Cuomo bucks latest calls to resign
Nursing home report raises questions for SUNY chancellor
As pressure grows for Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo to step aside, members of the State University of New York board of trustees are standing by their chancellor, James Malatras.
Malatras, a longtime adviser to the embattled governor, helped draft the state’s report on COVID -19-related nursing home deaths that was found to have undercounted victims and, as a result, he is now a subject of an investigation by the FBI and the U.S. attorney’s
office.
Malatras was a key figure in Cuomo’s COVID -19 task force before accepting the position as head of the sprawling 64-campus university system in August.
SUNY spokesman Leo Rosales said the trustees believe Malatras has been committed to the chancellor role since taking the helm and has changed the institution for the better. At a time when campuses across the nation remain closed, his policies, such as mandated weekly testing for all students and staff, have kept SUNY’S doors open.
“This immense responsibility takes 100 percent commitment which the Chancellor has delivered repeatedly,” Rosales said in an emailed statement. “Even with his other duties on task forces and teaching, the Chancellor has shown up traveling over 13K miles to 45 campuses in just six months to keep our students safe and learning, and he will continue to do the job daily without hesitation or distraction. This is what matters to the SUNY community.”
The nursing home report concluded that the greatest surge in deaths resulted from infected workers and not the state’s policy requiring homes to accept patients who had tested positive for the contagious respiratory illness.
The Wall Street Journal last week reported that Malatras and two other top Cuomo aides were responsible for altering the numbers provided by the state Department of Health, excluding nursing home patients who died in hospitals in an apparent attempt to make the death toll connected to the facilities seem less severe.
In an unrelated press appearance last week, Malatras denied changing any figures in the report.
“As with many reports, there were back and forth with structure, citations and other language during the process. But to be clear, I included the fatalities data provided by the New York State Department of Health, which I did not alter and change,” he said. “So I’m going to leave it at that.”
Many lawmakers saw the report as covering for the governor, who had lobbied for extraordinary executive powers during the pandemic as well as corporate immunity for hospitals and nursing homes included in the 2020-21 state budget. Secretary to the Governor Melissa Derosa, who is also accused of amending the report, privately apologized to lawmakers for withholding the data, saying the administration “froze” over a federal inquiry into the nursing home deaths.
Malatras and other top aides “were willing to suppress life and death information” in order to protect the interests of the governor and his corporate donors in the nursing home and hospital sector, according to Queens Assemblyman Ron Kim, a vocal critic of Cuomo who chairs the state Assembly’s Committee on Aging.
Democrats who control the state Legislature on Thursday commenced an impeachment investigation into the governor, focusing on the nursing home report and allegations that he sexually harassed at least six women.
As more details emerge, “SUNY will become the embarrassment of the country,” Kim said. “If (Malatras) had any sense of dignity, he would do the right thing for the students of the state of New York and step aside.”
A former Cuomo aide who is among the women accusing the governor of sexual harassment has said Malatras tried to intimidate her on Twitter when she spoke in 2019 of a toxic work environment for women on the second floor of the Capitol, where executive offices, including the governor’s, are located. Lindsey Boylan wrote on Twitter, “While @jimmalatras was
head of @Rockeffelerinst, the second floor asked him to defame me online after I spoke up about a toxic work culture.”
In the tweet referenced, Malatras referred to someone “Twitterbombing about life on the 2nd floor to get some attention for unrelated political purposes.”
Malatras’ appointment to the SUNY post after former Chancellor Kristina M. Johnson stepped down last summer was widely perceived as an expansion of Cuomo’s control.
Malatras’ academic leadership experience was limited. After more than a decade in government, he served two years as executive director of the Rockefeller Institute of Government, a Suny-funded think tank, and became president of SUNY’S Empire State College in May 2019.
United University Professions, the labor union that represents faculty and staff on SUNY campuses, last summer passed a resolution calling for a nationwide search and for the board to make every effort to ensure the next chancellor was from an underrepresented community of color. In its sevendecade history, SUNY has had 19 chancellors: 16 white men, two white women and Clifton Wharton Jr., the lone African American to serve in the post.
At the suggestion of Cuomo confidant Larry Schwartz, the SUNY board chose to forgo a nationwide search and install Malatras, which prompted faculty to take a vote of no confidence in the board.
Trustees cited the immediate financial and public health challenges facing SUNY in the wake of the pandemic, which they argued required them to act swiftly. In Malatras, they saw a crisis manager with the Albany connections who could cut through red tape and get things done.
In Barron’s, trustee Stanley Litow defended the board’s “break from tradition” in selecting Malatras without interviewing other candidates, observing that Cuomo “turned to him to help manage the overall effective statewide response to the pandemic where he worked closely with all agencies, especially those in health and economic development areas.”
Most of the SUNY trustees either declined to comment on Malatras’ role in the nursing home scandal or did not respond.
Litow, a professor at Columbia and Duke universities who serves on the SUNY board, was supportive of Malatras in the wake of the revelations.
“He says that he didn’t alter or change what the New York State Health Department (data) provided, so I certainly take him at his word,” Litow told the Times Union. “I think he’s done a great job as chancellor.”
Christine Fogal, president of the Faculty Council of Community Colleges and another board member, said, “I believe in due process and have no comment until after an investigation is completed.”
The SUNY trustees include a number of Cuomo loyalists who are former high-ranking members of his administration, including former top health adviser Courtney Burke and Robert Duffy, Cuomo’s first-term lieutenant governor. Its board also includes Camille Joseph Varlack, Cuomo’s recently appointed chair of the Joint Commission on Public Ethics and a former high-ranking staffer in Cuomo’s office.
SUNY leaders say they are confident that Malatras will fight for increased state funding in the budget for the public university system.
Malatras’ pull on the second floor was apparent at the start of the semester when many SUNY schools were experiencing a sharp spike in coronavirus cases. According to Cuomo’s executive order and subsequent guidance from the state Department of Health, campuses were required to suspend inperson activities once 100 people or 5 percent of the on-campus population tested positive within a two-week period.
Under Malatras, SUNY inferred from the guidance that only cases occurring within a predetermined, static two-week window should be counted, which enabled campuses to remain open well beyond the 100-case threshold.
It was a standard not used in any of the state’s other reopening guidelines, which consider infection rates within rolling two-week periods. The decision drew criticism from public health officials, who said it was an unhelpful way to count infections from an epidemiological point of view.
United University Professions President Fred Kowal declined to comment for this story. UUP represents faculty and professional staff in the SUNY system.
Aaron Major, an English professor at the University at Albany and president of the university’s UUP chapter, said Malatras is more accessible and responsive to faculty concerns than his predecessor was.
But, he said, Malatras’ involvement in the nursing home report underscores the need for leadership at SUNY that is independent of the executive branch.
“We have consistently made the argument that it’s problematic that not just the chancellor but also many campus presidents are all political appointees,” Major said. “It’s helpful to have a degree of independence from the governor’s office so that everything doesn’t rise and fall based on who is in office.”