New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has lost a significant portion of the sweeping authority given him by the State Assembly last year to enable him to move the lockdown and vaccination efforts forwards.
The move came Friday as the heat intensifies over two scandals involving Cuomo.
The first is a coverup of the actual number of deaths in the nursing homes over the past 18 months and how much Cuomo’s policies during the coronavirus crisis had to do with those deaths.
The second crisis is continuing to grow: allegations that he sexually harassed two now-former staffers and inappropriately touched a woman at a wedding.
The governor’s fellow Democrats, who control both chambers, led the effort to strip Cuomo of the emergency powers enacted in the State Legislature that granted Cuomo authority to deal freely with the coronavirus crisis.
The bill:
- prevents Cuomo from issuing any new COVID directives without consulting the Legislature,
- forces him to allow lawmakers to weigh in on any extensions of current measures, such as mask-wearing mandates or restaurant capacities, and
- won’t be able to extend actions beyond 30 days unless they explicitly relate to the pandemic.
Cuomo has 10 days to sign or veto the bill; but even if he vetos it, his fellow Democrats have enough of a supermajority to override his veto.
The vote, split along party lines, passed with 43 Democrats in favor and 20 Republicans opposed in the Senate; in the Assembly it passed 107 to 43.
“The public deserves to have checks and balances,” Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins (D-Yonkers) said.
“This legislation creates a system with increased input while at the same time ensuring New Yorkers continue to be protected.”
Republicans, however, supported a plan to fully scrap all of Cuomo’s current executive actions: “There is a dark cloud hanging over Albany and the entire state government because of his conduct,” Senate Minority Leader Robert Ortt (R-Erie County) contended.