26 March 2021: A Profile of Melissa DeRosa

Cuomo’s Top Aide Defends Her Boss and Herself: ‘I’m a Human Being’

This article reports Secretary to the Governor Melissa DeRosa is the second highest paid employee of New York's state government, earning more than Governor Cuomo. If you recall, Melissa DeRosa is the Cuomo administration official who acknowledged on 12 February 2021 they were covering up the full extent of COVID nursing home resident deaths during the period the administration's deadly 25 March 2020 directive was in effect.

Here's how the report introduces her:

On a ranking of New York power brokers last year, the most influential person after Donald Trump and Andrew Cuomo wasn’t the Assembly speaker or state Senate majority leader. It was Melissa DeRosa, one of the few people to pierce the governor’s fiercely guarded inner circle.

DeRosa’s unassuming title of secretary to the governor belies her clout as the three-term Democrat’s highest-ranking aide. With Cuomo facing calls to resign over claims of sexual harassment and accusations that his administration undercounted coronavirus deaths data, she has emerged as one of his chief defenders.

The ascent of the daughter of a powerful Albany lobbyist to the role of Cuomo’s enforcer -- like him, known for expletive-filled phone calls -- highlights how the governor surrounds himself with people, many of them women, who defend his well-documented aggressive demeanor. And they do so while helping him burnish his image of a governor who champions women’s rights....

“It’s DeRosa’s job to be Cuomo’s on-staff fixer and make things work for him,” said John Kaehny, executive director of government watchdog group Reinvent Albany. “For Cuomo, everything is about consolidating power and controlling the political narrative, whether that’s showing his control over Covid or otherwise, and DeRosa is effective at channeling the governor and implementing his every desire and will.”

DeRosa is cited in accounts by at least two of his accusers. She’s also accused of asking state health officials to alter a public report that outlined the true extent of the number of nursing-home residents who died, claims the administration has denied.

The article contains just one new statement from DeRosa:

“Media accounts have reduced me to a caricature, but I’m a human being who truly believes in and cares deeply about government and public service,” she said. “I’ve worked incredibly hard throughout my career and especially during the pandemic. I didn’t sleep. The last thing I would do in my day is call family members of health-care workers who died and tell them I’m sorry for their pain, and then close the door, lay on the floor and cry. I am not the one-dimensional person that has been portrayed in the press.”

Much of the rest of the article describes her involvement in several episodes of alleged sexual harassment and abusive conduct on the part of Governor Cuomo.