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NYU Law School Ethics Professor Embroiled In Major Ethics Scandal

Teach what you know!

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As her bio reads, Linda Lacewell is “an adjunct professor at New York University School of Law, teaching ethics in government.” According to the New York Times, Lacewell, who serves as the Superintendent of the New York State Department of Financial Services when she’s not teaching, has got a head start on drafting her next issue-spotter. It might read something like this:

A public health official wrote a report that made Governor Adam Como look bad. But Governor Como wants to earn outside income writing a book about how good he looks. Can senior official, Lisa Lovelace, change the report to hide nursing home deaths? And if she doesn’t remove it herself, is there a problem with her knowing someone else changed the report?

Maybe if Lacewell is lucky she can squeeze in this exam before the real-life scandal that birthed it comes to a close. You hate to write an exam that just goes to waste!

While Andrew Cuomo is also facing an investigation by the NY AG’s office over multiple allegations of sexual harassment, the nursing home scandal remains more nuanced but nonetheless damning for fans of good governance.

In a nutshell, early in the pandemic, Cuomo signed an order forcing nursing homes to take in elderly COVID patients in order to keep the hospitals from overcrowding. It was an idea that had public health backing at the time, as experts felt that medically equipped nursing facilities could care for these patients as well as a hospital without taking one of the very limited hospital beds (a shortage that Andrew Cuomo was responsible for in the first place). Unfortunately, this might have contributed to outbreaks in nursing homes accelerating the death toll. Or those deaths may have been inevitable when the virus was spreading out of control and seniors were most hard hit. Even if the advice Cuomo received turned out to be wrong, he wouldn’t be to blame for following the best guidance available at the time. But what happened next is absolutely on his administration and should be the end of it… you know, except for the fact that the sexual harassment will probably be the end of it.

Public health officials drafted a report that included data on nursing home deaths. Cuomo’s administration overrode the health officials and edited that data out of the report to remove any question of whether or not Cuomo’s policy had a disastrous impact on nursing homes. Normally, one would put “allegedly” in there as a courtesy except Cuomo straight-up admitted that they lied in the report.

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Mr. Cuomo finally released the complete data, saying he had withheld it out of concern that the Trump administration might pursue a politically motivated inquiry into the state’s handling of the outbreak in nursing homes.

Oh? That’s a thing we can do now? One has to give the guy some credit for thinking he could pull off the “look, we kept two sets of books because we were worried the IRS might prosecute us” defense. If the cover up is always worse than the crime, that goes double when there wasn’t necessarily a crime to begin with. It’s just breaching the public trust in government reporting… for funsies.

In any event, guess who acted as Cuomo’s first-responders in this matter according to the Times reporting?

The aides who were involved in changing the report included Melissa DeRosa, the governor’s top aide; Linda Lacewell, the head of the state’s Department of Financial Services; and Jim Malatras, a former top adviser to Mr. Cuomo brought back to work on the pandemic. None had public health expertise.

The Times article describes the public health report negotiations as “well beyond the usual process of the governor’s office suggesting edits to an agency report, and became ‘intense’ at times.” Ultimately, sources for the Times said that Malatras “substantially rewrote” the report, something an advisor with no health experience shouldn’t be doing with a public health report in the middle of a pandemic.

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So one might lay all the blame on Malatras, except the article closes with this somewhat awkward pair of paragraphs:

Even so, an edited version prepared by Mr. Malatras did not remove the higher death toll.

That occurred later, after Ms. DeRosa and Ms. Lacewell became aware of its inclusion. It was taken out soon after.

You don’t want to say res ipsa loquitur, but….

In any event, this claims she knew what the death toll numbers were, knew they were in the report originally, and then knew that they somehow got removed from the report. Even if she wasn’t involved in that decision, it makes for a really interesting question about an official’s responsibilities when it comes to “ethics in government.”

But Cuomo’s book was a bestseller, and that’s been the only ethical consideration in Albany for years now.

UPDATE: In a remarkable moment of Streisand Syndrome, the Cuomo administration responded to this article:

“As we have repeatedly explained, unverified data was removed because we could not establish its reliability, but the conclusion of the report did not change and no data was ’altered.’ Linda Lacewell is a top-notch lawyer who has selflessly served the people of New York as a Former Federal Prosecutor for the Eastern District, Special Counsel in the Attorney General’s Office, and as a Chief of Staff to the Governor and Superintendent for the Department of Financial Services –this attempt at mudslinging is below even Fox News.”

I… assume this is the mentality that made them think they could just bully Assemblyman Ron Kim into submission? A lot of us remember the Moreland Commission getting shut down. In fact, more of us remember the AG’s office — when Cuomo had that job —  pillorying Governor Paterson when there might have been, you know, threats to New Yorkers that should have been investigated before wasting resources on the gov’s affair, but whatever. Let’s just maintain a healthy skepticism in taking ethics advice based on this record.

Cuomo Aides Rewrote Nursing Home Report to Hide Higher Death Toll [New York Times]

HeadshotJoe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.

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