Name: 'Let’s keep pounding this drum': GOP seeks subpoena for New York's nursing home policies
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'Let’s keep pounding this drum': GOP seeks subpoena for New York's nursing home policies

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ALBANY — Republicans are continuing to press for subpoenas to be used to compel Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo's administration to provide documents and testimony about its handling of coronavirus in nursing homes, including records documenting the decision-making that guided the treatment and protection of elderly residents and their caretakers.The political pressure has intensified in the wake of a report last week that determined the health department had undercounted nursing home fatalities by roughly 50 percent at a time when criticism of the administration's policies governing the facilities was mounting.In letters sent this week to the state Assembly's Aging, Health and Oversight committees, Republicans called for formal hearing on the issue. They also pressured their Democratic colleagues on the committees to join them in invoking a section of legislative law that enables the majority of a committee to bypass the chair and issue subpoenas for testimony or records.The letters, signed by Republican members of those committees, noted the subpoenas could be used to compel state health Commissioner Howard Zucker "to testify and provide all data on nursing home deaths, as well as all communications from the DOH and other parties that led to the decision to craft, implement, and override its March 25th directive, as well withhold this data from the Legislature and public for so many months."There are also many Democrats who have been uneasy with the state's handling of the pandemic in nursing homes — as well as the lack of information from Cuomo's administration.Senate Deputy Majority Leader Michael Gianaris said Wednesday that Democrats in the Senate and Assembly are unhappy with how the Cuomo administration has handled COVID-19 in nursing homes, adding, "You can expect the Legislature to flex its muscles," .Earlier this week, Republicans in the Senate investigations committee attempted to force a vote to issue a subpoena to Zucker, but Sen. James Skoufis, the Democratic chair, knocked the effort down without allowing a vote. But GOP members contend that under legislative law, subpoenas can be issued by committees with a majority vote that does not require the support of the chair."Right now, at this stage of the game, I’m trying to understand what the minority is trying to do. I’m focused on trying to move legislation," said Assemblyman John McDonald, an Albany Democrat who chairs the oversight committee that received one of the letters. He contends that&nbsp;families who lost loved ones don't want more hearings, they want legislative action."Sometimes in the height of the storm, some decisions people would like to have another opportunity to review, and this is probably one of them," McDonald said of Cuomo's March 25 executive order that compelled nursing homes to accept residents who had tested positive for COVID-19. "I think if the governor took a different tack back in April and rescinded it and said we could have done something better here, I think people would have understood."But instead, McDonald said, the issue has festered for months, and partly for political reasons has become "the major issue."New York's Republican members of Congress on Wednesday also sent a letter to the U.S. Department of Justice calling for an investigation of Cuomo's nursing home policies."We will work to ensure that acting Attorney General Wilkinson and President (Joe) Biden support this pursuit for the truth about Gov. Cuomo and his administration, considering the scathing evidence presented in Attorney General James' recent report," U.S. Rep. Elise Stefanik, a Schuylerville Republican, said in a statement accompanying the letter. "Tens of thousands of innocent people in our great state died, and unlike the governor, we care."Republicans have for months demanded clarity from Cuomo on the number of nursing home deaths and have requested for more data from his administration.The attorney general's report "validated the concerns that we’ve been voicing for many, many months," said Assemblyman Kevin Byrne, a Mahopac Republican. His statement was echoed by others, including senators Susan Serino, Thomas O'Mara and James Tedisco, and Assembly Minority Leader Will Barclay.“Let’s keep pounding this drum," Barclay said in a Wednesday morning press conference hosted by Republicans pressing for use of the Legislature's subpoena authority. The news conference took place on a day when Zucker had been scheduled to appear in a joint legislative health committee hearing on the state budget.But he postponed his appearance until later in February, with Cuomo's office&nbsp;saying that Zucker was unavailable due to his expected attendance at the governor's routine coronavirus briefings, which are usually held on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Cuomo did not hold a briefing Wednesday, and spokesman Richard Azzopardi said that the weekly schedule was thrown off by the winter storm that hit the state, and an extra briefing was held Tuesday instead.The Republican lawmakers were joined at their news conference by Cindy Lizzi and Ted and Phil Minissale, who lost their mother to COVID-19 in April after she was infected at Teresian House Center for the Elderly in Albany. They have a close family and had visited their mother at the nursing facility nearly every day, they said.Several hours after the attorney general's report was issued last week, Zucker released an updated nursing home death toll, including nearly 4,000 more nursing home deaths of those infected with COVID-19 — because it added individuals who were infected in a nursing home but later died in a hospital. That information had been sought for months by members of the Legislature, media outlets and outside groups.

ALBANY — Republicans are continuing to press for subpoenas to be used to compel Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo's administration to provide documents and testimony about its handling of coronavirus in nursing homes, including records documenting the decision-making that guided the treatment and protection of elderly residents and their caretakers.The political pressure has intensified in the wake of a report last week that determined the health department had undercounted nursing home fatalities by roughly 50 percent at a time when criticism of the administration's policies governing the facilities...

'Let’s keep pounding this drum': GOP seeks subpoena for New York's nursing home policies

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