Pandemic privileges
As many readers will recall, COVID -19 tests were hard to come by early in the pandemic. Supermarket workers, nurses and others on the front lines of the crisis sometimes waited weeks for tests and results.
Meanwhile, Andrew Cuomo’s friends and family members were rushed to the head of the line as part of a VIP testing program for the connected.
That waste of precious state resources — during a crisis, no less — likely violated state Public Officers Law. The scandal was set to be investigated by the Assembly’s Judiciary Committee as it delves into the numerous controversies of the former governor’s tenure.
But as the Times Union’s Brendan Lyons reports, the investigation into the preferential testing scheme seems to have stalled, and perhaps for a lessthan-auspicious reason: Some lawmakers and their families also benefited from an effort that rushed samples to and through Albany ’s Wadsworth Center laboratory.
In other words, the scandal may be broader than initially realized, and lawmakers have no appetite for selfincrimination.
In fairness, some preferential testing may have been justifiable for officials crucial to keeping government functioning during the onrushing crisis.
It’s also important to distinguish between tests for lawmakers whose results were prioritized — perhaps without their knowledge — and a VIP effort for chums of Mr. Cuomo with no role in government. For example, the testing that privileged gubernatorial brother Chris Cuomo — and involved having state health officials travel to his home in the Hamptons and troopers rush his sample to Albany — is not at all the same as the benefit to lawmakers, including Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewartcousins, who traveled to a University at Albany testing site and received expedited results.
Of course, allies of Mr. Cuomo, including attorney Rita Glavin, will try to blur the distinction and tar all preferential testing with the same brush as part of an ongoing effort to distract from the disgraced governor’s corruption. That threat shouldn’t discourage lawmakers from a thorough investigation. Taxpayers, after all, have a right to know details of a testing regimen they funded, including how it worked and which bigwigs benefited.
That’s especially true at a time when Gov. Kathy Hochul and Democratic legislators have been describing Mr. Cuomo’s departure as chance to usher in a new era of transparency and integrity in state government.
That would be a welcome change, but the words will be empty rhetoric if lawmakers quash an investigation to hide their own transgressions. They’d be replicating Mr. Cuomo’s behavior, instead of moving on from it.
So, let’s consider the investigation into the VIP scheme a test of its own. If lawmakers proceed at the risk of embarrassing a few colleagues, it may truly be a new era in Albany. If they don’t, the status quo will have prevailed.