17 August 2021: NY Lawmakers Thinking About Going Old School Egyptian

Lawmakers eye Cuomo's pension, scrapping father's name from bridge

The ancient Egyptians had a way of dealing with bad pharoahs. After they died, they would remove their names from the monuments where they had literally been chiseled into stone.

This report indicates several NY lawmakers are suggesting doing something very similar with the Cuomo name.

It’s a bill that has been floated before, but is gaining more steam in light of recent events — changing the name of the Gov. Mario Cuomo Bridge back to the Tappan Zee.

In 2017, when Gov. Andrew Cuomo first renamed the newly rebuilt Tappan Zee Bridge, there was quite an uproar among local community members and even some lawmakers.

Now with Cuomo resigning in less than eight days facing numerous scandals, Assemblyman Mike Lawler, who introduced the bill, said it is time for the Cuomo name to be scrubbed off the bridge.

“If he could have named it the Andrew Cuomo Bridge, he would have, but he couldn't, and so he settled for Mario,” Assemblyman Lawler said. “So I think it's really time to get the Cuomo name off the bridge and revert it back to the Tappan Zee.”

The original name of the bridge, Tappan Zee, represented the history of the region.

The word “Tappan” referred to a Native American tribe that lived nearby and the word “zee” is Dutch for "sea."

Right away, when the name of the bridge was changed to honor Andrew Cuomo’s father, there was pushback. A petition with almost 110,000 signatures was delivered to the state Capitol.

Cuomo at the time called it “politically motivated and vindictive.”

Now that same bridge is being investigated by the Assembly Judiciary Committee as part of their impeachment investigation, after reports came out about potential safety violations.

“Given the governor's conduct and the scandals swirling around him, both the sexual harassment and the nursing home scandal, as well as his $5.1 million blood money book deal, I think now is the right time to change the name back,” Assemblyman Lawler said.

The report also describes an effort to strip Andrew M. Cuomo of the $50,000 per year pension he is set to receive after resigning as New York's governor, which would require amending New York's state constitution. We think that effort is a real long shot, but it will be interesting to see what might become of the bill to rename the bridge. We think it's unlikely to pass, but that may change depending on what all the various investigations into Andrew M. Cuomo determine.