13 August 2021: Cleaning Up Cuomo's Messes in Albany

Will other members of NY Gov. Cuomo’s administration resign?

This report indicates NY Lt. Governor Kathy Hochul is promising to do some housecleaning. But she isn't providing many details, which are being filled in by suggestions from the media:

“No one who is named as doing anything unethical in the attorney general’s report will remain in my administration,” she said. “At the end of my term, whenever it ends, no one will ever describe my administration as a toxic work environment.”

Gotham Gazette Editor Ben Max suggested senior Cuomo advisor Rich Azzopardi and Director of the Governor’s Offices Stephanie Benton might resign.

“They’re both named repeatedly in the attorney general’s report, and they are the type of close aides to a governor that you would expect to leave with that governor,” Max said.

A new op-ed in the Albany Times Union called for Health Commissioner Dr. Howard Zucker to lose his job. Max noted Zucker was not implicated in the attorney general’s report but that he “has been at the center of the COVID related scandals the nursing home death related scandals.”

Andrew M. Cuomo's COVID nursing home deaths scandals required the contributions of dozens, if not hundreds of state officials. And that doesn't even begin to address the scale of corruption instituted throughout New York's state government during Cuomo's tenure in office. If Hochul is serious, she will need to systematically force many overly comfortable officials out of their unearned positions, from the top down, across the entire state government.

But if she needs to prioritize, she should start with the Executive Office of the Governor and the New York State Department of Health, where the worst of the worst have been allowed to thrive.