Curb the secrecy
The administration of Gov. Andrew Cuomo has a reputation for secrecy, as most who follow state government in Albany already know.
But even by the governor’s opaque standards, the imperious stonewalling around the issue of nursing homes and COVID -19 has been remarkable to watch and troubling to consider. Mr. Cuomo is withholding information lawmakers and the public have every right to see.
For one, the state Department of Health has refused to release an accurate count of the number of nursing home residents who died of COVID -19. The state’s official tally is a significant undercount, certainly, because it does not include residents who were transferred to hospitals before they died.
Journalists, legislators and others have for many months asked for the complete count, to no avail. The state even has rebuffed Freedom of Information Law requests with shoddy or unpersuasive explanations for why it won’t release full data.
As the Times Union’s Chris Bragg reported this week, the Health Department also has refused to provide
the information it used as the basis for a much-disputed report that tried to absolve the state of any blame for COVID -19 nursing home deaths. That report faulted employees for bringing the virus into the facilities, thus clearing of culpability a controversial gubernatorial order requiring nursing homes to accept COVID -19 patients.
Some epidemiologists doubt that the underlying data support such a sweeping conclusion, and the state has only strengthened suspicions by refusing to show how it was reached. Indeed, the state's filibustering only feeds and validates speculation that the Cuomo administration is trying to hide something, and that providing a full picture of the state’s nursing home decisions would harm the governor’s reputation.
Unvarnished, realistic assessments of policy decisions are key to fighting this and possibly future pandemics.
That’s why the secrecy is beyond irresponsible. Protecting public health is vitally important; protecting Mr. Cuomo’s image and ego is not.
Lawmakers must correct the administration’s behavior. One step would be to resurrect legislation requiring governments to pay legal fees if a judge finds FOIL has been ignored. Current law allows judges to award legal fees, but doesn’t require them to.
The Legislature passed a similar bill in 2015, only to have a certain secretive governor veto the bill. Now that Democrats have veto-proof majorities in the Senate and Assembly, they should again approve the open-government legislation, and make it law whether Mr. Cuomo likes it or not.
No, the measure wouldn’t prevent every incident of stonewalling. It probably wouldn’t have deterred the actions of a Cuomo administration determined to keep the public in the dark about its handling of nursing homes during the pandemic.
But the law would put ordinary citizens, news organizations and, in fact, anybody seeking information on a more equal footing with governments, and it would signal that New York is committed to open and transparent government, despite Mr. Cuomo’s actions to the contrary.