13 May 2021: Impeachment, Investigations Stall Nursing Home Probe

Impeachment, Investigations Stall Nursing Home Probe

Governor Cuomo has previously used the excuse of the various investigations into his alleged misconduct in office to justify his administration's stonewalling of providing information about various matters to the public. This report confirms that elected officials in the New York Assembly are being blocked from investigating the Cuomo administration's COVID nursing home deaths scandals by the Assembly's own impeachment probe.

A state Senate probe of Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s handling of COVID-19 in nursing homes is taking a back seat to the Assembly’s impeachment inquiry for Cuomo.

Sen. Rachel May, D-Syracuse, made the statement in response to a question by Sen. Sue Serino, R-Hyde Park, in regard to a statement in March by Sen. James Skoufis, D-Newburgh. Skoufis had told The New York Post he would consider a probe led by the Senate Investigations Committee, in coordination with the Senate Aging Committee.

Serino asked May the status of that investigation during a Senate Aging Committee meeting on Tuesday.

“My understanding is the Assembly’s Impeachment inquiry took precedence over that, so we are waiting for the various investigations that are ongoing, including an FBI investigation to run their course,” May said. “That’s my understanding.”

The report also indicates there may be something more to the 10 February 2021 meeting between Secretary to the Governor Melissa DeRosa and Democratic party member of the New York Assembly, in which she acknowledged the Cuomo administration had engaged in a cover-up of the full extent of COVID nursing home deaths. While the New York Post broke that original bombshell about that meeting on 11 February 2021, this report indicates there is information about that meeting that has not yet been made public:

Serino filed a Freedom of Information Law request for a transcript of the Feb. 10 meeting. That request was denied in part because the governor’s office issued a transcript of the event. Serino has argued that the denial implies that the meeting recording must differ in a way substantial enough to set it apart from the transcript that was readily released, and has appealed the FOIL denial.

That motion was denied on a technicality by Senator May, who acknowledged she was a participant in that 10 February 2021 meeting, with the following argument:

“As chair it is my prerogative and I’m going to rule this motion out of order pursuant to Rule 7, Section 2,” May said. “I also will mention that having been part of that conversation that the transcript is quite accurate … There’s nothing missing that I’m aware of from that transcript. In any case I rule it out of order.”

Shouldn't public officials have to prove their claims? Shouldn't the full, unredacted recording of the meeting be released so the public can judge for themselves? We know from experience in transcribing recordings that transcripts provided by the Governor's office, while generally accurate, don't represent the whole picture and will often omit nuanced information that was communicated during the related event.

In other words, complying with New York's Freedom Of Information Law (FOIL) should be a no-brainer in this case. If May's characterization of the released partial transcript is correct, doing so will end an unproductive line of inquiry for those raising the questions. The question of whether all information the public is entitled to have regarding a meeting held among elected and unelected public officials needs to be resolved.