Report just shredded Cuomo’s credibility
CHURCHILL
CHRIS CHURCHILL
WAlbany hen Letitia James was elected with Andrew Cuomo’s backing, I assumed she wouldn’t be willing to ruffle the governor’s feathers or look under rocks he didn’t want lifted.
New York, with its long history of public corruption, needs an independent attorney general. It seemed unlikely James would be one.
But she proved me wrong with Thursday’s bombshell report on deaths in New York nursing homes, which, in its 76 pages, shreds Cuomo’s credibility and decimates the notion, held mostly by those who live well outside the state, that he’s some sort of sage of the pandemic.
Among other findings, the report makes clear that Cuomo and the Department of Health misled the public about the
Governor Andrew M. Cuomo provides a coronavirus update on Jan. 18 at the State Capitol in Albany. A report released Thursday found the state misled the public about the number of New York nursing home residents who died of COVID-19.
number of New York nursing home residents who died of COVID -19.
Cuomo’s administration underreported the nursing home count by as much as 50 percent, the AG’S investigation found, by not including residents who were moved to hospitals before they died.
The undercount served a purpose. It helped the governor deflect criticism of a controversial state order that forced nursing homes to accept COVID -19 patients — criticism that, if you believed Cuomo, was motivated purely by partisanship and “ugly politics.”
But James, a Democrat elected in 2018, is nobody’s idea of a right-winger. She was, of course, a loud and significant critic of the Trump administration.
She was, at least until Thursday, considered a Cuomo ally.
And yet her investigation lays bare the governor’s many failings.
For one, the report casts a critical eye on the controversial order, issued in March and retracted in May, saying it may have put nursing home residents at risk. The Cuomo administration has never conceded the order was a mistake.
The report is likewise skeptical of the junk-science Health Department report that blamed nursing home deaths on employees — another attempt to deflect attention from bad state policies — and it is critical of a separate Cuomo order that shielded nursing-home operators from lawsuits.
That protection, the report notes, “may have allowed facilities to make financially motivated decisions” such as admitting patients for whom the nursing homes couldn’t properly care.
Those are all important findings, and there are many others in the report. But it was the conclusion on New York’s official nursing home death tally that sent shock waves across New York. That’s where James delivered a body-blow to Cuomo’s credibility.
Journalists and lawmakers, of course, have been asking for the full nursing home tally for months, only to be stonewalled by an administration full of arrogance and ready with cockamamie excuses.
Even the AG was apparently unable to get an accurate number. Notably, the report includes only the estimate of a 50 percent undercount.
But the report shamed the Health Department into releasing the full number — 12,743, about a 50 percent increase from the prior tally — just hours after the report’s release. The remarkably quick turnaround means the data was available all along. Cuomo, whose recent book promised lessons in leadership, didn’t want the public knowing the truth.
That shows why an independent attorney general is necessary. We shouldn’t have needed James’ investigation to shake the number loose. But we did, and kudos to her for making it happen.
The report’s findings took Cuomo by surprise, I’m told, but he didn’t let it show on Friday. The governor, speaking at an Albany briefing, suggested it didn’t matter much if the nursing home tally included hospital fatalities. “Who cares?” he asked. “They died.”
Cuomo’s claim is belied by his actions. If the full count doesn’t matter, why not release it months ago? By stonewalling for so long, despite Freedom of Information Law requests and even a lawsuit, Cuomo showed that he considered the number important enough to hide.
And, of course, a full, accurate count does matter. It provides us with a complete picture of what happened in nursing homes during the important early stage of the pandemic. It allows for real accountability and the ability to guide future policy decisions.
An accurate count matters simply because New Yorkers deserve the truth, and because facts shouldn’t play second fiddle to massaging a politician’s reputation. You would think that would be obvious even to Cuomo, especially during a pandemic.
Predictably, the reaction to the report was swift and strong, with Democrats and Republicans alike saying, correctly, that it revealed unconscionable and infuriating behavior. From Senate Minority Leader Robert Orr, a Republican from Lockport, there was even a call for Health Commissioner Howard Zucker to resign.
That isn’t as outlandish as it may seem. Zucker never should have allowed his Health Department to become an arm of the governor’s public relations team, and his reputation is also badly tarnished by the attorney general’s report.
Who can trust him now?
The more important question: Who can trust Andrew Cuomo?