5 minute read
FIRST READ
city was still struggling through the beginning of the pandemic. Bolstered by some $13 billion in direct federal aid for schools and other purposes, plus over a billion more in FEMA reimbursements, de Blasio announced big new spending proposals for the city. But while he expressed confidence that going big is the best way to help the city recover and grow economically, his own budget projects multi-billion budget holes for the next several years that his successor will have to address. Plus, the next mayor will have to figure out $1 billion labor savings that were built into future budget projections without specification.
CUOMO WELCOMES BACK THE PRESS
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For the first time since December 2020, Cuomo held an outdoor press conference that reporters were able to attend. The governor was facing ongoing questions about why he continued to hold only virtual press conferences where he had complete control. He has not held any outdoor events in Albany yet, the only kind that he said the press could attend, but a couple members of the Albany press corps gamely took the hourslong trip to Syracuse to question the governor in person again. At the same time, new reporting from The New York Times added fuel to the fire of the governor’s ongoing COVID-19 nursing home deaths scandal. The Times found that Cuomo’s aides went further than previously known to prevent data on those deaths from getting released, keeping the totals artificially low, and had on multiple occasions overruled Health Department officials to keep the numbers from getting out.
After months of not allowing the press to attend his in-person events, Gov. Andrew Cuomo finally let reporters back in.
Prisoners now receiving COVID-19 vaccines
Soon after prisoners in New York correctional facilities sued Gov. Andrew Cuomo and won, they began receiving hard-won COVID-19 vaccinations.
The Department of Corrections and Community Supervision wrote in a statement to City & State that it began offering the Johnson & Johnson vaccine to all incarcerated individuals on April 6. As of mid-April, 894 incarcerated individuals and 23 staff members had been vaccinated through this effort.
Getting shots in the arms of inmates to begin with, however, has been a battle. On March 30, a judge ordered the state to administer COVID-19 vaccines to prisoners after a lawsuit from a coalition of advocates argued that Cuomo and state Health Commissioner Howard Zucker had unfairly denied prisoners access to the vaccine.
Meghna Philip, a staff attorney at the Neighborhood Defender Service of Harlem, one of the groups who brought the suit, was involved in every stage of the litigation and argued the case before the judge.
Philip said that her organization had tried contacting the governor and his office and advocate “in any way we could.” But after receiving no response time and time again, they resorted to legal action. When other organizations had the same problem, they banded together and brought the suit.
Philip said part of the suit cited the fact that people in every other kind of congregate setting were eligible for the vaccine and that the exclusion of incarcerated adults felt intentional. She found it mind-boggling that those in juvenile detention centers were even eligible, along with prison staff, but adults who were incarcerated (and didn’t have another qualifier for the vaccine) were not allowed to get the vaccine.
The judge, in ruling with the coalition of advocates, agreed. She wrote that the state “irrationally distinguished between incarcerated people and people living in every other type of adult congregate facility, at great risk to incarcerated people’s lives during this pandemic.” In her decision, she said there was “no acceptable excuse for this deliberate exclusion as COVID19 does not discriminate between congregate settings.”
In response, Philip said, “It’s worth noting that the judge’s decision really underscores the fact that the state was neglecting its duties to incarcerated people for several months. It is a reflection of, throughout this pandemic, the deprioritization of the lives and safety of incarcerated people.” – Nuha Dolby
THE WEEK AHEAD
MONDAY 5/3
Some 80,000 New York City government employees are scheduled to return to their offices for the first time in over a year, under an initiative encouraging private companies to follow suit. THURSDAY 5/6
Gov. Andrew Cuomo is slated to extend for another month nearly 200 executive orders affecting the state’s pandemic response. INSIDE DOPE
State lawmakers are showing an increased appetite for repealing Cuomo’s emergency public health rules by a majority vote of the state Senate and Assembly. THURSDAY 5/6
Join City & State and nine state lawmakers for a 10 a.m. legislative forum on the biggest issues facing Brooklyn.
CityAndStateNY.comTHE
SPRING OF BILL
IT WAS A MERE two years ago that this publication announced Andrew Cuomo was having a “hot gov” summer. Multiple sexual harassment allegations and a whole pandemic later, Cuomo will count himself lucky if he’s not impeached this summer. On the other hand, after spending a month dancing on the political grave of his No. 1 rival, Bill de Blasio is looking refreshed, rejuvenated and resplendent.
HE MAY BE A LAME DUCK, BUT HIZZONER IS HAVING A HECK OF A TIME.
BY CAITLIN DORMAN
This trip to celebrate the reopening of Coney Island was arguably the beginning of the “Spring of Bill.”
Bill visited the biggest vaccinated celebrity, the blue whale at the American Museum of Natural History. This was the perfect outing for a notoriously grumpy mayor who’s finally enjoying himself.
Look at this tall boy riding the Cyclone, with a row all to himself!
It’s like he’s a high school senior cutting class to hit the boardwalk, except this is his actual job. Not sure whether BdB and Neil deGrasse Tyson are trying to fist or elbow bump ...
