Photo above: Governor Kathy Hochul (Credit – Matt Meduri)
New York led the country in navigating uncharted waters with the onset of the COVID-19 Pandemic in March 2020. Then-Governor Andrew Cuomo (D) ordered lockdowns across the state, closing schools, non-essential businesses, and other forms of commerce and tourism. At the time, Cuomo asked for the blame and wrath of citizens to be laid on him, not local leaders and elected officials.
Shortly thereafter, Cuomo and the State came under significant fire for the sweeping lockdowns, lagging economic recovery relative to the rest of the country, and the controversial decision to admit COVID-positive or symptom-presenting patients in nursing homes, with virtually no negotiations or options for nursing home staff, residents, and residents’ families.
The Olson Group, a Virginia-based consulting firm, has released its long-awaited report, after multiple roadblocks from State government.
The report finds that Governor Cuomo acted outside his authority to micromanage the state’s response to the pandemic from the executive office, resulting in great confusion, dysfunction, and unpreparedness in fending off the novel coronavirus.
The $4.3 million dollar taxpayer-funded, 262-page report says that Cuomo made a “significant and unnecessary mistake” when he absolved municipalities of local control and ignored pre-established Department of Health protocols to essentially govern pandemic response himself.
The DoH already had plans in place to establish community-based vaccination sites. Cuomo instead took to setting up “hub hospitals” to inoculate New Yorkers, despite the fact that the hospitals lacked capacities to carry out vaccinations of the public.
“The structures developed through hard-won experience from events including 9/11 and Hurricane Sandy were largely ignored and the state’s chief executive office served as the central point of the response,” the report reads. “Although decisive actions were widely praised during the early stages of the pandemic, his [Cuomo] failure to shift to full incorporation of the state’s established institutions in coordinating the ongoing response operation resulted in unnecessary confusion at a time when New Yorkers needed clarity.”
The report also slams Cuomo’s decision to populate nursing homes with infected or symptom-presenting patients, as well as criticizes the State’s reporting of nursing home deaths. The report says the actions were “lacking in transparency.”
“The state did not consider the appearance of impropriety related to how it was reporting COVID-19 nursing home deaths until the public was already upset, having noticed and reported the discrepancies,” the report states.
The report’s release comes off the heels of Cuomo’s testimony in front of the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic. Republican legislators have accused Cuomo of “deflecting responsibility” for the nursing home scandal, one the report says is in line with the “theme of mistrust” in the response to the virus. Cuomo blamed an unnamed State DoH employee for drafting the decision and said it was not mandatory. Nursing homes were required to take in patients regardless of their COVID test results and presentation of symptoms.
Congressman Marc Molinaro (R, NY-19) expanded on Cuomo’s claims that directing patients to nursing homes mirrored federal guidelines during last week’s hearing.
“They [Cuomo and his then-staff] want to assert that that order is exactly the same as the federal [Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services guidelines], which it is not,” said Molinaro. “The state order says, ‘You shall take back individuals and you cannot deny them solely on the basis of COVID,’ which left [nursing homes] no option but to accept individuals that we knew would cause risk to the other patients.”
Congressman Ami Bera (D, CA-06), a doctor and former chief medical examiner for Sacramento County called Cuomo’s directive “medical malpractice” at a May 2023 hearing.
The report not only criticizes Cuomo’s response from a health perspective, but also his micromanaging in other areas of state commerce affected by the pandemic. The report highlights shortsightedness from the executive office in trying to bolster low milk supplies across the state. The State ordered three hundred tractor-trailer loads of raw milk to be rerouted from dairy manufacturers and sent directly to bottling plants. The decision led to a surplus of milk, which then expired and/or had to be discarded.
Rich Azzopardi, a spokesman for Cuomo, has openly criticized former President Donald Trump (R-FL) for the national response to the virus and has defended Cuomo amidst the release of the report.
“His daily press briefings were internationally recognized for providing the facts amid a chaotic lack of a national response to this pandemic where 1.2 million Americans lost their lives,” said Azzopardi. “While this report cuts through the political garbage that has consumed the nursing home issue and points out how circumstances were consistent nationwide, it’s ridiculous to suggest that this pandemic response be treated the same as H1N1 or Legionnaires outbreaks.”
Governor Kathy Hochul (D), then Lieutenant Governor at the time of the pandemic, did not offer many comments on the report, but fell short of defending her former boss.
“We knew that things had to be done differently, they had to be done better and we had to prepare for the possibility that this would happen again,” said Hochul, adding that extra funds for the State Office of Emergency Management and a $1.7 billion investment in a new research lab are initiatives she has taken to better prepare New York for a similar scenario.
Former Congressman and 2022 gubernatorial candidate Lee Zeldin (R-Shirley), slammed Cuomo, Hochul, and even the Olson Group not only for the controversial handling of the pandemic, but also the timing of the report’s release just a day after the legislative session in Albany ended.
“In predictably corrupted New York fashion, after Kathy Hochul initially punted this report past her 2022 election campaign, this massively delayed After Action Report didn’t get released until a Friday just after the state legislative session ends,” Zeldin said in a statement. “This is clearly timed to be late enough so that Albany legislators would be out of town and public hearings couldn’t be scheduled, but early enough to hopefully be buried over a weekend and long summer so that it wouldn’t be politically damaging for the November 5 elections.”
Zeldin also mentioned Hochul’s governance over the tail end of the pandemic and Ne
w York’s lagged recovery and return to normalcy against other states.
“Substantively, of course, this not-so-independent consultant avoids taking Kathy Hochul to task for forcing 3-5 year olds to be the only New Yorkers required to wear masks, and for an extensive period of time. Of course, the report refused to dig into Hochul awarding massively overpriced, no-bid contracts to top campaign donors,” said Zeldin. “There is also bad news here for anyone reviewing this After Action Report hoping for transparency on COVID tests being given to administration friends and family at private residences, done by State Health Department personnel, with the samples moved to the front of the line at the state lab. Even the content on Andrew Cuomo’s deadly nursing home order and coverup is filled with excuses and defenses.
Zeldin called for in-depth investigations and further scrutiny from legislators.
“High profile state legislative hearings should be called immediately to go over this report with a fine tooth comb,” said Zeldin. “Legislators and reporters should dig deep on the many issues the obviously not so independent consultant decided to leave out of the report, inquire why, and get answers about the cause of the extraordinarily long delays, and absurd timing for this release.”
This is not a fight that us families wanted or ever expected that we’d have,” said Tracey Alvino, Director of Voices for Seniors, in a FOX News interview. “We need to see this through to the end, and we’re not going to stop until we hold Andrew Cuomo and all of his cronies in the Cuomo crime syndicate responsible.”
Alvino lost her father in a nursing home due to the controversial New York policy. Voices for Seniors is a 501(c)(4) not for profit founded after many families lost relatives in nursing homes during the pandemic.
