Republican and several Democratic lawmakers have called for New York Governor Andrew Cuomo to be stripped of his emergency powers to handle the pandemic because of how the state has accounted for deaths in nursing homes and hospitals.
They are critical of the Cuomo administration for delays in releasing state data. Over 15,000 nursing home deaths have been reported since a state investigation last month found that Cuomo’s health department undercounted the number of deaths by half.
Cuomo said legislators can always change those directives.
“Emergency powers have nothing to do with nursing homes. I have taken hundreds of actions. The Legislature can reverse any action that I take, not even by a bill, just by passing 50% of the Assembly and the Senate; they have never reversed a single action,” Cuomo said.
Cuomo said there are public health decisions that need to be made on those merits and not on a political basis.
He said his administration was first responding to a “politicized” request for information from Trump’s Justice Department.