Source: Politics<\/p>\n
ALBANY, N.Y. \u2014 No one dared tell Andrew Cuomo how terrible they thought his idea was.<\/p>\n
In the summer of 2020, with Cuomo at the height of his pandemic-inflated fame, the then-governor of New York suggested that the state health department deploy half its roughly 5,000 employees to check restaurants for their compliance with the state’s mask-wearing and capacity limit rules. Cuomo wanted to tout the number of tickets issued for noncompliance during his nationally televised news briefings, according to a former administration official who was on a call when the governor floated the idea.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was like, \u2018You could use them like an army,\u2019\u201d said the official, who worked on the state\u2019s pandemic response and requested anonymity to speak freely.<\/p>\n
The governor’s proposal \u2014 \u201can impossible request\u201d \u2014 baffled the official, whose account was confirmed by another person familiar with the plan. But, the official said, “the call ended and no one said \u2018no\u2019 to him … No one could explain to him how bad the idea was.”<\/p>\n
Cuomo, who resigned in August<\/a>, is facing renewed scrutiny over his response to the pandemic, including allegations that he downplayed Covid deaths while writing a pandemic memoir that netted him more than $5 million<\/a>. New POLITICO interviews with several former state Department of Health officials, along with a trove of government documents released this month, suggest the former governor\u2019s behavior behind closed doors was in direct contrast to the science-first, hyper-competent image Cuomo presented in his Emmy-winning 2020 press conferences.<\/p>\n The interviews, combined with a legislative impeachment investigation report<\/a> and transcripts made public by state Attorney General Tish James\u2019 office<\/a>, paint a picture of an administration in chaos at the height of the emergency, with political appointees and public health professionals frequently at war over decisions and messaging. As Cuomo projected calm during his daily public briefings, with thousands dying as the virus ravaged New York City, public health officials were forced to find ways to work around him.<\/p>\n In the case of the health department\u2019s “army,” top officials quickly formed a plan they hoped would placate the mercurial governor until he moved on to some other idea. The official said he told department leaders on the call to “sign up” about 50 agency staffers and “send out pictures” of their enforcement actions on their Twitter accounts.<\/p>\n It worked, and became just one of several subterfuges state health officials concocted to deal with demands from the governor\u2019s office they believed to be based in politics, not science. That continuous pressure from Cuomo’s office contributed to dozens of high-level staff departures in the months after New York became the global epicenter for the viral outbreak, according to several people who worked on the state\u2019s Covid response. And it left a state health department with a potentially long road to recovery after being ravaged by both the pandemic and an iron-fisted executive.<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s why a lot of people left,\u201d Democratic Assemblymember Richard Gottfried, the chair of the Assembly Health Committee and the longest-serving state legislator, said in an interview. \u201cIt\u2019s not that they felt overworked. It\u2019s that they felt that they were not being allowed to do their jobs in a professional manner.\u201d<\/p>\n In a statement to POLITICO, a spokesperson for the former governor, Rich Azzopardi, defended the administration’s pandemic response and was dismissive of the Assembly and attorney general\u2019s inquiries, saying one key source offered \u201csecond- or third-hand interpretations.\u201d Cuomo, the spokesperson said, \u201cpushed back against the bureaucracy.\u201d<\/p>\n While Cuomo\u2019s reputation as a micromanager was well known, the extent to which he wielded power at the state Department of Health when it was under siege still is not fully appreciated, former state officials said.<\/p>\n They described a frantic environment where public health experts were not just overruled, but constantly responding to Cuomo’s \u201cridiculous demands\u201d that were expected to take precedence.<\/p>\n \u201cThere were times when [Cuomo] was on the warpath, and I would text people over there [at DOH] and be like, just don’t answer your phone,\u201d said the official who described Cuomo\u2018s \u201carmy\u201d plan. \u201cIf it’s coming from a number you don\u2019t know, don\u2019t answer it for the next eight hours. And he would forget about it and move on to the next.\u201d<\/p>\n One of several former Health Department staffers who confirmed that account said it was just one example where the agency was \u201cbeing asked to do too much.\u201d<\/p>\n That former staffer, who is familiar with the conversations about nursing home policy, said they decided to leave the agency because \u201cthe working conditions were so bad.\u201d They said they were routinely working from early morning until midnight, all the while dealing with mounting deaths and severely strained resources, which further hurt morale.<\/p>\n Elizabeth Dufort, a former medical director for the Division of Epidemiology who was identified as \u201cState Entity Employee #2\u201d in one of the transcripts released by the attorney general\u2019s office<\/a>, told investigators that working conditions had gotten so bad at the Department of Health that some employees had asked the Public Employees Federation, one of the state’s largest unions, if they had any legal recourse when it came to things like unpaid overtime. (They were reportedly advised that it was \u201cnot illegal during a public health emergency.\u201d) The union did not respond to requests for comment.<\/p>\n Despite their expertise and long hours, several former staffers said, decisions that should have come from DOH experts \u2014 such as where to send personal protective equipment \u2014 were often routed through Cuomo\u2019s inner circle.<\/p>\n For example, the department would conduct daily surveys of nursing homes and other facilities to see what PPE was needed and assemble packages to be sent from the state\u2019s warehouse. At one point, Larry Schwartz \u2014 a longtime Cuomo ally and former secretary to the governor who was, at the time, a C-suite executive at airport vendor OTG \u2014 had to sign off on those requests and at times questioned the need for them, the former staffer said. Schwartz and other former aides had returned during the pandemic<\/a> to work in a \u201cvolunteer capacity.\u201d<\/p>\n That system of direct approval was initially intended to override bureaucratic delays and manage inventory during the early days of the pandemic, said former Cuomo administration officials. But it evolved to reinforce an image of tightly concentrated power held only by the individuals Cuomo trusted.<\/p>\n \u201cHe would push back and say, \u2018How accurate do you think this is? \u2026 Do you think they\u2019re trying to not buy that themselves, trying to get us to supply it?\u2019 I remember he asked that question a couple of times, and I was like, \u2018Listen, Larry, they need it,\u2019\u201d the former Department of Health staffer said. \u201cThe warehouse couldn\u2019t distribute the stuff until they had [governor\u2019s office] sign off.\u201d<\/p>\n Two former administration officials defended the roles Cuomo\u2019s office staff and inner circle played in the pandemic response, saying that they were never intended to replace public health experts, but rather to work as liaisons, organizers and managers on behalf of the governor. They were regularly conversing with state and local health officials when Cuomo was not, they said. The inquiries about personal protective equipment were made to properly gauge supply and demand, not to hold up any deliveries, they said.<\/p>\n In her interview with the attorney general’s office, Dufort described \u201ca toxic work environment\u201d in which state Health Department staff were not allowed to collaborate with their counterparts in the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene or other local health departments. The governor\u2019s office would also arbitrarily override certain metrics, like which regions qualified for various Covid \u201czones,\u201d which Cuomo used to delineate the level of reopening restrictions in certain regions of the state. And the office had ordered Department of Health staff to share incomplete data on Hydroxychloroquine with the White House. Both things, Dufort said, raised ethical concerns at the department.<\/p>\n \u201cData was not ready to be shared in a manner that would be ethical or appropriate,\u201d she told investigators of the Hydroxychloroquine request. But the governor\u2019s office insisted the department share the incomplete data, Dufort said. She said she was prepared to resign rather than hand over the information.<\/p>\n Numerous former Department of Health staffers said that the governor\u2019s office had to approve every communication coming out of the department \u2014 at times holding up press statements and directives over things like grammar. Dufort said the approval process held up the release of nursing home data and even a flier on isolation and quarantine for use by local health departments.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s just crazy the amount of time they spent on that, instead of coming up with \u2018what are we going to do next week, two weeks, three weeks, a month, three months, five months from now,\u201d the former staffer familiar with nursing home policy discussions said. \u201cNo, they weren\u2019t really forward thinking, they were just reactionary.\u201d<\/p>\n That obsession with controlling the public narrative around all things related to Covid-19 took center stage in Cuomo\u2019s pandemic news conferences. The daily briefings \u2014 known for being part fireside chat, part bluster \u2014 made Cuomo a national figure as the country looked for an alternative leader to then-President Donald Trump in the early days of the pandemic.<\/p>\n The televised address, often delivered at 11:30 a.m. from the Capitol\u2019s Red Room, initially played a key role in communicating important public health information and calming public unease as the virus took hold of New York. But, by the time the \u201cCuomo Show\u201d had reached national syndication, it consumed much of the administration\u2019s pandemic response as public health officials turned their attention to supporting the daily briefings, several former state officials said.<\/p>\n The endeavor \u201cdiverted people\u2019s attention to service the press conference instead of servicing the running of the state,\u201d the former Department of Health staffer said. \u201cIt became more about the press conference and about the issue that he was talking about at the press conference.\u201d<\/p>\n Aides to the governor (and sometimes agency staff) would typically begin work on the day\u2019s news conference early in the morning \u2014 at times finishing the final slides in the powerpoints that became a hallmark of the governor\u2019s musings only after Cuomo had already begun presenting \u2014 former staffers told POLITICO.<\/p>\n \u201cThe governor would make a powerpoint by hand, others would type it up, he\u2019d go over it, and then sometimes, on the way out the door, he\u2019d say \u2018OK, now add all these other slides,\u2019\u201d a former Cuomo aide familiar with the briefing operations said. \u201cJust, on his way to the briefing.\u201d<\/p>\n After the show ended, they would regroup and start planning the next day\u2019s briefing and topic du jour, including announcements that sometimes caught state and local health officials off guard.<\/p>\n \u201cThe governor would announce something, and then we would implement; or sometimes we would find out in advance we need to do this and then it would be announced. It went either way,\u201d Dufort told the attorney general\u2019s investigators. \u201cI got the sense like they didn’t fully understand the public health system to understand what our role is in it.\u201d<\/p>\n A member of the governor’s Covid task force conceded that Cuomo “was managing by press release, by press conference. If he saw a bad story he pivoted, and we reacted to it, the policies reacted to it. Everyone who worked with him put up with it. But he got a lot of kudos.”<\/p>\n Dufort, who was summoned to perform a Covid-19 test on Cuomo at a May 2020 briefing<\/a>, said the department had raised concerns that the nasal swab demonstration would be at odds with federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidance that such tests be done without an audience. After several \u201cback and forth discussions\u201d \u2014 including suggestions that the test be performed in a room with a camera but no reporters or having Cuomo get tested at a drive-thru site \u2014 officials decided to go ahead with the on-air swab.<\/p>\n \u201cThey were not interested in the other alternatives \u2026 They said they wanted to do [it] in a press event, and they felt it would look better,\u201d she said, later adding: \u201cWe were saying that is not an OK reason if it is not following CDC protocol.\u201d<\/p>\n She further told investigators that she had planned to swab the governor while he was seated, as is protocol. But the governor had insisted on standing for the demonstration because he felt \u201cit looks better,\u201d Dufort said.<\/p>\n The doctor said she wasn\u2019t comfortable with the demonstration, but understood the value in the public understanding the process and approached it as a medical professional.<\/p>\n A new report from the state Assembly\u2019s Judiciary Committee suggests not only that Cuomo used staff employees to work on his pandemic memoir, \u201cAmerican Crisis: Leadership Lessons from the COVID-19 Pandemic,\u201d but that the effort took priority over other important tasks. The disclosure raises new questions about whether the work on the book influenced the state\u2019s Covid-19 response or its messaging on deaths linked to nursing homes, a full accounting of which the state had avoided disclosing publicly.<\/p>\n According to the Assembly report, a literary agent representing Cuomo had been in talks with Penguin Random House as early as March 2020 about a book. On July 1, 2020 the agent told a Penguin Random House representative that the governor had been working on a book on his experience and leadership during the first six months of the Covid-19 pandemic.<\/p>\n Cuomo and a senior official took part in a meeting with Penguin Random House on July 6 \u2014 the day on which the Department of Health released a now infamous report on Covid-19 in nursing homes, which defended the administration from claims that a nursing home admission policy led to thousands of deaths at long-term care facilities. On July 10, Penguin Random House won a bidding war for Cuomo’s book, for which he received a $5.2 million payout.<\/p>\n Senior aides in the governor\u2019s office and members of Cuomo\u2019s Covid task force<\/a> \u201cspent significant time working on the book\u201d \u2014 all while Covid continued to take a toll in New York, the Assembly report found. That work included the drafting and editing of a chapter on nursing homes during the pandemic.<\/p>\n The report noted that one senior state official \u201ccomplained in a text message to a colleague that work on the Book was compromising his ability to work on other COVID-related matters.\u201d And another \u201cnoted that the State\u2019s response to COVID-19 involved nonstop work for senior members of the Executive Chamber \u2014 including during July and August 2020, a period during which the Book continued to be drafted and revised.\u201d<\/p>\n A former state official, who also asked for anonymity to speak freely, told POLITICO that state health Commissioner Howard Zucker had no idea the governor was writing a book until it was announced publicly<\/a>. “He was just as surprised as I think anybody was,” the official said.<\/p>\n Witnesses told state lawmakers that the same senior Cuomo aide who was the point person for the book made decisions about the reporting of Covid deaths in nursing homes in the July 6 Department of Health report. That document, the Assembly concluded, was intended to \u201ccombat criticisms\u201d of the state\u2019s early-pandemic nursing home admission policy that allowed hospitals to discharge Covid-19 patients to such facilities. That staffer was not explicitly named, but it is clearly Melissa DeRosa, who served as Cuomo’s top aide. <\/p>\n Cuomo also \u201creviewed and edited the draft DOH Report on multiple occasions, and made edits to strengthen the defense of the March 25 Directive,\u201d the report stated.<\/p>\n The result, according to the Assembly\u2019s findings, was that the nursing home report \u201cwas accurate in its disclosures,\u201d but \u201cnot fully transparent regarding the total number of nursing home residents who died as a result of COVID-19.\u201d<\/p>\n The intentional underreporting of the deaths \u201cwas the subject of multiple discussions involving employees of the Executive Chamber, members of the Task Force and others in April and\/or May 2020\u201d who were reluctant \u201cto admit error when it was discovered and to correct the published numbers immediately.\u201d In one of those conversations, the report states, a task force member asked, \u201cDo you want me to admit that we\u2019ve been reporting deaths incorrectly?\u201d<\/p>\n As the state prepared the nursing home report, officials argued over whether to include data from a draft scientific paper that covered deaths for all nursing home facility residents \u2014 about 10,000 deaths \u2014 or a figure that included just those that occurred within nursing home facilities \u2014 about 6,500 deaths.<\/p>\n The nursing home report initially cited the 10,000 death figure, but after a late-June call with members of the governor\u2019s office and his task force, all subsequent drafts included the 6,500 figure.<\/p>\n State health officials who worked on the report \u201cexpressed a number of concerns regarding drafts of the report,\u201d according to the Assembly\u2019s findings, including \u201cthat the DOH Report was directed by the Executive Chamber and Task Force and was not in fact a scientific or medical report.\u201d<\/p>\n Health Department officials interviewed by the Assembly complained that “the former governor\u2019s COVID-19 response team was largely comprised of non-medical experts and felt that as a result, decisions were not always made based on scientific or medical advice.\u201d<\/p>\n The only health care professional on the Covid-19 task force<\/a> \u2014 Zucker, the health commissioner \u2014 \u201cdid not have regular meetings with the former Governor during the pandemic and found it difficult to speak directly with the former Governor, as senior Executive Chamber employees guarded access to the former Governor,” the Assembly report said. It did not name Zucker but referred instead to a “senior DOH official.”<\/p>\n And when they did converse, Zucker did not feel he could speak freely, \u201cas advice that was contrary to the Chamber\u2019s views was often rejected,\u201d according to the Assembly report.<\/p>\n \u201cThe senior DOH official felt that speaking up could result in an even more limited ability to provide advice going forward,\u201d the Assembly report said.<\/p>\nInside the Covid war room<\/h5>\n
Feeding the beast<\/h5>\n
Book influence<\/h5>\n
The nurse home deaths<\/h5>\n
<\/h2>\n