One of several former Health Department staffers who confirmed that account said it was just one example where the agency was “being asked to do too much.” And he would forget about it and move on to the next.” “If it’s coming from a number you don’t know, don’t answer it for the next eight hours. “There were times when was on the warpath, and I would text people over there and be like, just don’t answer your phone,” said the official who described Cuomo‘s “army” plan. They described a frantic environment where public health experts were not just overruled, but constantly responding to Cuomo’s “ridiculous demands” that were expected to take precedence. While Cuomo’s reputation as a micromanager was well known, the extent to which he wielded power at the state Department of Health when it was under siege still is not fully appreciated, former state officials said. In a statement to POLITICO, a spokesperson for the former governor, Rich Azzopardi, defended the administration’s pandemic response and was dismissive of the Assembly and attorney general’s inquiries, saying one key source offered “second- or third-hand interpretations.” Cuomo, the spokesperson said, “pushed back against the bureaucracy.” Inside the Covid war room It’s that they felt that they were not being allowed to do their jobs in a professional manner.” “That’s why a lot of people left,” Democratic Assemblymember Richard Gottfried, the chair of the Assembly Health Committee and the longest-serving state legislator, said in an interview. And it left a state health department with a potentially long road to recovery after being ravaged by both the pandemic and an iron-fisted executive. That continuous pressure from Cuomo’s office contributed to dozens of high-level staff departures in the months after New York became the global epicenter for the viral outbreak, according to several people who worked on the state’s Covid response. It worked, and became just one of several subterfuges state health officials concocted to deal with demands from the governor’s office they believed to be based in politics, not science.
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