Adviser Melissa DeRosa joins New York Governor Andrew Cuomo as she speaks to reporters during a press conference in New York on September 14, 2018. | Mary Altaffer / AP photo
ALBANY, NY – When Governor Andrew Cuomo’s top aide told Democratic lawmakers this week why the government was slow to release information about deaths in nursing homes, she seemed to be trying to dispel latent rumors of a cover-up.
Instead, the aide, Melissa DeRosa, threw gasoline into a fire that on Friday had engulfed Cuomo’s legacy of effective leadership during the Covid-19 crisis – something he hoped would reach a fourth term next year.
Republicans demanded Cuomo’s impeachment.
There were resignations from its main employees.
And members of the governor’s own party – who largely silenced their criticism amid budget negotiations – began to turn against him, publicly and vigorously.
“They left us in the dark every step of the way,” Rep. Ron Kim, a Democrat from Queens, told POLITICO. “That’s why we’re here.”
The way the government has dealt with asylums is now a complete scandal – a surprising turnaround for Cuomo, whose initial treatment of the pandemic and high-profile daily briefings has earned him high approval ratings, an Emmy and a book contract.
Now, many fellow Democrats want to write an epilogue.
While Cuomo was heading to Washington on Friday to meet with President Joe Biden on the response to the pandemic, at least 14 Democrats on the left flank of the state legislature have called for the revocation of the governor’s emergency powers – promulgated almost 11 months ago – which gave him almost unilateral authority during the pandemic. And the momentum seems to be growing in the Legislature to exercise more oversight.
“It is clear that the expanded emergency powers granted to the governor are no longer appropriate,” lawmakers said in a statement released Friday morning.
Cuomo was already facing an increasing reaction for dealing with the crisis of the nursing home. Wednesday’s call with DeRosa was designed to repair relationships with frustrated Democrats, who said Cuomo was excluding them from the state’s response.
She told lawmakers the administration “froze” after the Department of Justice conducted an investigation into the management of Cuomo’s nursing homes. State officials have refrained from releasing the data, she said, because of concerns that President Donald Trump was trying to turn the tragedy “into a giant political football”.
“We were in a position where we were not sure if what we were going to give to the Department of Justice, or what we were giving you, and what we started to say, would be used against us and we weren’t sure if there would be an investigation,” said DeRosa during the meeting, according to a partial transcript.
The comments – first reported on Thursday night by the New York Post, which obtained a recording of the call – generated widespread criticism in New York on Friday and prompted an effort by Cuomo’s aides to rephrase DeRosa’s comments.
The Justice Department announced last August who was considering investigating whether New York and other Democratic-led states violated the civil rights of nursing home residents by admitting Covid-19 patients to the facility. Federal officials requested data from New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Michigan – which issued contentious orders to admit clinically stable Covid-19 positive patients to long-term care facilities as hospitals were raided last spring.
Although it is not clear how many nursing homes were subjected to to the DOJ application – which appeared to focus only on state-run facilities – DeRosa released a statement on Friday saying the investigation had exceeded the requests of New York lawmakers.
“I was explaining that, when we received the DOJ inquiry, we needed to temporarily void the legislature’s request to deal with the federal request first,” said De Rosa in a statement released Friday morning. “We informed the houses of this at the time. We were comprehensive and transparent in our responses to the DOJ. ”
But the top Democrats in Albany rejected that claim, saying government officials asked for more time to compile the information, but did not reveal their specific reasons.
“In addition to what was reported in the news, [Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie] I was not aware of an official Department of Justice investigation, ”Heastie spokesman Michael Whyland said in a statement.
Senate majority leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins said in a statement that she was also unhappy 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 responses to it must be led by policies, not by politics,” said Stewart-Cousins in a statement.
Senate sources say the leadership is much closer to limiting the governor’s authority than they let on publicly.
“Basically, we had a conference on this issue of the executive branch on Monday,” said a source, requesting anonymity to speak about negotiations behind closed doors. “The momentum was moving towards the removal of executive powers. The last revelation – it almost beats everything. ”
The senate already flagged can rebuke the Cuomo government’s handling of Covid-19 in nursing homes, announcing plans to move a series of long-term care bills, including legislation to ensure the Department of Health updates its regular nursing reports of elderly and adult care centers Covid- 19 related deaths to include residents who died in hospitals.
When pressed recently for his continued powers, Cuomo was quick to remember that his authority came with a stipulation that the Legislature has the ability to challenge any of its decisions, something the body has not tried since its approval last March.
And it is not clear whether enhanced executive authority affected the state’s response to Covid-19 in nursing homes – particularly a March 25 hospital transfer policy that many critics cited as the reason why thousands of New Yorkers died in long-term care facilities. (Asymptomatic spread, inadequate protective equipment and loose infection control policies were also cited as guilty.)
But cries to control Cuomo emerge from months of frustration with the government’s treatment of deaths in nursing homes, legitimized both by a report by Attorney General Letitia James and by a court order that led to the launch of new numbers increasing the number of Covid-19 deaths from long-term care in the state from about 9,000 to about 15,000, including presumed and confirmed cases.
“It is something that will complicate an existing political controversy, but it is not a crime or anything like that,” said a former government official. “It is food for those who want to keep the issue alive.”
Kim, a vocal critic of the governor’s response to the nursing home, is chairman of the Assembly’s Aging Committee and is among those now on the now infamous liaison with Cuomo government officials. He said he understands the logic of the state, but that DeRosa’s characterization is not valid.
“There was clearly an effort not to share the information, even before the Justice Department issued the letter,” he said, adding that these issues are likely to dominate a February 25 budget hearing.
Kim said that while “knocking in defense” of the governor supporting his request for emergency powers, he now feels “very disappointed and a little betrayed”.
Senate Health Committee chairman Gustavo Rivera, a Democrat from the Bronx who opposed giving Cuomo the emergency powers last winter, said he was not disappointed by the lack of transparency in the governor’s office because he never expected it .
“Why would I be surprised?” he said.
Rivera said the meeting with senior officials, in which he attended, actually eased tensions between the government and legislative Democrats – a tension that now appears to have been broken.
“When you consider for seven months that they’ve been blocking us, and then they really sat down for what almost amounted to a three-hour meeting with some of the most important people in the administration, that’s obviously a change of tone,” said Rivera in an interview. “This is the first that we hope will be many conversations.”
Cuomo has not formally commented on the latest revelations about his government’s action. The governor was in Washington DC for a rare personal discussion with President Joe Biden about the billions of dollars he and leaders in other states are asking to support their battles with Covid.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki was asked during a Friday press conference whether Biden, who touted the importance of transparency for the country’s recovery, felt confident in Cuomo’s administration in light of the recent report.
“The president received Governor Cuomo and a bipartisan group of governors and mayors at the White House today to get his perspective from the front lines, not to give anyone a seal of approval or to get his seal of approval,” she said.