NY state Lidar !?

Im I losing it? Why are the New York State Aerial Photos in NYSPC system but the DEM and Lidar data are in UTM. 

Im having a terrible time translating the lidar data and or DEM over to state plane, Do i just need to give in and buy point cloud software? 

I toy around with this stuff and its not worth owning another software suit, I use carlson and I can extract a grid file from the DEM but I cannot

translate it to SPC. I can manually guess but without proper reference points its just a guess which is unacceptable. NC keeps all their data in SPC so

I'm basically spoiled but this HAS to annoy other surveyors that need to use real projections.

Any insight on software will help, Tried in QGIS and Cloud Compare with no useful results. I can extract the data i need in both programs but cannot 

get useful data out for cad, Ill use the DEM in Carlson if I have to but that seems archaic with new lidar data available.