Gov. Kathy Hochul is seeking to spend up to $5 million in taxpayer money to pay the legal bills of dozens of current and former state employees who got caught up in the sexual harassment scandal that forced ex-Gov Andrew Cuomo from office, The Post has learned.
The move could benefit Cuomo cronies who stayed loyal to the disgraced ex-governor to the very end of his scandal-scarred tenure — including former aide Melissa DeRosa.
But DeRosa, when reached by phone Wednesday night, said, “I am not seeking reimbursement for either the nursing-homes investigation or the attorney general’s sexual-harassment investigation.”
But, she added, it was “appropriate” for the other public employees to get reimbursement for outside counsel at the advice of the state.
Hochul has been discussing the matter with Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli and Attorney General Letitia James, sources familiar with the matter said.
Sources said Hochul has been working to determine what, if any, legal avenues exist that would allow the state to cover the bills.
The governor’s office expects law firms representing about 30 current and former chamber employees to apply for any such reimbursement estimated to be up to $5 million, a source said.
Lawmakers and advocates commemorated the more than 15,000 nursing home deaths in New York amid the COVID-19 pandemic on Wednesday, as they pitched a measure to get to the bottom of the missteps made under disgraced ex-Gov. Andrew Cuomo that caused the fatalities in elder-care facilities.
During a press conference in Albany, an ideologically diverse coalition rallied behind a bill to designate March 25 as “We Care Remembrance Day,” and another to create a body tasked with studying the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic response on deaths in nursing homes.
Friday marks exactly two years since the state Department of Health under then-commissioner Howard Zucker implemented a directive that required nursing homes to readmit residents who tested positive for the coronavirus.
“It wasn’t just an executive order — it was a declaration of eldercide in the state of New York,” charged Assemblyman Ron Kim (D-Queens), a fierce Cuomo critic whose uncle died in April 2020 of COVID-19 in a Flushing nursing home.
“This executive order was one of the biggest mistakes in the history of the state of New York,” Kim said.
The infamous state Department of Health order, rescinded under public pressure on May 10, 2020, forced sickened seniors into facilities housing those most vulnerable to COVID-19 and increased the death toll among residents of them, according to a New York State Bar Association report.
3 comments:
designate March 25 as “We Care Remembrance Day,”
Was is it with politicians and their obsession with creating stupid "days" that nobody gives a shit about?
Don't forget you got Juneteenth off this year!
And the peasants cheer over yet another Pyrrhic victory! Tone deaf politicians never lose, only their complicit, challenge averse audience-CULT members of staggering apathy. And the propaganda lying-and-denying, 'LAMESTREAM' media outlets turn off their mics!
❝The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became the truth.❞ ——George Orwell
Bad Botox Bugs Bunny is the handmaiden for crooked Albany power brokers.
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