WOES PILE UP FOR ANDY
● Nursing home cash flooded Cuomo coffers ● Ex-gov aide spills dirt on alleged sex harass
“It’s clear that that industry wrote the bill, and they’re one of the only groups that had access at that time. ... You can’t put a toxic bill like that in the budget without having full access to the executive office.” ASSEMBLYMAN RON KIM
ALBANY — Health care groups and lobbyists tied to nursing homes flooded Gov. Cuomo’s campaign coffers with cash last year as the state shielded hospitals and long-term care facilities from the threat of lawsuits stemming from the coronavirus outbreak.
Lawmakers and critics are raising questions about the donations and ties as the governor and his administration are embroiled in a ballooning controversy over Cuomo’s office admitting it failed to make the total death toll of nursing home residents killed by COVID public due to a federal probe.
According to campaign finance records, Cuomo accepted at least $126,000 from the Greater
New York Hospital Association and other industry groups and related lobbyists in the months surrounding last year’s budget, which included an 11th-hour amendment granting New York nursing homes broad legal protections from lawsuits and criminal prosecutions as the state became the epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak in the U.S.
Assemblyman Ron Kim (D-Queens), an outspoken Cuomo critic who has publicly sparred with the governor in recent weeks, voted against the measure and has fought to repeal the immunity statute since last summer.
He and others are now calling on the governor to turn over documents and correspondences related to the immunity push and to return all health care-related donations.
“It’s clear that that industry wrote the bill, and they’re one of the only groups that had access at that time,” Kim told the Daily News. “You can’t put a toxic bill like that in the budget without having full access to the executive office.”
Joined by other elected officials at a rally outside City Hall on Wednesday, Kim said he believes there’s a connection between the legal immunity, and the way the administration reported coronavirus deaths of nursing home residents.
For months, state Health Department officials delayed releasing the complete number of COVID-19 deaths of nursing home and long-term care residents. The state had reported the number of long-term care residents who died at 9,154, separating those who died in hospitals
versus in the facilities in which they lived.
The death toll increased to about 15,000 as a result of revised figures released in the wake of a blistering report from state Attorney General Letitia James that accused officials of undercounting the deaths of seniors living in such facilities by as much as 50%.
The hospital association, which has framed its push for liability protections as an effort to defend workers, openly admits that the group “drafted and aggressively advocated for” the immunity provision.
“As has been widely reported, GNYHA advocated for the state’s COVID-19 immunity law,” spokesman Brian Conway said in a statement. “We continue to believe, given the extraordinarily challenging circumstances facing hospitals and other providers during this pandemic, that it is right to protect health care facilities and their staff from liability except in cases of gross negligence and intentional wrongdoing.”
Conway said the group has constantly been in touch with city, state and federal officials throughout the pandemic to discuss directives ensuring hospitals increase bed capacity, transferring patients among hospitals, and addressing PPE, ventilator and medication shortages as well as the immunity push on the state and national level.
Legislators rolled back part of New York’s measure last summer, allowing lawsuits and prosecutions unrelated to coronavirus patients to proceed. However, patients and family members are still barred from suing hospitals or nursing homes over care “related to the diagnosis or treatment of COVID-19.”
Campaign disclosures also show the hospital association was far from the only health care group donating to Cuomo as the COVID crisis tore through the Empire State. The Healthcare Association of New York State, another trade group that supported protections, and related lobbyists gave Cuomo $90,000 in the months before and just after the budget passed last year.
David Weinraub, principal of Brown & Weinraub, which was retained by the group in 2019 to lobby on health care issues, gave Cuomo $15,000 just three months after the liability protections became law. Weinraub’s wife chipped in another $10,000 the same day.
The state affiliate of the American Medical Association, another group that advocated for liability protections at the state level, gave Cuomo $10,000 in December.
“What we’re saying is: return that money and make it fair,” Kim said.
“That’s why we’re calling on him to return that money and repeal that immunity clause. Not for the workers, I’m not saying all immunity. I think the frontline workers deserve to be protected.
“But the shareholders, the board of trustees ... we should strike that. And he knows that.”
In response to Kim’s claims that Cuomo threatened to “destroy him, aides have attempted to paint the assemblyman as a bitter political foe who “has baselessly accused this administration of pay to play and obstruction of justice.”
At the rally, Kim was joined by city Public Advocate Jumaane Williams and a gaggle of other elected officials and advocates who tore into the governor, accusing him of mishandling nursing home deaths and bullying to get his way.
“This is who he has always been, long before the pandemic,” Williams said.
“It is finally exposing who we knew this governor was all along, from pay-to-play with real estate to pay-to-play with nursing home owners, to ducking accountability, to passing blame to everyone but himself, to bullying tactics.”
The group called on Cuomo and the state Democratic Committee to return a total of $10 million in contributions from GNYHA, a full repeal of the immunity provision and a congressional hearing into New York’s nursing home death toll.