Cuomo: A new chapter to begin
New York’s pandemic state of emergency ends Thursday, governor says
Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo on Wednesday said he is ending the state of emergency that he had declared last year as the
coronavirus pandemic overwhelmed New York.
The state’s declaration of emergency is scheduled to expire Thursday — and will not be renewed — signaling the beginning of the “POST-COVID” period, the governor said during a news conference in Manhattan.
Cuomo’s declaration for the state on March 7, 2020, had given him the authority to temporarily suspend or modify any statute, local law, ordinance, order, rule, or regulation “if compliance with such statute, local law, ordinance, order, rule, or regulation would prevent, hinder, or delay action necessary to cope with the disaster emergency or if necessary to assist or aid in coping with such disaster.”
That power invoked by the governor had rankled some lawmakers who were uneasy with the authority that Cuomo had used to alter hundreds of laws and regulations, especially in the early stages of the pandemic as New York sought to contain the spread of the virus.
“We’re now starting to write a new chapter,” Cuomo said. “It doesn’t mean there’s not challenges for the new chapter, but the emergency is over.”
Cuomo announced last week that he was lifting nearly all restrictions he put in place because of the COVID -19 pandemic. Roughly 70 percent of New York residents have received at least one dose of the vaccine, based on data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The federal government has identified the 70 percent vaccinated threshold as a benchmark for safely reopening states.
“It’s not that we believe COVID is gone,” Cuomo said. “We still have to vaccinate people, especially young people.”
The governor is facing multiple investigations for allegations ranging from sexual harassment to doctoring the state’s figures on nursing home deaths attributed to COVID -19.
Last week, when he announced that he was lifting many of the restrictions, he also announced there would be state-sponsored fireworks displays across the state that same day.
The grandeur was heavily critiqued by Cuomo’s critics, and in particular, by the state Republican Party, which lambasted Cuomo for not ending the state of emergency sooner. GOP leadership wanted the governor also to relinquish the expanded executive powers granted to him by the Legislature and the emergency declaration, which generally include the ability to unilaterally bring back the restrictions.
The lifting of the state of emergency means Cuomo’s extended powers will end with it.
“New Yorkers can now, at long last, return to their daily routines and a sense of normalcy,” Assembly Minority Leader William Barclay said in a statement. “It is time to move forward.”
The fight over the governor’s use of his office under a declared state of emergency drew the ire of Republicans, who typically campaign for less government control and more authority at the local level. They had called for local school districts to decide whether their students should wear masks. Conservatives put up lawn signs that called for Cuomo to “unmask” their children.
And the typically GOP depiction of an overreaching executive branch — which ushered in restrictions like restaurant curfews to curtail the spread of COVID -19 in order to protect public safety — became a calling card for people who said it was time to leave New York for less restrictive states, including Florida, which is seeing a wave of new residents from Northeast states. The debates became politicized, pitting Cuomo’s handling of the pandemic against that of governors like Florida’s Ron Desantis, at a time when the nation was still reeling from the spread of the coronavirus.
It was during Cuomo’s daily, televised briefings on the toll of the pandemic that his national profile began to rise. Out of the admiration of his handling of COVID -19 came a $5 million book deal, now a focus of multiple investigations into the governor. And out of the briefings came questions of whether he was accurately telling the story of the pandemic’s toll. Alleged manipulation of nursing home death data is a focus of an investigation by the U.S. Justice Department that’s being led by the U.S. attorney’s office in Brooklyn.
In his briefing Wednesday, Cuomo continued to highlight the need to rejuvenate the economy, which he characterized as “reimagining ” New York, not reopening.
He is encouraging people to go shopping and to attend shows and sporting events. He noted that escalated levels of crime in cities should be addressed so people feel more comfortable going out and spending money.
In celebration of the end of the state of emergency, Cuomo unveiled plans to have a “Circle of Heroes” monument in Manhattan’s Battery Park to honor the essential workers who helped during the pandemic. It will include 19 maple trees, which will encircle an eternal flame, he said. The monument, with views of the Statue of Liberty, is to open Labor Day.
New York City, where the state’s emergency was most pronounced early on in the pandemic, became the world’s ground zero during the first two months of the pandemic. It was during those days that Cuomo exercised what he said was the state’s right to close down parts of the economy to protect public health. Asked if his well-publicized back-and-forths with New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio over when to close restaurants or schools led to additional deaths, Cuomo said flatly, “No.”
In his final briefing during the state of the emergency, Cuomo charted out the plans to be better protected against future pandemics, because “there will be a next one.”
Safe staffing law
Flanked by nurses and union leaders, Cuomo also signed into law Wednesday a “safe staffing ” bill that advocates say will result in better patient outcomes. It will require certain staffing minimums in hospitals and nursing homes, the facilities most embattled during the pandemic.
The bill to protect patients is long overdue, New York State Nurses Association Executive Director Pat Kane said at the news conference.
“It’s 12 years that I’ve worked on this bill and I have to thank you,” Kane said, “because it means so much to me, means so much to all of my colleagues.”
Cuomo cautioned that it is important to remain vigilant against the virus, its mutations and the continued need for more vaccinations of young people.
“They say the vaccinations manage all of the mutations, but God forbid there’s a mutation that doesn’t work,” Cuomo said. “Then we’re back to zero.”