American Crisis

by Andrew Cuomo

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  IN MARCH THE state legislature, which normally meets from January to June and recesses for the remainder of the year, was still in session. The key legislative action is normally the passage of the budget by April 1, but for years the state legislature never actually passed the budget “on time.” It became a joke and a symbol of government dysfunction.

  The truth is, the budget is hard to pass because it allocates every dollar of the state’s $175 billion. The two houses of the legislature have their own priorities, and each region of the state has competing priorities. Upstate New York and downstate New York are very different places. In years past, it was such a difficult equation to solve that the governor and the legislative leaders gave up. It was not unlike the federal government, which doesn’t even try to pass a budget anymore and just rolls forward with what they call continuing resolutions, which are slight modifications to the existing budget.

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  IN THE PRECEDING thirty years, governors had passed an on-time budget only seven times. Batting .233 is barely acceptable in baseball but certainly not in government. When I took office, I took it as a personal mission to get it done, to demonstrate government credibility. We did that. I’ve passed an on-time budget every year of my administration, the first time one administration has done this in more than fifty years. Having said that, I acknowledge that getting a significant piece of legislation passed is still no small feat. Now, with the first “hot-spot cluster” in the country, we needed to pass a plan for how the state would handle the COVID crisis.

  The governor’s legal power to handle a “disaster” was actually very limited and amounted to basically expedited procurement. It’s a law that was constructed in a different time for different situations. I told the legislature that this situation would dwarf anything we had seen in New York, including the devastation wrought by Superstorm Sandy in 2012 and the two terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in 1993 and 2001. I told them that without the legal responsibility to handle the situation, I would not represent to the people of the state that I was in charge. If 213 members of the legislature wanted to manage the COVID situation, God bless them. I wouldn’t take on the responsibility without the authority. I wasn’t bluffing. Any other arrangement would be chaos.

  I knew confidence in government in the middle of an emergency was a tall order. What we were attempting to do was virtually impossible. I would not ask the people of the state to trust me if I didn’t know I could deliver. Allowing different local governments to put different policies in place, often inconsistent with surrounding policies, is asking for chaos. To handle the emergency unfolding in front of us, I needed the authority to make decisions for the welfare of the entire state.

  Many politicians think they want control, but they don’t really want the responsibility that comes with it. They do, however, want control of the microphone. I have seen too many situations where a politician will adopt a different policy from a neighboring jurisdiction just to be different. No one gets a headline by saying, “We’re doing the same thing as everyone else.” I have made this mistake myself before. But the virus does not respect city or county boundaries or even state boundaries. We were watching the situation unfold in California with caution as different cities and counties took different actions, with some declaring emergencies and restrictions and others not, while a confused public tried to understand which path was correct.

  The legislative proposal we put forth accomplished two goals: fund coronavirus as a statewide emergency and give the governor power to set statewide policy. It was obvious to me that this was the only way to proceed. But it would not be easy with the legislature, where politics often drive lawmakers to “bring home the bacon” for their local district, be that government funds, patronage, or political power. And as I said, one part of New York State is very different from another.

  As an elected official, I’m less worried about political consequences and more worried about the governmental consequences. At times, my father and I had both made the mistake of focusing on the immediate politics of a situation, and I would not make it again. I am focused on the real-life effects that will be judged by the history books or judged by me when I’m sitting in my rocking chair explaining my actions to my grandchildren. I was not playing politics with COVID. All that mattered was that people would die or lives would be saved.

  The Speaker of the assembly, Carl Heastie, and the senate majority leader, Andrea Stewart-Cousins, are good politicians, and they are also responsible government leaders. They knew what needed to be done and how we needed to do it. I told them that I would not be taking significant actions without consulting them; our relationship had proven productive for the state in the past and would again.

  The day after our first COVID case, the legislature passed the law giving the governor emergency powers to handle the crisis. If the legislature had not passed the law, I would not have had the power to do what I would soon do. There would be no executive order closing businesses or schools, no order requiring masks or social distancing. The legislature still retained their authority, and they could override any executive order with a simple majority vote. The law was smart, and it has proven successful. It might not have been politically smart for me, because it made me personally responsible for all the difficult decisions ahead.

  MARCH 6 | 22 NEW CASES | 5 HOSPITALIZED | 0 DEATHS

  “I’m urging reality. I’m urging a factual response as opposed to an emotional response.”

  AFTER THE FOURTH OR FIFTH day of briefings, I knew that I would be doing them every day for the foreseeable future. I stuck to the format, because I thought consistency of presentation was effective and offered its own kind of comfort to viewers; they knew what to expect. That’s why we tried to do our briefings at the same time every day, unlike the chaotic and rambling briefings the White House staged at varying times. Our briefings were at 11:30 A.M., and generally I could be back in the office at about 1:30 P.M. Then the operational focus began.

  On Friday, March 6, while New York still had very limited testing capacity, we could test beyond the restrictive criteria that the CDC had put out. I announced in my press conference who would be eligible, including New Yorkers with symptoms who had traveled from hot-spot parts of the globe and contacts of known positive cases. Later that day, almost as if in response, President Trump, while touring the CDC headquarters in Atlanta, said that “anyone who wants to get a test can get a test.” Of course, this was not true and sowed further chaos and confusion, and our social media team had to work overtime to clarify who was actually able to get a test in New York State.

  By this point, we had put together the New York State Interagency Task Force to focus on testing priorities, quarantine, and containment tracking, including our health commissioner, Dr. Zucker, and three of my all-stars: Linda Lacewell, superintendent of the Department of Financial Services; Gareth Rhodes, deputy superintendent and special counsel of the Department of Financial Services; and Simonida Subotic, deputy secretary for economic development. Simonida went to Wadsworth to oversee their work to increase capacity. Linda focused on the daily reporting and monitoring hot spots. Gareth focused on building lab capacity.

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  THERE WAS NO blueprint for this undertaking. No governor had faced this challenge. But in some ways it was basic. For me, it was about developing a relationship, and a relationship is based on trust and trust comes from the truth. If they did not trust my credibility, they would not trust me, the information I gave them, or my proposals. The same way I cannot deliver a speech that I have not written because the words must be mine, I would not be effective in communicating the facts of COVID if I didn’t understand them, and I didn’t know if I could learn them quickly enough. We consulted with experts from many different organizations, hoping to find consensus to guide us. These included research
ers from the WHO, for the international perspective; the public health school at Drexel University in Philadelphia; the SUNY Albany research center that works with the Department of Health; the renowned modelers from Imperial College in England; and global experts including Dr. Michael Osterholm, an epidemiologist and director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota. It was a great network of people who were all doing this for free.

  Unfortunately, every expert had a different position on the “facts.” My goals were to speak to all of them and to ask the questions savvy New Yorkers would ask. To research the actions of other countries to determine what worked and what didn’t work. To research past pandemics to see what we could learn.

  I then presented what I’d learned to the people in a totally transparent manner because I knew long before this crisis happened that trust has to be earned, competence must be proven, credibility must be established. The briefings needed to do that.

  The founding fathers were right: Government can be an instrument for social progress. If that foundation is successfully created, there is no limit to what society can achieve. However, the founding fathers assumed public trust and government competence. Today we live in a hyper-partisan divided world with so much of our “news” and information coming from biased sources. We get conservative facts from Republican news channels, or we get liberal facts from Democratic news channels. That news is funneled through social media echo chambers by algorithms that target and cater to specific people inclined to believe it. And then we wonder why the public is fragmented and disillusioned. No one knows what and whom to trust. I would have to convince people that I was delivering an unbiased truth with facts. The people needed to trust me on this before I could ask them to act.

  As the days passed, it was clear that this wasn’t just about my ability to garner the attention of people so I could present this troubling and complex information. We would also need support for drastic remedies while not causing panic. We were already talking about precautionary quarantine, mandatory quarantine, and mandatory isolation. It was all frightening. It was a fine line to walk, and my message would not be going out in a vacuum. The president, vice president, and their federal mouthpieces were all communicating. Other governors, mayors, and public health officials were communicating. Cable news was providing around-the-clock coverage featuring every talking head in the country. Different states and cities were taking different actions. People were confused by the divergence of opinions, which only vindicated their cynicism about government.

  Most of all, I was concerned about public panic. I had seen it before when I was at HUD. I’ll never forget the images I witnessed during one hurricane warning in the Southeast, people blowing through red lights at intersections with a policeman banging on the hood of a car to avoid being run over while trying to direct traffic. Panic is the real enemy, even more than the initial disaster. Once people are panicked, there is chaos. A natural disaster can be managed; a panicked population cannot.

  Counties around the Bay Area were among the first in the country to take decisive action, and it sent ripples of fear across the nation. The mayor of San Francisco announced a “shelter in place” policy on March 16. Shelter in place was originally used in the 1950s in anticipation of a nuclear attack. In San Francisco, it was first used as a cautionary alert in anticipation of a possible earthquake. The policy literally means to seek out shelter in an interior windowless room in your home and remain there until the “all clear” sign is given. It was a startling and frightening concept, especially for those of us old enough to remember the nuclear attack drills in elementary school when we were sent to the basement of the school to hunker down. This wasn’t what Mayor London Breed intended; she meant simply that people should stay home. But the headline traveled across the country. I could see fear in the people around me, their eyes widening with anxiety. Communication is an art form, especially when emotion is running high; I’d already got in trouble when I used the term “containment zone” in New Rochelle. When we issued our own order in New York on March 20, I would speak about “staying home” and “pausing,” which I considered more comforting terms.

  This was a highly emotional time. We were navigating the unknown. People would be afraid and isolated. I wanted to say to people, you are not alone, I am here with you. I will be here with you every day. I will do my best to inform myself, and I will tell you everything that I know without any political filter. We will make decisions together, and even if we disagree, you will know why we are doing what we are doing, and you will know that what we are doing I believe is in our best interest. I wanted people to understand that even in this time of slanted “news” on both sides of the political spectrum, unvarnished truth still existed, and they could find it with me. There was no example that I could follow. FDR’s fireside chats were the only parallel I could find.

  A lot happened before the 11:30 briefings every morning.

  The numbers came in around 3:00 A.M. Melissa would get on the phone with Gareth and Dr. Jim Malatras between 4:00 A.M. and 5:00 A.M. to talk about them and what needed to be included in that day’s presentation.

  Gareth is thirty-two years old and started working for me when he was twenty-two years old. During those ten years, he left to attend Harvard Law School and ran for Congress. Bright, hardworking, and effective, he is a superb manager who makes the bureaucracy produce. It is an art form. You can be both charming and purposeful.

  Jim has been with me even longer and is one of the best policy minds not just in New York State but far beyond. When I was attorney general, Jim helped write the law that helped local governments consolidate, and went on to serve as director of state operations. Jim is a workaholic with an exceptional sense of humor. He has a PhD in political science—so while he is technically a doctor, he is not what I consider in a public health crisis to be a “real doctor,” a fact that I pointed out in my briefings, much to the chagrin of PhDs nationwide.

  Melissa would text me the numbers so that I could look at them as soon as I woke up at 5:00. When I got to the office between 6:00 A.M. and 7:00 A.M., there was a stack of paper—testing numbers, hospitalizations, hot spots. I would pepper the team with questions and then write the whole presentation by hand myself. It was important to me that everything I conveyed at the briefings was logically organized and in my own words. And I’d draw the visuals for each of the twenty or thirty slides for that day. One day I wanted to visualize the threat facing New York’s hospital system, so I sketched a tidal wave representing COVID cases cresting upward, and in the sea below, a hospital. I can’t claim to have much talent as an artist, but I knew the information I wanted conveyed. I would note where the clicks went to advance the text or slides in the PowerPoint; I held the clicker during the briefing, so those were important. Noah Rayman, Will Burns, and Jack Davies—three of the smartest, hardest-working, and most reliable aides anyone could ask for—would scramble to bring the entire thing to life, complete with graphics, charts, and art, to convey the day’s message.

  As time went on, the team wanted to use more modern visuals on the PowerPoint, with different colors and fonts. They thought ours looked straight out of the 1960s. But I didn’t want to make it look slick. I wasn’t trying to sell anything.

  After the presentation of the day’s facts and numbers and statistics, I would offer my personal take on how we were doing, under a banner on the PowerPoint slide that said “Personal Opinion.” When I was afraid and I was frustrated, I said that. I did not know what tomorrow would bring. When I was sad, especially when the fatalities began, I communicated honestly and extemporaneously exactly what I was feeling. All we can do is our best, and all I could do was my best. I vowed I would work as hard as I could, be open and honest and present every day.

  We also had to coordinate the voices within this state. New York has the same political divide seen in the rest of the country. We
are a majority Democratic state, but we are about 40 percent Republican. There is New York City, but there are also rural counties that have more cows than people. All politicians want to dictate policy for their jurisdictions, but it was vital that government speak and act with one voice. Different or competing plans would only further confuse an already frightened public and further erode confidence. While we have our political differences, in New York we lived through the experience of 9/11 together, and most understand that at a time of emergency, building unity and commonality are the primary responsibilities of a true leader. Fortunately, in the face of this unique challenge, 90 percent of the politicians in New York were collegial and helpful and eager to cooperate. In truth, I suspect they were happy to let us lead in those days when all the news was bad. We would have to deal with harsh conservative elected officials in upstate New York who followed the Trump doctrine of denial. Downstate, we would have to deal with Mayor de Blasio, who was quick to make public pronouncements despite his having no authority under the law to do so. And I was sure that sooner or later we would run afoul of President Trump. He used the partisan divide to insulate himself and demonize any contrary voices. He would surely accuse me of playing politics as soon as what I was saying was not convenient for him.

  I am not a typical politician. If I were, I would have run for president. Period. I had to make sure that it was clear that I had no agenda besides helping New Yorkers. This was not about me, it was about them. And there was no politics at play. I am a Democrat and a proud Democrat. I am the son of Mario Cuomo and a proud son. But I am first and foremost governor of all New Yorkers.