The Times Union says, “Resign, Mr. Cuomo”
Editorial: Resign, Mr. Cuomo Times Union Editorial Board March 6, 2021
First Gov. Andrew Cuomo hid the truth about deaths of nursing home residents from the public. Then his administration lied about why. Then, pretending to come clean, it lied about why it lied.
Enough. Mr. Cuomo has squandered the public’s trust at a time when it’s needed more than ever. Amid an enduring pandemic, it is vital that people can believe what their governor and their government are telling them, and that the rules they’re asked to follow and the sacrifices they’re asked to make are truly in the interest of public health. It is time for Mr. Cuomo to resign, and for those who helped him deceive the public to go, too.
We do not say this lightly. We endorsed Mr. Cuomo for governor three times. He has brought to fruition a host of important progressive goals. But between his manipulation of state ethics bodies, multiple allegations of sexual harassment and these latest revelations on nursing home deaths, he has lost the credibility he needs to lead this state, especially in the midst of a public health crisis.
As we wrote in our last endorsement of him: “New York still matters. It's the fourth-largest state and the financial center of the world. It's the birthplace of women's rights and LGBT rights. It embodies the American melting pot. With its wealth, its legacy and its diversity come a special responsibility to stand as a moral voice in America.”
Mr. Cuomo can no longer be that voice.
Last March, the governor made a mistake. The state Health Department issued an advisory that nursing homes could not refuse an admission, or readmission, of a person who had been infected with the coronavirus but was medically stable. There were understandable reasons for this policy: New York had been hit hard by the pandemic, and hospitals were running out of beds.
Mr. Cuomo rescinded the advisory in May, but some questioned whether it had caused more nursing home infections and deaths. In July, the Health Department, under Commissioner Howard Zucker, issued a report that said the advisory had no role in increased infections. The Legislature, journalists and others, however, asked for better data — in particular, the number of people who were infected in nursing homes but died in hospitals. The administration insisted that was very complex to analyze. Months passed.
But in January, Attorney General Letitia James released a report that found the administration had greatly understated the number of nursing home deaths, and that the directive — among other things — likely led to more people getting sick. Suddenly, the administration produced data to challenge Ms. James’ numbers. But the real numbers turn out to have been at least 50 percent higher than the administration had claimed.
It gets worse. In a conference call last month with Democratic lawmakers, the governor’s top aide, Melissa DeRosa, supposedly came clean, claiming the administration withheld the nursing home data because it was worried that the U.S. Justice Department under President Donald Trump was going to conduct a politically motivated probe of the matter.
It now turns out that the excuse for the lie was a lie, too.
Reporting by The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal reveals that while the Health Department’s report was being drafted in June — before a federal inquiry started — the state had a more complete number of nursing home deaths, but it was higher than Mr. Cuomo’s close aides wanted it to be. Those aides included Ms. DeRosa; Linda Lacewell, who heads the Department of Financial Services; and James Malatras, a former top adviser to Mr. Cuomo who is now chancellor of the State University of New York. They changed the report, the papers found.
Why? We can’t be certain, but right around that time Mr. Cuomo, basking in national admiration for his handling of the pandemic, was working on a book deal, and, no doubt, thinking about how this performance could be parlayed into a national run down the line.
That’s no excuse to manipulate health data or an official report, as Mr. Cuomo and Ms. Lacewell in particular surely know. It was then-Attorney General Cuomo who said as much in 2007 in an investigation that faulted former Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s administration for compiling politically damaging information on then-Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno’s use of state aircraft. Ms. Lacewell was one of the main authors of the report. Whether it’s to make a rival look bad or a governor look good, you don’t twist government reports to do it.
So now we have a compromised health commissioner who can’t be trusted to tell the full truth about vital public health matters. A university chancellor who had a hand in writing a report of half-truths. And a governor who can’t be trusted to tell the truth even when he’s supposedly owning up to a lie.
New York cannot get through this public health crisis if New Yorkers don’t know whether the governor and health officials are being honest with them from one day to the next.
It did not have to be like this. Mr. Cuomo was, by and large, doing a commendable job leading the state through the pandemic. People knew what a tough situation he faced. If he made a bad call a year ago, New Yorkers would have understood if he’d just been straight with them.
But Mr. Cuomo didn’t trust New Yorkers with the truth.
And now, they could hardly be blamed for not trusting him with their government, much less their lives.
It is time to go — for Dr. Zucker, Ms. DeRosa, Chancellor Malatras, all the other people who went along with this, and Mr. Cuomo, most of all.