A week after Attorney General Letitia James threw a political hand grenade into the lap of Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo over nursing home deaths from Covid-19, his administration has a chance to do better. It should immediately comply with a court decision ordering it to release details of those fatalities.
A state Supreme Court justice on Wednesday directed the state Health Department to release details on nursing home deaths within five business days, responding to a lawsuit brought by the Empire Center for Public Policy, a conservative-leaning think tank that is frequently critical of the Cuomo administration. A spokesman for the Health Department said the data would soon be made public.
The Health Department’s secrecy was always puzzling. In a crisis, some actions will work great, some not so great. In business, the mantra for innovative companies is “fail fast.” The sooner problems are identified, the sooner you get to what works. In government, transparency is the key to spotting failures fast. It is the nature of politics that critics will use transparency to seize on the not-so-good. But great leaders like Franklin Roosevelt swat away the critics, learn from what didn’t work and quickly try new solutions.
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The Empire Center filed the lawsuit in August after the Health Department failed to provide a requested breakdown of Covid deaths in each long-term care facility.
The trial court ruling came less than a week after James released a report stating that the Health Department appears to have undercounted nursing home deaths by about 50%. The state responded by publishing more complete statistics.
Covid fatigue has been ramping up among lawmakers, with some Democrats joining their Republican colleagues in calling for more responsiveness from the Cuomo administration and others wanting to rescind the emergency powers the governor was granted last April to deal with the pandemic.
State Sen. Sean Ryan, D-Buffalo, last week said he is calling on Health Commissioner Howard Zucker to appear before the Senate Health Committee and provide “full and complete answers.”
Deputy Senate Majority leader Mike Gianaris, D-Queens, told Morgan McKay of Spectrum News that Democrats are considering subpoenas if Zucker does not release more information before he testifies before the Legislature on Feb. 25.
Republican opponents of Cuomo use his name and “nursing homes” like a new variation of “Benghazi,” the 2012 incident in which Islamic militants killed four Americans in Libya that became an all-purpose epithet used against then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. We all know politicians make mistakes. We should expect them, they should acknowledge them and then do better.
It’s time to move ahead on this. Further stalling would only dig a deeper political hole.
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