29 September 2021: Editorial - New York Needs Someone to Clean Up Cuomo and Zucker's Mess

Editorial: New York needs a trusted voice

This editorial describes what kind of characteristics replacement NY Governor Hochul needs for her as yet unnamed replacement NY Health Commissioner to have. But more importantly, it describes why trustworthiness is at the top of the list.

The damage Andrew Cuomo and Dr. Howard Zucker did to the state Department of Health is immeasurable. Time and time again, the former governor and his health commissioner subsumed the department’s integrity to the burnishing of Mr. Cuomo’s reputation — and to their everlasting shame, the men did so even as New York was confronting the COVID-19 pandemic.

Perhaps the most egregious example is the intentional underreporting of nursing home deaths after the controversial mandate requiring that the facilities accept COVID-positive patients. In an effort apparently aimed at limiting any negative impact to the velocity of what was then Mr. Cuomo’s rising star, the administration and Dr. Zucker’s department manipulated COVID-19 data reported to the public, cleansed an official report of accurate numbers and stonewalled state legislators and reporters seeking an honest death count.

That scandal was enough to warrant Mr. Cuomo and Dr. Zucker losing their jobs, but, alas, it wasn’t the end. Those misdeeds were accompanied by the VIP COVID-19 testing afforded to the former governor’s friends and family — a wholly inappropriate and perhaps illegal program that used public resources, including top Health Department officials and state troopers, to hurry samples to and through the Wadsworth Laboratory in Albany.

We could point to additional failures by Dr. Zucker, including his laissez-faire approach to the water contamination crisis faced by Hoosick Falls beginning in 2014, and it will always be confounding that he allowed his own reputation and that of the Health Department to be so sullied. Why didn’t Dr. Zucker take a stand for integrity? Why didn’t he stand up to Mr. Cuomo?

Answers to those questions may never come, although state and federal investigations are ongoing. What has been clear since the day of Mr. Cuomo’s August resignation is the need for New York’s new governor, Kathy Hochul, to replace Dr. Zucker with a health commissioner who can restore confidence and repair damaged trust.

New Yorkers, and Hochul, would benefit from following a two track approach. First, she needs to pursue criminal cases against Andrew M. Cuomo, his inner circle, and the members of his administration who participated in its COVID nursing home deaths scandals.

Second, she needs to ensure enough information becomes available to the families of the victims of that scandal to allow them to relentlessly pursue justice through civil litigation. Making the public data the state has collected available to all the public is a small step she could take to advance that second track along.