21 April 2021: Op-ed - Calls for Bipartisan Commission to Investigate New Jersey Governor Murphy's COVID Nursing Home Policies

GOP: Murphy should still be held accountable for the unnecessary harm he caused | Opinion

This op-ed by New Jersey State Senator Joe Pennacchio calls for a bipartisan commission with subpoena power to investigate Governor Murphy and his administration's policies during the coronavirus pandemic.

For nearly a year, Republicans in the New Jersey Legislature have called for bipartisan legislative oversight of the Murphy administration’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. We pushed our Democratic colleagues to join us, and when they continued to resist after 10 months of trying, we moved forward with independent hearings on our own.

As a result of our efforts and explosive revelations by the media, we’re more certain than ever that a bipartisan select committee with subpoena power must be formed. It’s the only way we’ll get the answers we need to understand what went wrong and ensure tragic mistakes aren’t repeated. Unfortunately, Trenton Democrats, who chomped at the bit to investigate matters of lesser importance in recent years, are suddenly frozen in inaction. It’s inexplicable.

Many of the issues Pennacchio would have the bipartisan commission investigate mirror those in New York, where Governor Phil Murphy copied many of the ill-fated policies of Governor Andrew Cuomo. As in New York, there are clear signs New Jersey's Murphy administration knew those policies would directly cause the deaths of nursing home residents:

We also read about secret recordings made when nursing homes were ordered to admit COVID-19 patients from hospitals and prohibited from testing to see if those patients were still infected. As NJ.com reported, nursing home administrators warned Health Commissioner Judith Persichilli and other Murphy administration officials on a call last March that the directive would lead to tragedy. One administrator warned that segregating sick residents wouldn’t work, while another said bluntly, “Patients will die.”

Sadly, none of Governor Murphy’s people listened to the warnings that could have prevented many of the estimated 10,000 nursing home deaths that occurred in subsequent outbreaks. We need to know why the Murphy Administration blindly followed New York Governor Andrew Cuomo’s lead in issuing and implementing the disastrous nursing home order over extremely vocal concerns.

New Jersey narrowly ranks second in the U.S behind New York for its share of COVID-related deaths among its senior (Age 65 and older) population. Like New York, it took a lot of teamwork for the Murphy administration and state government officials to implement and enforce its policies. Like New York, the New Jersey legislature's failure to act to seriously investigate the disastrous outcome of the policies it copied may be attributed to the influence of those officials, who are seeking to protect themselves from legal liability and the political consequences of their actions.