Skoufis to lead COVID response hearings
A state lawmaker from the Mid-Hudson Valley who recovered from COVID-19 will co-chair four hearings at which New York’s response to the pandemic will be reviewed.
Sen. James Skoufis, DCornwall, made the announcement in a press release issued Monday.
Skoufis said three hearings will be conducted by the Senate’s Investigations and Government Operations
Committee, which he chairs, and Health and Aging committees. The hearings will “scrutinize the devastation in our state’s nursing homes as well as the challenges our hospitals have faced over the past four months,” Skoufis said in a press release.
An Aug. 3 hearing will focus on upstate nursing homes, and Aug. 10 hearing will focus on downstate nursing homes, and an Aug. 12 hearing will focus on hospitals.
The hearings are to include testimony from Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s office, nursing home management, hospital stakeholders, frontline workers and patients’ family members.
The Cuomo administration has been under fire for instituting a policy, later rescinded, that nursing homes in New York state had to accept recovering COVID patients from hospitals. A spike in COVIDrelated deaths at nursing homes followed, though Cuomo has said it was because staff members who had COVID but didn’t know it kept coming to work.
Separately, Skoufis’ committee and the Senate’s Labor and Bank committees will hold an Aug. 13 hearing about workforce issues, including problems with the state unemployment system and the distribution of
personal protective equipment, and the treatment of employees during the pandemic.
All four hearings will be conducted remotely, using the online Zoom platform.
Skoufis announced on April 24 that he had tested positive for COVID-19. On May 5, he declared himself “fully recovered.”
“Since the beginning of the pandemic, one thing was clear,” Skoufis said in a prepared statement. “While our frontline workers were heroically saving lives, communities across the state were under attack from both the virus as well as bureaucratic dysfunction. We owe it to the people of this state to get answers and diligently examine what transpired, both as a means to hold bad actors accountable as well as learn what worked and what didn’t work in preparation for the next public health crisis.”
Skoufis represents New York’s 39th Senate District, which comprises the Ulster County towns of Plattekill and Marlborough, central and eastern Orange County, and the northern tip of Rockland County.
For local coverage related to the coronavirus, go to bit. ly/DFCOVID19.