ALBANY — State lawmakers passed a bill late Wednesday night backed by Gov. Cuomo that will give the state Department of Health $40 million to bolster coronavirus preparations.
Cuomo announced last week that extra funding was necessary for additional staff and equipment to combat disease prevention and spread.
“The reality is, our state and our nation continues to look for leadership, and we, probably better than most places have the ability to act. We have the facilities, we have the personnel,” said state Sen. Majority Leader Andrea Stewart Cousins on the floor of the state Senate, before voting in favor of the measure.
“I have confidence in New York paying attention to what’s important and doing what’s right for our people.”
But the bill also greatly expands governor’s power to act when disaster situations—like fires, floods, earthquakes and disease outbreak—threaten New York.
The legislation empowers the governor to “temporarily suspend” any statute, local law or rule “if necessary to assist or aid in coping with such disaster” upon declaring an emergency order.
Those powers are effective immediately upon passage of the legislation, and expire April 30, 2021.
Speaker Carl Heastie earlier told reporters that the legislature also has the ability to pass a resolution overturning the measure.
But Democrats and Republicans expressed outrage Monday evening, arguing against the governor’s augmented powers and lack of time to read and process the bill’s implications.
“Is this the only answer?” an outraged state Sen. Andrew Lanza asked during the Senate vote, comparing the new powers afforded in the legislation to a form of “martial law.”
“It gives the Executive more broad unconditional power that goes way beyond, way beyond what would be necessary to deal with the pandemic.”
“I think this is a bad idea,” Assembly Health Committee Chair Richard Gottfried (D-Manhattan) declared later on, during the Assembly debate.
“We take something this serious, and this unprecedented, through all the decades and all the crises we’ve been through and with a bill that’s still…warm from the computer screen, to pass that without spending a day to let people who know what they’re talking about, or don’t work in this building [read the bill],” he said.
“We should take that day or two, or even more if that’s necessary, so we can have some confidence that we’re doing the right thing and not make some mistake that we’ll live to regret,” he added.
Republican Assemblywoman Marybeth Walsh (R-Saratoga) slammed the bill’s debate running past the midnight hour.
“We’ve seen, historically, there are some pretty bad ideas in Albany that come this way,” she argued.
The Senate passed the bill in a 53 to 4 vote. Two Democrats, Sen. Julia Salazar (D-Brooklyn) and Senate Health Committee Chair Gustavo Rivera, casted ‘no’ votes.
The state Assembly passed the measure 120 to 12.