3 May 2021: Kim Calls for NY State AG to Investigate Cuomo Nursing Home Scandals

Assemblyman Ron Kim urges Attorney General to investigate Cuomo nursing home scandal

Assemblyman Ron Kim spoke to an interest group for seniors on 3 May 2021, calling for New York Attorney General Letitia James to investigate the Cuomo administration's nursing home deaths scandals. Here are his remarks:

“For ten months Andrew Cuomo only listened to the worst operators, the lobbyists, to put forward policies that were not only deadly but were irresponsible and criminal. So, we are here once again calling for full accountability for Andrew Cuomo’s unilateral decision-making around nursing homes, in particular, we are asking for the Attorney General and every other investigator who has now opened up investigations into Andrew Cuomo to look into him and his allies, and his administration committing fraud,” Kim said.

The group, Voices for Seniors, is led by Vivian Rivera-Zayas, whose story is featured in the timeline here. She describes the group's perspective on the state of the investigations surrounding the Cuomo administration's scandals:

“We represent 15,000 seniors who lost their lives in our state. One year later it is clear that there is an investigation into the resources for the writing and the assembly of the governor’s book, we also know one year later there is an investigation into sexual harassment allegations, which are both serious issues. What isn’t clear at this point is if there is an investigation into the handling of the nursing homes during the height of the pandemic still one year later,” said Vivian Rivera-Zayas, who co-founded Voices for Seniors with her sister Alexa Rivera after their mother contracted COVID-19 and passed away shortly after while at a Long Island nursing home.

That the question needs to be raised more than a year after most the deaths occurred says a lot about the system New York's elected officials and state government workers have established to investigate themselves.