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| Johannes Eisele/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images |
Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo wrote a memoir on pandemic leadership last year. But questions around New York’s incomplete count of coronavirus-related deaths in nursing homes have undercut his national image.
Now, the Democratic leaders of the State Senate are in the final stages of crafting a bill that would strip him of emergency powers granted during the pandemic.
“I believe they should be taken away, hopefully sooner than later,” State Senator Gustavo Rivera said on Wednesday, adding that “we need to remind them that state government is not one big branch: There’s three of them.”
[Read more about the move by lawmakers.]
Here’s what you need to know:
The details
Nearly a year ago, Mr. Cuomo was granted far-reaching authority to supersede state laws to combat the pandemic. He has signed dozens of executive orders since then, mandating shutdowns and instituting quarantine requirements for travelers, among other actions.
The bill’s passage, which could occur as soon as next week, would limit those powers and would be a remarkable rebuke in the aftermath of Mr. Cuomo’s admission that he withheld nursing home data from the Legislature, according to my colleagues Jesse McKinley and Luis Ferré-Sadurní. It would also establish a 10-person commission to evaluate his future pandemic-related directives.
It remains unclear if the State Assembly would follow the Senate’s lead, and any bill passed would also need to be signed by the governor himself — though Democrats could override a veto with supermajorities in both chambers.
The governor also faces a federal inquiry by the F.B.I. and the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District over his handling of nursing homes during the pandemic.
The context
Critiques of the governor’s nursing home policies have been raised for months, and Mr. Cuomo had long dismissed them as partisan attacks. But on Wednesday, he lashed out at a critic from his own party, Assemblyman Ron Kim, a Queens Democrat who had said the governor had threatened him earlier.
After a report from the state attorney general and a court order, the official count of deaths of nursing home residents nearly doubled from about 8,500 to more than 15,000. Those who died in hospitals had not been initially included.
Mr. Cuomo’s top aide, Melissa DeRosa, also privately told some lawmakers last week that officials had withheld data because they worried about a possible Trump Justice Department investigation, sparking further allegations of a cover-up. The governor has since said that his administration’s lack of transparency was “a mistake,” but has stopped short of a full apology.
“That
void of information caused the families who lost a loved one tremendous
pain,” he said on Wednesday. “My administration created the void — and
that I feel bad about. Not illegal, not unethical. But just failed
people in that moment.”
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