Top Aid Melissa DeRosa is speaking with New York Government Andrew Cuomo during a news conference on September 14, 2018 with reporters. | Mary Altaffer / AP Photo
ALBANY, NY – When Governor Andrew Cuomo’s top aide told Democratic lawmakers this week why the government was slowly delaying death tolls in nursing homes, it’s apparently trying to dispel smoldering rumors of a cover-up.
Instead, assistant Melissa DeRosa threw gasoline on a fire that enveloped Cuomo’s legacy of effective leadership during the Covid-19 crisis by Friday – something he hoped to turn into a fourth term next year. serve.
Republicans have demanded Cuomo’s accusation.
There was a call on his top staff to resign.
And members of the governor’s own party – who have largely dampened their criticism amid budget talks – began to turn on him in public and vigorously.
“They left us every step in the dark,” Ron Kim, a Queens Democrat, told POLITICO. “That’s why we’re here.”
The handling of the administration of old age homes is now a complete scandal – a wonderful turnaround for Cuomo, whose early handling of the pandemic and conspicuous daily personal information has earned him the rising approval ratings, an Emmy and a book deal.
Now many fellow Democrats want to write an epilogue.
While Cuomo was on his way to Washington on Friday to meet with President Joe Biden on the pandemic response, at least 14 Democrats from the left flank of the state legislature called for the governor’s emergency forces to be recalled – ordained almost 11 months ago – which gave him almost unilateral authority during the pandemic. And the momentum in the legislature seems to be growing to keep more oversight.
“It is clear that the extensive emergency powers conferred on the Governor are no longer appropriate,” lawmakers said in a statement issued Friday morning.
Cuomo has already had an increasing setback due to dealing with the nursing home crisis. Wednesday’s call with DeRosa is designed to restore relations with frustrated Democrats who said Cuomo excludes them from the state’s response.
She told lawmakers the administration has “frozen” after the Department of Justice investigated Cuomo’s management of nursing homes. Government officials refrained from disclosing the information because she was concerned that President Donald Trump “wanted to turn the tragedy into a giant political football”.
“We were in a position where we were not sure whether what we would give to the Department of Justice, or what we would give to you, and what we were going to say, would be used against us and we would not.” sure whether there will be an investigation, ”DeRosa said during a partial transcript during the meeting.
The comments – first reported by the New York Post on Thursday night, which obtained a recording of the call – sparked widespread criticism in New York on Friday, prompting an attempt by Cuomo assistants to reformulate DeRosa’s remarks.
The Department of Justice announced last August that consideration be given to investigating whether New York and other democracies violate the civil rights of nursing home residents by including Covid-19 patients in the facilities. Federal officials have requested data from New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Michigan – all of which have issued controversial orders to admit medically stable Covid-19-positive patients into long-term care facilities as hospitals were flooded last spring.
It is unclear how many nursing homes were subject to to the DOJ request – which apparently only focused on state-owned facilities – DeRosa issued a statement on Friday that the investigation had trumped the requests of lawmakers in New York.
“I explained that when we received the DOJ investigation, we had to temporarily set aside the Legislature’s request to deal with the federal request first,” De Rosa said in a statement issued Friday morning. “We informed the houses about this at the time. We were comprehensive and transparent in our responses to the DOJ. ”
But the top Democrats in Albany pushed back the statement, saying that administration officials had asked for more time to compile the information, but that they had not disclosed the specific reason for it.
‘Contrary to what was reported in the news, [Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie] had no knowledge of an official investigation into the Justice Department, ‘Heastie spokesman Michael Whyland said in a statement.
Senate Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins said in a statement that she was also not happy with how Cuomo’s office handled lawmakers’ requests for information on deaths in nursing homes.
“Politics should not be part of this tragic pandemic, and our response to it should be guided by policy, not politics,” Stewart-Cousins said in a statement.
Senate sources say leadership is much closer to limiting the governor’s authority than they have publicly allowed.
“We basically held a conference on this executive on Monday,” one source asked, asking anonymity to talk about closed doors. ‘Momentum has tried to remove executive powers. The latest revelation – it’s almost bad. ‘
The Senate already signify it could reprimand the Cuomo administration’s handling of Covid-19 in nursing homes and announce plans to introduce a series of long-term care bills, including legislation to ensure the Department of Health updates its regular reporting on nursing home and care facility Covid. 19 deaths related to residents who died in hospitals.
When Cuomo was recently pressured into his sustained powers, he quickly pointed out that his authority had a condition that the legislature does have the ability to challenge any of its decisions, something the body has not tried since approving it in March last year.
And it is unclear whether the extended executive has influenced the state’s response to Covid-19 in nursing homes, especially not a hospital transfer policy of 25 March which many critics cited as the reason why thousands of New Yorkers died in long-term care facilities. (Asymptomatic distribution, inadequate protective equipment and laxative infection control policies are also mentioned as culprits.)
But the cries to curb Cuomo stem from months of frustration over the administration’s treatment of deaths in the nursing home, legitimized by both a report by State Attorney General Letitia James and a court order that requested the introduction of new numbers the mortality rate of the state’s long-term care Covid-19 from about 9,000 to about 15,000, if suspected and confirmed cases are included.
“It’s something that would complicate an existing political controversy, but it’s not a crime or anything like that,” a longtime administration official said. “This is fodder for those who want to keep the cause alive.”
Kim, an outspoken critic of the reaction to the governor’s old age home, is chairing the meeting of the Aging Committee and among the people currently notorious with Cuomo government officials. He said he understands the logic of the state, but that DeRosa’s characterization does not hold water.
“There was clearly an attempt not to share the information even before the Justice Department issued the letter,” he said, adding that the questions were likely to prevail in a budget hearing scheduled for February 25. is.
Kim said that while he “went to bat” for the governor by supporting his request for the emergency services, he now feels ‘very disappointed and kind of betrayed’.
Senate Health Committee Chairman Gustavo Rivera, a Democratic Bronx in the Bronx who opposes giving Cuomo the emergency services last winter, said he was not disappointed by the lack of transparency in the governors’ office because he never expected it in the first place.
“Why would I be surprised?” he said.
Rivera said the meeting with senior staff, in which he participated, actually eased the tension between the government and the Legislative Democrats – a distraction that seems to have been shattered.
“If you think for seven months that they stoned us, and then they sat down for a three-hour meeting with some of the most senior people in government, it’s obviously a tone change,” Rivera said. in an interview. “This is the first of what we would hope there are a lot of conversations.”
Cuomo did not formally comment on the latest revelations regarding the actions of his administration. The governor was in Washington DC for a rare personal conversation with President Joe Biden about the billions of dollars he and leaders from other states are requesting to support their Covid battles.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki was asked during a Friday briefing whether Biden, who argued the importance of transparency for the country’s recovery, had confidence in Cuomo’s government in light of the recent report.
“The president today hosted Government Cuomo and a two-group group of governors and mayors to get the perspective of the front lines, to give no one a stamp of approval or to seek their stamp of approval,” she said.