Assembly Minority Leader Will Barclay today called out Assembly Majority for their inadequate agreement billed as a repeal of Gov. Cuomo’s expanded emergency powers. The bill, A.5967, removes the original April 30, 2021 expiration date of the governor’s authority and continues to afford the governor enormous executive latitude. The governor will still be permitted to modify or extend all the directives he has issued to date.

“Today’s vote demonstrates that Assembly Majority are unwilling to govern independently from Andrew Cuomo,” said Leader Barclay. “They have repeatedly rejected a full repeal of the governor’s powers and instead passed legislation that keeps New York on its current path with no end date in sight. Restoring state government to the representative democracy it was always intended to be shouldn’t be political and it shouldn’t be problematic. Assembly Majority are making it both.” 

The FBI and U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District are currently investigating Gov. Cuomo’s office for a nursing home cover-up in which the administration intentionally withheld the true number of fatalities of nursing home residents. The state attorney general is now looking into claims of sexual harassment against the governor after three women have come forward to outline inappropriate conduct.

“After numerous scandals, cover-ups and investigations into the governor’s pandemic response and, now, alleged harassment of multiple women, the trust between the Legislature and Executive has reached an all-time low. It should have been easy to limit the damage the state’s top executive can do moving forward. This should have been a straight repeal; instead, New Yorkers got another bogus back-room deal.”