A group of state Senate Democrats – who are fed up with Governor Andrew Cuomo’s handling of nursing homes during the COVID-19 pandemic – on Tuesday passed bills that would strengthen accountability and oversight of the facilities as well as the state’s health department.
The move by the Legislative Health Committee to approve the bills for a full Senate vote comes amid a state nursing home crisis that has nearly 15,000 residents dying from the disease, and both Cuomo and Howard Zucker , health commissioner, raved about the coals as they tried to keep the number away from the public.
Critics of Cuomo blame his administration for causing deaths by forcing COVID-19 nursing home residents to return to vulnerable facilities amid a shortage of hospital beds – and then for underreporting deaths to the coronavirus associated with the long-term care centers.
State Sen. Gustavo Rivera (D-Bronx), chairman of the Health Committee, accused the Democratic governor on Tuesday of “stoning” the state legislature for months by refusing to disclose full figures on the number of nursing homes killed by the coronavirus. .
Rivera said Cuomo and Howard Zucker, the state’s health commissioner, sat on the data – until State Attorney General Letitia James issued a serious report late last month accusing the government of misleading the public by counting the deaths by 50 percent too little.
“As we suspected and feared, the second floor stoned us,” Rivera said during a virtual public committee meeting on the bills, referring to the governor’s office on the second floor of the Capitol building in Albany.
The Department of Health included in the reporting of deaths in nursing homes only the approximately 8,700 residents who died in a long-term care center at the time, not those who died of the virus in hospitals.
Hours after the Attorney General’s report was released, Zucker began cleaning up, revealing that at least 4,000 nursing home residents had died of COVID-19 in the nursing home.
Last week, a judge in Albany even tore up the Department of Health in Cuomo-Zucker in a ruling on the failure to provide total deaths at the nursing home to a government watchdog.
One of the Senate bills being reviewed Tuesday and sponsored by Rivera requires the Department of Health to report the deaths of all nursing home residents, including those who were transferred to a hospital and died in the hospital. ‘
The bill, if signed into law, will apply retroactively to March 1, 2020, as the pandemic began in the US.
“In order to make good policies, you need to have good information … so that we can prevent unnecessary deaths,” Rivera said.
Republican lawmakers jumped on the Cuomo bashing bandwagon.
“For the families of those who have lost loved ones in nursing homes, you should know that today is still a step in the direction of accountability – but the road is far from over,” said the leader of the Senate majority, Rob Ortt of Lockport, said.
He and other GOPers are campaigning for an investigation into the state’s actions by the federal Department of Justice.
“The legislature must hold dual hearings, with the help of subpoena power, and the Department of Justice must expand its efforts to investigate what happened here,” said Will Barclay, leader of the state assembly, of Syracuse.
Cuomo spokesman Gary Holmes responded in an email to The Post: ‘We said we would release additional data once our audit was completed and prior to the commissioner’s testimony. We do it. ”
‘Although the AG’s report correctly pointed to the Department’s efforts to support staff, testing, PBT and inspections, it captured the data incorrectly, and therefore we released what was audited to correct the record. . ‘