28 March 2021: Tom DiNapoli Holding Up State Investigation of Cuomo Nursing Home Scandals

One Man Is Standing in the Way of an Investigation into Cuomo's Nursing Home Scandal

This report explores why New York State Attorney General Letitia James has not yet begun a criminal investigation of the Cuomo administration's cover-up of the full extent of COVID nursing home resident deaths, despite uncovering and presenting evidence of it.

In January, New Yorkers were shocked to learn that the actual Covid-19 death tolls in the state’s nursing homes were as much as 50 percent higher than what had previously been disclosed. The misreporting, which was revealed in a report released by New York Attorney General Tish James on January 28, meant that thousands of deaths may have gone uncounted. And many of these deaths occurred in the early days of the pandemic, as Cuomo told hospitals to send coronavirus-positive patients back to the facilities, leading to rapid spread of the virus.

That scandal gained legs in February when the top aide to the governor, Melissa DeRosa, said that the misreporting was deliberate; Cuomo’s office wanted to throw off an investigation into the state’s handling of nursing homes. “We were in a position where we weren’t sure if what we were going to give to the Department of Justice, or what we give to you guys, and what we start saying, was going to be used against us and we weren’t sure if there was going to be an investigation,” she said on a conference call with Democratic legislators....

James has not, however, begun an investigation into the Cuomo administration on its actions last spring, for a bureaucratic reason: She needs a referral from either Cuomo himself or Tom DiNapoli, the state’s low-profile comptroller, who has served since 2007. James has the statutory authority to investigate nursing homes, hence the January 28 report. She does not have the statutory authority to launch an investigation with subpoena power into the Cuomo administration without DiNapoli’s referral. (Theoretically, James could decline to investigate Cuomo’s handling of the nursing home crisis even if she received the referral from DiNapoli, though that seems very unlikely given her willingness to investigate the issue so far.)

The article identifies a political reason why DiNapoli has not acted to provide the formal referral needed to launch that investigation:

A nursing home investigation has the potential to be explosive for a much broader range of actors than just Cuomo, and DiNapoli is himself considering a run for governor. While DiNapoli, a mainstream Democrat who nonetheless has occasionally clashed with Cuomo, is among the Democratic politicians calling for Cuomo’s resignation over sexual harassment claims, so far his office has declined to make a referral. Most of the leading Democrats calling for his resignation have not specifically referred to the nursing home scandal, with a notable exception being powerful state Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins, a longtime Cuomo foil who assailed his “loss of credibility surrounding the Covid-19 nursing home data” in addition to “allegations about sexual harassment.”...

A full spectrum investigation by James into the Cuomo administration’s handling of the nursing home crisis could expose a much broader set of powerful actors in the state — actors that DiNapoli, who is considering a run for governor, would confront by making the referral demanded by the families of nursing home Covid-19 victims. “I would imagine that [the lobby groups] don’t want any more investigations into their potential pay to play schemes,” said New York Assembly Member Ron Kim, a Democrat. “The timeline proves [pay to play] may have happened around corporate immunity.”

That agrees with our previous analysis on the topic. It took a lot of teamwork within the Cuomo administration to impose and enforce its deadly 25 March 2020 directive forcing nursing homes to admit COVID patients from hospitals seeking to free up bed space without testing to see if they were still contagious. It also took a lot of teamwork to ration Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) to favor hospital employees at the expense of nursing homes, which greatly increased the risk nursing home employees would become infected and become superspreaders within the facilities where they worked because of the resulting shortages of PPE.

The focus on Governor Cuomo's sexual harassment scandals would appear designed to limit the damage to a lot of members of the Democratic Party in New York. To rectify that problem and begin cleaning house throughout the state government, Tom DiNapoli needs to stand up and formally request the state attorney general's investigation with subpoena power. Without it, justice for the families of victims of Governor Cuomo's COVID nursing home policies will be denied. Without it, Tom DiNapoli's personal integrity will always be found lacking. What legacy does Tom DiNapoli want to have for his career in public service? Who's interest will he choose to serve?