10 July 2022: Editorial - Gov. Hochul Needs to Make Her Promised Independent Pandemic Response Review Happen

Look back: Gov. Hochul needs to get a promised independent pandemic response review started

The editors of the New York Daily News are growing impatient with replacement NY Governor Kathy Hochul. In the following excerpt from their editorial, they call for her to finally launch her promised independent review of Andrew M. Cuomo's pandemic response.

A flattering April New York Time opinion piece says that at a “working dinner” headed by Gov. Hochul in late March, Gov. Cuomo’s COVID-19 response came up: “Surrounded by her commissioners of health and homeland security, the head of her labor department and her counsel and her head of operations, she said she wanted a deep dive into everything that had happened — ‘the good, the bad and the ugly.’ And she wanted it on her desk in two weeks.”

In May, Hochul, asked about the idea, replied: “Actually, we have outside consultants who are going to be working with us to examine every aspect of the pandemic,” she said. “The good, the bad, the ugly. Because I have to be able to leave future governors what was learned.”

It is now nearing mid-July, and, as Gotham Gazette reminds us, there’s no scintilla of progress. No consultants have been retained. No review is underway.

COVID killed nearly 70,000 New Yorkers, making it the worst cataclysm in our modern history. The deadliest period was the start, when a lack of coordination between the city and state almost certainly cost lives. Nor has Cuomo’s order directing recovering COVID patients be returned to nursing homes — or his failure to properly report the numbers of nursing-home deaths — been fully explored.

When, in an endorsement interview last month, we asked Hochul what was taking so long, she answered: “I wouldn’t say it’s taking so long, because we’re still dealing with the pandemic. We don’t have closure. We’re not done.” When we pointed out that it might never be done — and that no lookback prevents public servants from continuing to respond to the pandemic today, she replied: “Well, it is going. We are starting to identify the key players. What I want to do is have independence, so the results of the analysis has (sic.) integrity.”

Assessing the response to a disaster this massive is urgent. The work should have begun months ago. Gov, stop making excuses and start making it happen.

Hochul's alternative hypothesis for explaining her lack of action, implying that state officials aren't capable of both doing their jobs and participating in an independent probe of their past actions, doesn't hold water. If she really believed that to be true, she should be doing everything in her power to remove these individuals from their positions of authority because they're clearly too incompetent to be allowed to continue in them. She isn't, because she doesn't believe that.

We suspect the real issue is that such a review would impair the hold Hochul's political party has over New York's state government. That's because implementing Andrew M. Cuomo's pandemic response, including his deadly 25 March 2020 directive, involved the participation of hundreds of members of their party. A more coherent explanation for Hochul's lack of action is that she believes an independent probe that her party cannot entirely control will damage their interests.

Regardless, as the editors state, it's time for her to stop making excuses and start acting like a responsible leader who quickly follows through on their promises.