Frustration with Cuomo Grows Among Democrats, While Calls Grow for his Resignation

Tolerance for Gov. Andrew Cuomo among Democrats in the Legislature continued to erode Friday, as lawmakers reacted to news that top aides in the administration had altered a report on COVID-19 at nursing homes to exclude residents who died outside those facilities.

Lawmakers also appeared displeased with Cuomo Friday in Albany, where they voted to amend his emergency powers in the wake of dueling scandals involving his administration.

Senate Deputy Majority Leader Mike Gianaris, a Democrat from Queens, said during the debate on the bill that Cuomo lied Wednesday when he claimed the legislation had been negotiated between the Legislature and the governor’s office.

“To be clear, the governor lied,” Gianaris said. “There was no agreement between the houses of the Legislature and the governor on this bill.”

Cuomo had framed the measure as a three-way agreement between the Senate, Assembly and his office on Wednesday, but Democrats have rejected that claim.

Republicans have been critical of the measure because it doesn’t completely strip Cuomo of his powers, but instead creates a new mechanism for legislative oversight over any future changes he makes to existing pandemic-related rules. He won’t be allowed to issue new directives. 

Sen. Andy Lanza, a Republican from Staten Island, argued during the debate that, given a federal  investigation into the state’s handling of nursing homes, Cuomo shouldn’t be allowed to keep any of his emergency pandemic-related powers.

“Right now in the state of New York, one man makes those decisions,” Lanza said of actions regarding the state’s economy, schools, and more. “Now he has to tell some of us what he’s going to do when he does it, but he’ll do it anyway regardless of what you say about it.”

The bill allows the Legislature to repeal any of Cuomo’s new changes through a simple majority vote, though that had always been an option over the past year. Lawmakers did not, previously, challenge any of Cuomo’s actions during the pandemic. 

But some Democrats are coming out in favor of stronger action against the Cuomo administration, given news that top aides to the governor may have misled the public on COVID-19 deaths at nursing homes.

Both the Wall Street Journal and New York Times reported Thursday that the Cuomo administration altered a controversial report from the state Department of Health to remove the number of deaths of nursing home residents who died outside those facilities.

The change allowed the agency to omit thousands of deaths from the report, which shifted the blame for nursing home fatalities to asymptomatic visitors and staff, rather than any of the state’s decisions during the pandemic.

In a statement Thursday evening, a top spokesman for the state Department of Health and Beth Garvey, special counsel to Cuomo, said those deaths were taken out because the administration couldn’t verify them.

“While early versions of the report included out of facility deaths, the COVID task force was not satisfied that the data had been verified against hospital data and so the final report used only data for in facility deaths, which was disclosed in the report,” the spokesman said. 

“While the out of facility deaths were held aside for verification, the conclusions were supported by both data sets.”

The news was not received well by Democrats in the state Legislature, some of which have already called for Cuomo’s resignation in the wake of sexual harassment claims made against the three-term governor in the past two weeks.

Sen. Rachel May, a Democrat who chairs the Aging Committee, was the latest Democrat to call for Cuomo’s resignation, reacting to the altered nursing homes report.

“If true, everyone involved in lying to the public and to the Legislature must resign immediately,” May said. “And that includes the governor. Even though he is not named in this specific article, it was done in his name.”

Sen. Todd Kaminsky, a Democrat from Long Island, said the Cuomo administration’s actions, if true, were “unacceptable and unethical, at best.” Kaminsky is a former federal prosecutor who worked in the Public Integrity Section of the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Brooklyn.

“Let’s be clear: if any State employee knowingly whitewashed an official report to cover up the deaths of New Yorkers, that is unacceptable and unethical, at best,” Kaminsky said. “We need to get answers now, and this whole thing reeks.”

Federal prosecutors in Brooklyn have already launched an investigation into the state’s handling of nursing homes, including data related to those facilities. The timeline of that investigation is unclear, but lawmakers are hoping for it to conclude sooner, rather than later.

Some Democrats in the Legislature have already called for Cuomo to resign over claims that he sexually harassed two women who worked in his administration, and touched another woman inappropriately at a wedding.

Cuomo said Wednesday that he’s not planning to resign, and that the COVID-19 pandemic, the state’s economic recovery, and the vaccine rollout would keep him in office for the time being.

The New York Attorney General's Office is managing its own investigation into the sexual harassment claims, and is expected to select an independent, nonpolitical law firm to lead the probe.