Upstate pols tell gov: Get your hands off respirators

ALBANY — Upstate Republicans vented their frustration Friday over Gov. Cuomo’s executive order allowing the state to redistribute life-saving ventilators.

GOP lawmakers denounced the decision despite a frightening shortage of the devices in New York City and other downstate areas being ravaged by the coronavirus outbreak.

“Using the National Guard to confiscate life-saving vents from upstate for use in NYC is outrageous,” state Sen. Richard Funke (R-Rochester) tweeted. “Seizing from a private entity using force is something out of a totalitarian regime, not a republic.”

The order will mobilize the National Guard to pick up and distribute ventilators and other resources from medical centers in areas that have yet to be inundated with COVID-19 cases. Cuomo said the items will either be returned or reimbursed.

“There could be several hundred excess ventilators in hospitals that don’t need them right now,” the governor said during a press briefing in Albany.

Cuomo said he expected some backlash and even predicted some hospitals could file legal challenges against the measure.

“If they want to sue me for borrowing ventilators to save lives, let them sue me,” he said.

Republicans, some representing areas with only a handful of cases, were indignant over the order.

State Sen. Rob Ortt (RLockport) said he thinks the governor’s decision will put lives in jeopardy.

“The governor’s executive order to seize ventilators and PPE from Upstate and Western New York hospitals will endanger the safety and wellbeing of healthcare professionals and residents in our communities,” he tweeted.

Less than 100 people have tested positive for the respiratory illness in Ortt’s district, compared to the 50,000 cases in the city.

Senate Democratic spokesman Michael Murphy said he was surprised by the pushback and commended the governor’s repeated calls for unity in the face of the crisis that has left nearly 3,000 New Yorkers dead.