“I’m beginning to wonder if the whole cover-up was mostly about that damn book,” Bill Hammond tweeted just after the Times and Journal broke the news about how Gov. Cuomo’s political team had successfully browbeaten the state’s health professionals into omitting thousands of nursing home residents who died in hospitals from a key July report.
In the Cuomo administration’s 10th year, the governor’s 2010 campaign promise to run the most transparent administration in state history has become a grim joke. New York government so routinely stonewalls even the most routine records requests, we can only assume it’s strategic. Reflexive delays and denials cynically exploit the fact that ordinary records requesters and increasingly cash-strapped news outlets lack the capital to hire lawyers and sue to force compliance with open-records laws.