Andrew Cuomo ‘froze’ nursing home truth
Now, there’s yet another revelation that blows apart Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s credibility. This one came via private remarks made by Cuomo top aide Melissa Derosa to top Democratic lawmakers. The topic, unsurprisingly, was the administration’s refusal, for month after month after month, to be honest about the number of nursing home residents who died from COVID-19.
Derosa said the administration didn’t provide full and accurate information, despite requests from state lawmakers, because Donald Trump had turned the issue into “a political football” and Team Cuomo was afraid of consequences after the Department of Justice requested the data.
“We were in a position where we weren’t sure if what we were going to give to the Department of Justice, or what we give to you guys and what we start
saying was going to be used against us and we weren’t sure if there was going to be an investigation,” Derosa said in a conversation first reported by the New York Post.
“Basically, we froze,” she also said.
That remarkable admission tells us what we long suspected: Cuomo’s team smothered the truth to prevent an investigation and political blowback. Providing accurate and honest data about nursing homes during a pandemic, in other words, was less important than protecting the governor.
To their credit, New York Republicans and Democrats alike reacted with immediate and appropriate fury.
“This is a betrayal of the public trust,” said state Senator Andrew Gounardes of Brooklyn, who joined 13 other Democrats senators calling for the stripping of Cuomo’s emergency pandemic powers.
Some Republicans, meanwhile, called for the governor’s resignation or impeachment.
Somewhat lost in the firestorm was the wild revisionism of Derosa’s claim, which ignored that journalists and lawmakers had been requesting accurate data about New York nursing homes for months before the Justice Department made its demand in late August.
By that point, Cuomo’s determination to stonewall was already established. The information is just so tricky to compile, they told us. We’re busy, but we’ll get it to you when we can.
That was baloney. They had no intention of providing the data and wouldn’t have if their hand wasn’t forced. That’s obvious now.
And what a disgraceful disaster all this is for Cuomo, whose administration has been left battered and humiliated by events of recent weeks.
First, Attorney General Letitia James released a searing report that made clear Cuomo misled the public with a 50 percent undercount of nursing home deaths. Unlike other states, you see, New York didn’t include in its nursing home tally count residents who were moved to hospitals before they died.
Then, a state Supreme Court justice ruled that the administration had violated the law by ignoring Freedom of Information Law requests for full nursing home data. Judge Kimberly O’connor ordered the data released and required the state to pay legal fees and attorney costs to the Empire Center for Public Policy, which had filed the lawsuit.
(It would be nice if that money could come out of the governor’s wallet. Alas, taxpayers are on the hook for it.)
And now we have Derosa’s comments, which, when you think about it, are just the latest twist on a long-standing administration strategy: Blame Donald Trump.
Trump handled the pandemic poorly, no doubt, and that made it easy for Cuomo & Co. to deflect deserved blame and responsibility. With Trump in the White House, Cuomo had the perfect foil.
It’s probably no coincidence that Cuomo’s struggles have intensified since Trump left office. The governor is no longer being seen in comparison to the former president. He’s being scrutinized for the reality of his record.
“No one has gained more political capital in this very blue state by blaming Trump for all manner of things, including nursing home issues, than this governor,” Assemblyman Phil Steck, a Democrat from Latham, said on Twitter, as he derided Derosa’s “fear of Trump” excuse as “beyond ridiculous.”
Beyond ridiculous is right.
The governor didn’t hide honest nursing home data because he feared Trump.
He hid them because he feared an honest assessment of a controversial order, issued in March and retracted in reaction to fierce criticism by May, requiring that nursing homes accept COVID -19 patients. He stonewalled because he didn’t want to dull the luster of a suddenly glowing national reputation.
Is there another reason that makes sense? I haven’t heard one.
Consider that Cuomo repeatedly used the phony low count to argue that the percentage of nursing home deaths in New York compared favorably to other states. The false stats even made it into his self-congratulatory book.
And remember that his Department of Health used the undercount in a widely criticized report that tried to blame nursing home deaths on employees of the facilities, thus absolving state policy of responsibility.
All along, the top concern was Cuomo’s reputation, not reality or public health. The truth about what happened to older New Yorkers, beloved parents and grandparents, was hidden because, as Derosa said, it was going to be used against us.
It’s all so unnecessary.
Cuomo could have released accurate data long ago, admitted the state’s nursing home policy was a mistake and moved on. New Yorkers would have understood and forgiven.
But with a Nixonian penchant for secrecy and paranoia, Cuomo couldn’t do it. And now his reputation is in tatters.
On Friday, The Associated Press reported that 9,056 recovering COVID-19 patients were moved from hospitals to nursing homes, a number more than 40 percent higher than what the state had previously claimed.
And we know, thanks to Judge O’connor and the Empire Center, that nearly 15,000 New Yorkers died after contracting COVID-19 in nursing homes and other long-term care facilities, which is 63 percent higher than the tally provided before this discredited and disgraced administration was forced to tell the truth.
Those, finally, are honest numbers. They are numbers that tell the full, horrific reality of the coronavirus pandemic in New York. They are numbers Andrew Cuomo didn’t want you to see.