Friday, April 23, 2021

23 April 2021: Cuomo Stonewalls Releasing Communications with Feds about NY Nursing Home Deaths

New York won’t say what it told DOJ about nursing home outbreaks

For a man whose book about his "leadership" during the coronavirus pandemic in New York proclaims the value of transparency, Governor Cuomo sure seems intent on keeping the public from finding out what public information his administration has communicated to the federal government.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s office said it won’t reveal what it told the U.S. Justice Department about COVID-19 outbreaks in nursing homes, partly because doing so would be an “invasion of personal privacy.”

The Justice Department last year asked the governors of several states, including New York, to turn over certain, basic statistics related to deaths and infections inside nursing homes.

That federal request, initially made in August and later expanded in October, followed reports by The Associated Press and other news organizations that the state’s official nursing home death toll was likely a significant undercount.

Cuomo’s began sending records to federal investigators last year. But his office has now denied a request from The Associated Press for copies of those documents.

That’s despite Cuomo himself, in mid-February, saying he supported releasing the records.

“Look, I would have no problem with it,” said the governor, who as New York’s attorney general oversaw many complex criminal investigations. “I would have to have the lawyers talk to DOJ, but I would have no problem with it.”

Releasing the documents would “constitute an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy,” the governor’s records access officer, Jaclyn Clemmer, wrote in a letter dated April 15.

She didn’t explain whose privacy might be invaded, or how.

The public also isn’t entitled to see the records because they were “compiled for law enforcement purposes” and their disclosure would “interfere with law enforcement investigations,” Clemmer wrote.

This wouldn't be the first time Cuomo administration officials attempted to hide behind claims of violating personal privacy in refusing to release public data to the public. Here's an earlier incident from the timeline describing the exact same tactic:

The following entry from the timeline discusses how that attempt to withhold data eventually crumbled as the falsehood it was:

Finally, here's where the timeline has previously covered Governor Cuomo's use of the many investigations against his conduct in office to deny providing public information to the public and the news media:

Cuomo blocks release of COVID nursing home data sent to feds

This report covers a lot of the same territory as the previous article, but provides additional background information for context.

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