State lawmakers on Friday voted to curb Governor Andrew Cuomo's emergency pandemic powers.
The vote comes as legislators also consider nursing home reforms, as it’s been reported that the governor’s aides changed a COVID-19 report from last summer to withhold the complete number of nursing home resident deaths. It also comes as the Cuomo administration deals with multiple allegations of sexual harassment against the governor.
State Senator Liz Krueger, who represents parts of the east side of Manhattan, joined anchor Errol Louis on “Inside City Hall” on Friday to talk about the twin scandals involving Cuomo.
“I would like to see full, complete, independent evaluations of all the charges that have been made against the governor and his administration,” she said. “Because if you follow through with today’s stories, it is not just him, but it is other senior people working for him who are accused of having falsified the data in reports, knowingly falsified the data about people dying in nursing homes.”
Weighing in on the sexual harassment allegations against the governor, Krueger questioned the way in which the Cuomo administration handled Charlotte Bennett’s complaints when she first came forward. Bennett, 25, is accusing the governor of propositioning her and asking her questions about her sex life during a 2020 interaction in his office.
In 2018, the state implemented a law that requires all employers to adopt harassment policies with minimum standards, including thorough investigations. At the same time, Cuomo issued an executive order requiring that internal sexual harassment investigations in his office be referred to the Governor’s Office of Employee Relations.
But during a CBS interview on Friday, the former aide to the governor said that when she brought her allegations up to two Cuomo senior officials, she was transferred to a different office, but no internal investigation was initiated.
“I think that a law may have been violated,” Krueger said. “She (Bennett) made clear that did not happen.”