomo aide, Joe Percoco.

Then, over a two-day period in October 2013, Crystal Run officials, doctors or their spouses gave Cuomo 10 donations of $25,000 apiece. The donations came during a Cuomo fundraiser, though the governor's campaign has repeatedly refused to discuss its location and details such as whether it was an exclusive Crystal Run event.

Of the 10 Crystal Run donors to Cuomo, seven had not made a donation in a New York election in at least a decade.

In May, U.S. Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney gave away more than $35,000 in donations to his congressional campaign from Crystal Run executives, doctors or their spouses. Instead of returning the money to the company officials, however, the Hudson Valley Democrat donated it to the U.S. Treasury.

Like New York state law, federal election law prohibits giving donations through "straw donors" meant to circumvent donation limits.

According to Maloney's office, Crystal Run officials told the congressman's office that the donations had been "incorrectly attributed."

In a recent editorial board meeting with the Times Union, Maloney, who is running in the Democratic primary for state attorney general, said he learned of the issues with the Crystal Run donations from a letter sent to his office by a Crystal Run attorney earlier this year.

Maloney said his subsequent efforts to find out more information about the problems with the donations were not successful.

A Cuomo campaign spokeswoman, Abbey Collins, has refused to answer questions about whether Crystal Run had similarly approached the Cuomo campaign concerning problematic donations.