Bill Hammond

Although the state Health has recently revealed significant additional information about the pandemic death toll in New York's nursing homes, it has not fully complied with last week's court order in a Freedom of Information lawsuit brought by the Empire Center. Read More

Last month Governor Cuomo introduced his FY 2022 Executive Budget in the midst of pleading, once again, for a federal bailout. Read More

The state Health Department has revealed additional detail about coronavirus deaths in New York nursing homes, showing for the first time how many residents of each home died of COVID-19 outside of the facility, typically in a hospital. Read More

Numbers belatedly released by the Cuomo administration last week pushed New York's COVID-19 mortality rate in nursing homes from 35th to 13th highest in the U.S., an Empire Center analysis shows. Read More

In a letter to governors two days after President Biden's inauguration, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said that the pandemic-related federal public health emergency "will likely remain in place for the entirety of 2021." Read More

After a report from New York Attorney General Letitia James confirmed suspicions of under-reporting the official record of COVID-19 nursing home deaths, counsel for the Empire Center submitted a letter to the Albany County Supreme Court renewing its urgent Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) request. Read More

The most shocking thing about state Attorney General Letitia James’ report on the coronavirus pandemic in New York nursing homes is what it did not contain: a definitive count of how many thousands of residents have died of COVID. Apparently, not even the highest-ranking legal official in the state was able to pry that elusive number out of the Cuomo administration’s clutches. Read More

The Cuomo administration's resistance to sharing pandemic data from nursing homes has broadened to withholding vaccination numbers as well as full death counts. Read More