After his bombshell resignation announcement, Governor Cuomo will soon leave office and Lt. Governor Hochul will take over. And while the investigations are not over \u2013 most notably whether the Administration illegally withheld data on COVID deaths in nursing homes, whether Governor Cuomo used public resources in drafting his $5.1 million book, and whether the Administration compromised safety in the building of the Mario Cuomo bridge \u2013 one thing is certain: Incoming Governor Hochul will need to take actions to restore public trust in state government.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Attorney General\u2019s seismic report substantiating the harassment charges leveled against Governor Cuomo painted a picture of an out-of-control executive staff that created a \u201ctoxic\u201d work environment and were willing to use confidential personnel records \u2013 including of former staff \u2013 to smear the governor\u2019s critics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In addition, related issues continue to fester. In addition to the ongoing investigation into misuse of public resources to draft the governor\u2019s book, there is also the issue of how<\/em> the state\u2019s ethics watchdog (the Joint Commission on Public Ethics, JCOPE) blessed the book deal it in the first place. Apparently, the proposal never went to the ethics agency\u2019s full Commission for discussion. Why?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Moreover, there is still the issue of how Governor Cuomo found out about the ethics watchdog\u2019s confidential discussions on its investigation of Joe Percoco, Governor Cuomo\u2019s now imprisoned former right-hand aide. The state Inspector General\u2019s review of the JCOPE leak didn\u2019t find anything, but she never interviewed the Governor or the Assembly Speaker \u2013 a scandal on its own. Who illegally leaked information to the governor?<\/p>\n\n\n\n And while we\u2019re at it, there is still the Administration\u2019s habit of endlessly dragging out Freedom of Information Law requests \u2013 effectively denying the public timely access to public records.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Unfortunately, the Assembly Judiciary Committee has so far refused to release the findings of its investigation. New Yorkers paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for their work and the public deserves, at a minimum, a report on what the Committee found \u2013 if anything. There are other investigations that are ongoing: the state Attorney General (investigating the governor\u2019s book deal) and the federal Department of Justice (investigating the reporting of nursing home deaths). Those investigations must continue with findings publicly reported. It\u2019s hard to fix problems unless you know that they exist.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Soon-to-be-Governor Hochul will have her hands full pulling together her leadership team, managing a sprawling state government bureaucracy, developing a state budget for January, and handling the ongoing pandemic. But restoring public trust should be near the top of her list. Here are some steps:<\/p>\n\n\n\n This long list just touches the top layer of the changes that are needed. In addition, the new governor must set a new tone \u2013 in the way she personally operates and in the manner in which her staff behave.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Winston Churchill reportedly quipped, \u201cNever let a good crisis go to waste.\u201d New York State is once again in crisis. Ms. Hochul must rise to the moment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" After his bombshell resignation announcement, Governor Cuomo will soon leave office and Lt. Governor Hochul will take over. And while the investigations are not over \u2013 most notably whether the Administration illegally withheld data on COVID deaths in nursing homes, whether Governor Cuomo used public resources in drafting his $5.1 million book, and whether the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2598","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2598","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2598"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2598\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2599,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2598\/revisions\/2599"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2598"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2598"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2598"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}