Cuomo: Data’s absence left ‘void’
Says state mishandled data on nursing home COVID deaths
Following days of turmoil surrounding an admission by the secretary to Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo that their office had deliberately withheld data on nursing home deaths, the governor on Monday acknowledged his administration created a “void” by not providing the requested information.
The governor declined to explicitly apologize for his administration’s decision to withhold data from the press and from state lawmakers on nursing home deaths, instead saying he erred by allowing others, including what he described as conspiracy theorists, to fill in the information gap with allegations of a cover-up.
“Apologize? Look, I have said repeatedly, we made a mistake in creating the void,” he
said. “When we didn’t provide information it allowed press, people, cynics, politicians to fill the void. When you don’t correct this information, you allow it to continue, and we created the void.”
Cuomo, in his first news conference addressing the issue, reassured New Yorkers that “everybody did everything they could” when it comes to the coronavirus infiltrating nursing homes, but acknowledged that requests for information from state lawmakers and the press should have been given “more priority.”
“In retrospect, should we have given more priority in fulfilling information requests? In my opinion, yes,” the governor said. “And that’s what created the void, but I do understand the pressure that people were under.”
Republicans and some Democrats escalated their calls over the weekend — and following the governor’s remarks Monday — for outside investigations of Cuomo’s administration. They have also pressed for the use of legislative subpoenas to compel answers from key officials — including state Health Commissioner Howard Zucker — about a policy decision that many believe may have increased the number of infections and deaths tied to COVID -19 in New York’s nursing homes.
The governor’s office last week released a partial transcript of a closed-door meeting between state Democratic lawmakers and Melissa Derosa, the governor’s secretary, in which Derosa acknowledged that their office had delayed providing nursing home data to the state Legislature out of concern about how that information might be used against the governor’s administration in the face of a U.S. Department of Justice investigation.
In the meeting, Derosa characterized a Justice Department official who sent a letter to the governor’s administration last year seeking answers to questions about the state’s nursing home policies and deaths as a “political hack” who she contends had pursued the probe at the urging of President Donald J. Trump.
“Basically, we froze because then we were in a position where we weren’t sure if what we were going to give to the Department of Justice or what we give to you guys and what we start saying was going to be used
against us, and we weren’t sure if there was going to be an investigation,” Derosa told the Democratic lawmakers.
The lawmakers who attended the briefing with Derosa included Assemblyman John Mcdonald, D -Cohoes, chair of the Assembly’s Oversight, Analysis and Investigations Committee, and Sen. James Skoufis, an Orange County Democrat who chairs the Senate’s Investigations and Government Operations Committee. Skoufis and Aging Committee Chairwoman Rachel May, who were both in the meeting, have faced calls from Republicans for their chairmanships to be stripped by Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-cousins because they did not alert their legislative colleagues to what had been said.
Skoufis had already come under fire by Republican lawmakers for not immediately issuing subpoenas seeking information from the health commissioner that they had asked for last summer. Skoufis has said he would use the power if necessary, but would decide that issue after Zucker appears before the Legislature’s joint budget hearing panel.
Cuomo at Monday’s news conference first said that state lawmakers were informed of the administration’s decision to delay providing them with data in order to prioritize the response to the Justice Department. But that initial response was handled by his office quickly, and some lawmakers, including Assembly Speaker Carl E. Heastie, said they only knew about the federal inquiry from press reports.
When pressed on that issue,
Cuomo then clarified that his staff members alerted unnamed staff members in the Senate and Assembly about the decision, not lawmakers directly.
“Legislative staff was told by my staff, OK?” he said. “So legislative staff was told; top legislative staff was told.”
That message included informing those unnamed legislative staffers early on that the the governor’s office would be prioritizing the Justice Department’s request ahead of the Legislature requesting data on deaths of nursing home residents. He suggested that the breakdown in communication occurred within the houses.
Much of the information sought by lawmakers, the press and special-interest groups stemmed from a March 25 state Department of Health directive requiring nursing homes to accept residents who were COVID -positive. Cuomo said that decision, which was later rescinded, accorded with federal guidelines at the time, and he claims it did not exacerbate the spread of the virus in the facilities.
Cuomo blamed the spread in nursing homes on asymptomatic staff members and others, including workers such as delivery drivers who may have entered the facilities and infected others.
“We should have done a better job of providing the information. We should have done a better job of knocking down the disinformation,” Cuomo said. “We were too focused on doing the job and addressing the crisis of the moment, and we did not do a good enough job in providing enough information. I take total responsibility for that.”
He said the lack of information allowed for “disinformation and misinformation,” creating “conspiracy theories” around the deaths that the governor argued hurt the families who lost loved ones to COVID -19 in nursing homes.
“I’m worried about the effect on people,” Cuomo said. “What bothers me is people calling up, saying, ... ‘The March 25 directive was the reason my father died.’ Those are the people who were hurt by the void.”
Cuomo said “cruel torture” is perpetuating the theory that something more could have been done. He defended the actions taken throughout the pandemic, noting that advice was taken from the best medical professionals and saying everything that could be done was done. The virus, however, targeted senior citizens who often have underlying health conditions, with the vulnerable population accounting for the majority of deaths from COVID -19, Cuomo said.
“That’s why people died, not because anyone did anything wrong or because there was a conspiracy,” he said.
Much of the information sought by the press and state legislators dating to last year has still not been released by Cuomo’s office. The governor’s office also has declined to release a copy of the full transcript of Derosa’s roughly twohour meeting with the Democratic lawmakers last week.
Sen. Sue Serino, the ranking member of the state Senate’s Aging Committee, seized on Cuomo’s failure to apologize on Monday “to the vulnerable residents and loved ones who have been impacted by the state’s handling of the COVID crisis in our nursing homes.”
“If the governor is so secure in the facts he presented today, then he should have no reason to oppose a thorough, independent investigation to verify them,” Serino said in a statement.
Senate Minority Leader Robert Ortt also responded to the governor’s briefing in a statement, accusing Cuomo of being incapable of taking the blame for “the hurt inflicted on our families by his administration’s relentless disinformation campaign.”
“The governor’s major excuse for the failure of his administration to provide accurate, timely information to the public was, ‘We were busy,’” Ortt said. “This is a pathetic response coming from a man who had the time to publish and promote a book about his pandemic response while New Yorkers clamored for the truth.”
Assembly Minority Leader Will Barclay has called on lawmakers to hold a special session to discuss the alleged cover-up of nursing home data, a move that Ortt supports. They also want a revocation of the governor’s emergency powers.
Those powers, set to expire April 1, were granted to the executive in last year’s budget vote to more easily respond to the coronavirus pandemic, but legislators from both sides of the aisle have toyed with the idea of ending those powers earlier.
Heastie has remained largely silent on the matter. His spokesman issued a statement last week saying the governor’s office had “communicated to staff that they needed more time to provide the information” on nursing home fatalities and policies. The statement added that Heastie was unaware of the Justice Department investigation, now stalled, “other than what was reported in the news.”
Stewart-cousins, the Senate majority leader, delivered a more forceful message on Friday, noting that “crucial information should never be withheld” from those “empowered to do oversight.”
“Politics should not be part of this tragic pandemic and our responses to it must be led by policy, not politics,” Stewartcousins added. “As always, we will be discussing next steps as a conference.”
Serino, a Hudson Valley Republican, has also demanded Cuomo’s administration release the full transcript of the meeting with lawmakers. A partial transcript was released last week in response to the controversy, whereby Derosa argued her remarks were taken out of context.
The Times Union requested the full transcript last week, but the administration never responded to the request.
Stephen Hanse, president and CEO of the New York State Health Facilities Association, issued a statement following Cuomo’s remarks that called for politicians to stop pointing fingers and start treating longterm care as an investment rather than an expense:
“New York’s ‘hospital-centric’ approach focused the state’s resources on hospital-based solutions such as the Javits Center and the USS Comfort that ultimately proved to be ill-advised, while nursing homes throughout New York were left scrambling to safeguard their residents and staff.”