It appears that former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo won’t be able to dodge responsibility for some controversial actions he took regarding COVID-19 after all.
Cuomo received a subpoena March 5 from the U.S. House of Representative’s Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic. An article published March 5 by the New York Post reported that the subcommittee scheduled Cuomo’s deposition to begin in May and will likely be held behind closed doors.
A March 25, 2020, directive from the state Department of Health prohibited nursing homes from turning away residents solely on the basis that they had previously become infected with the novel coronavirus. It also barred the facilities from testing patients after they were released from medical care.
The measure was designed to free space in hospitals early in the pandemic. Once patients were cleared to return to the public, state health authorities argued that nursing homes should let them come back.
However, nursing home officials felt pressured to take these people in regardless of whether they remained infected. This practice is believed to have further spread the virus through facilities housing senior citizens, one of the populations most vulnerable to the effects of COVID-19. Compounding the problem was the fact that the state Legislature approved a bill to offer immunity to heath care facilities for problems their patients encountered during the pandemic.
The consequences of these actions were made apparent following an investigation by state Attorney General Letitia James A. James. In January 2021, her office announced that the DOH underreported the number of deaths of nursing home residents from COVID-19. Representatives of the Cuomo administration said that deaths were only counted when residents died within the confines of a nursing home, not while in private homes or other health care facilities.
The situation grew worse. Some of Cuomo’s staffers rewrote a July 2020 state DOH report examining the nursing home deaths. Cuomo then used the distorted data to praise New York’s nursing home system; the manipulated information made the system look more effective than it was.
Cuomo resigned as governor in August 2021. In addition to concerns expressed over his handling of the coronavirus, he faced accusations of sexual harassment and abuse from former staff members.
The state Assembly Judiciary Committee commissioned a report in 2021 from Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP to examine the Cuomo administration to prepare for possible impeachment proceedings. The document noted that the actual deaths of all nursing home residents from COVID-19 was about 10,000 but that deaths of residents inside nursing homes when they succumbed was about 6,500. Cuomo administration officials opted to include the 6,500 number rather than the 10,000 figure, the report concluded.
It was good that the Assembly Judiciary Committee had this investigation done. However, questions were raised about how far it would be allowed to proceed with a modest $4.3 million offered for what should have been an extensive probe.
Of course, leaders of the Assembly declared that impeachment was off the table following Cuomo’s resignation. This squashed any hopes that the legislative branch would conduct its own investigation into Cuomo’s actions — or follow up with a decision to bar him from seeking office again.
So now a congressional committee will put Cuomo on the hot seat to look into his administration’s behavior. This is a good development, despite the fact that Cuomo’s supporters have denounced it.
Assembly leaders have shown they won’t hold him accountable for his incredibly poor decisions. Hopefully, the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic will shed some light on a part of New York’s governance that state authorities are too timid to view.
