The state of Michigan is facing a lawsuit in which plaintiffs seek information about the government’s executive order, Gretchen Whitmer, related to the coronavirus.
Whitmer may soon take her under the microscope, similar to what a fellow Democratic government, New York Government Andrew Cuomo, is facing, the Michigan men taking legal action against Whitmer.
Plaintiffs Steve Delie and Charlie LeDuff set out the purpose of their lawsuit in an article published by USA Today on Friday. Delie is an official of the think tank Mackinac Center for Public Policy, while LeDuff is a Pulitzer Prize winner.
“It does not take any legal action to obtain this critical information,” the couple wrote. “The Whitmer government has made the same policy choice as the Cuomo government, which is forcing infectious senior citizens to be close to medically vulnerable people. “including a 20-year-old. Michigan citizens deserve to know why she did this, and whether our governor is telling the truth about the consequences.”
“The Whitmer government has made the same policy choice as the Cuomo government, forcing infectious senior citizens to be close to other medically vulnerable people.”
The authors say Whitmer issued her executive order on April 15, 2020, just weeks after Cuomo issued his similar order in New York on March 25, 2020.
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They further note the recent revelations about the alleged under-reporting of the Cuomo administration’s deaths of New York’s nursing home patients as the coronavirus has spread. More than 40% of patient numbers in New York have been underreported, while state deaths have been underreported by more than 75%, they say, citing the report by The Associated Press.
Delie and LeDuff argue that the New York public had the right to know accurate information about what was happening to patients in nursing homes, but only got the information after a five-month legal battle.
Whitmer’s unique legal exemption
They then note that Whitmer has the advantage under Michigan law that he is legally exempt from the Freedom of Information Act and that he is the only one of the country’s 50 governors to have the exemption.
‘Thanks to this release, the governor [Whitmer] has no obligation to produce records, despite making decisions that affect the lives of every Michigander, ‘the authors write.
‘The governor [Whitmer] has no obligation to produce records, despite making decisions that affect the lives of every Michigander. ‘
They allege that Whitmer used the protection through the release to ‘act with impunity’ and that he did not provide the data on which she based her coronavirus policy decisions.
“This is unacceptable,” Delie and LeDuff write.
Earlier this month, Michigan Attorney General Danna Nessel, a Democrat, rejected a request from state republics to investigate Whitmer’s nursing home-related actions, saying an investigation is not ‘necessary’.
‘I appreciate that you and your colleagues have policy differences with the response of Gov. Whitmer on COVID-19, ‘Nessel wrote in a March 15 letter. “But an investigation by my office is not the mechanism for resolving those differences of opinion.”
Republicans have condemned the governor of Michigan for allowing residents of nursing homes recovering from the virus to return to or gain access to their nursing homes, claiming the residents are endangering other residents.
Whitmer has created 21 hubs in existing nursing homes that were meant to have space for isolation and special equipment for elderly groups discharged from the hospital, reports The Detroit News.
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But Republicans in the state wanted separate isolation units designated for elderly populations recovering from COVID-19, to prevent other nursing home residents from contracting the virus.
Last week, a director of nursing homes in New York told Fox News he considered the orders from Cuomo’s nursing home “ridiculous” and complained to state health officials, saying, “We can not do that.”
Cuomo is facing an investigation by the FBI and federal prosecutors in Brooklyn, NY, into his nursing home policy, The New York Times reported Friday.
Fox News’ Caitlin McFall and Greg Norman contributed to this story.