Gretchen Whitmer is avoiding accountability for her deadly coronavirus nursing-home policies.
Gretchen Whitmer, Michigan’s governor, is avoiding accountability for her deadly coronavirus nursing-home policies.
L ast August, Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer joined New York governor Andrew Cuomo in a statement blasting the Trump administration’s Justice Department for daring to request data related to nursing-home deaths in their respective states.
The governors — both Democrats — claimed this was “nothing more than a transparent politicization of the Department of Justice in the middle of the Republican National Convention.”
Whitmer and Cuomo complained that the federal officials simply were targeting their states and several others under Democratic control for partisan purposes.
That wasn’t the reason. Rather, it had to do with governors who put in place dangerous policies impacting nursing homes in their responses to COVID-19. Governors such as Whitmer and Cuomo have acted with tremendous power for the past year, unilaterally making decisions impacting their states in the name of combating a health emergency. And they have a lot to answer for.
Whitmer may now regret her chummy relationship with Cuomo. Given the recent bombshell that Cuomo and his staff fudged New York’s numbers to make the state’s nursing-home deaths appear rosier than they were, it’s extremely apparent that public officials can’t be trusted to be open with citizens, regardless of how many times they say “science and data” (one of Whitmer’s favorite catchphrases) are guiding their decisions.
The Democratic New York attorney general took a close look at the numbers and found the discrepancies in reporting undercounted nursing-home deaths by more than 50 percent. The state had not included deaths of nursing-home residents when they took place in hospitals. This revelation has prompted an investigation by the FBI and Justice Department.
In Michigan, the more than 5,500 deaths in long-term-care facilities account for a third of COVID deaths in the state — as far as we know, given lack of transparency from both Whitmer and the state Health Department.
Whitmer refused to back down for months from her initial executive order instructing nursing homes and other similar facilities to take on hospital patients with COVID-19. The governor was warned early on by the head of the state’s elder-care association not to do this, but she did so anyway. And she continued the misguided policy, despite several bipartisan attempts from the Michigan legislature to alter the mandate.
It wasn’t until late September that she changed course — and not until November that she signed legislation making it official.
Cuomo initially had a similar nursing-home policy to Whitmer’s, but notably altered his order in May 2020 after intense pushback. At least he was willing to acknowledge his error. Michigan’s governor refused to back down.
Whitmer, who rose to national prominence last year in giving the Democratic response to the State of the Union address and as a contender for vice president, used her executive authority to implement some of the most stringent COVID lockdowns in the country. And when the Michigan Supreme Court in October struck down the state’s emergency-powers law that had given her so much control — and the ability to sidestep the legislature — Whitmer turned to epidemic powers under the Health Department to continue her arbitrary orders.
Just like Cuomo, Whitmer and her administration should be investigated. No one knows whether Michigan officials have finessed the numbers, as Whitmer and state Health Department leaders have not been forthcoming with providing this information to legislators, federal officials, or the public.
A growing number of lawmakers are demanding such an inquiry from Michigan’s Democratic attorney general Dana Nessel, one of the most partisan elected officials in the country. She has resisted previous calls to investigate the data and has shown no interest this time either. Since she can’t be relied on, it will have to come down to federal investigators.
This month, eight state GOP senators sent a letter to Nessel and the U.S. Justice Department asking for a close look into Michigan’s data on nursing homes, as well as the policies that likely put so many seniors at risk.
Nessel flatly ignored several similar requests last year from Republican lawmakers in the state legislature and Congress. Whitmer has done the same.
Things got even more shady this month when it came to light that Whitmer’s former health director Robert Gordon — who resigned unexpectedly and without explanation in January — had signed a $155,000 hush-money deal.
As the top health official implementing the governor’s orders, Gordon’s departure raises a lot of questions that will remain secret thanks to his confidentiality agreement, something that is highly unusual in state government.
Michigan is known for its lack of transparency. It’s one of only two states that exempts the governor’s office from Freedom of Information Act requests, and other state departments and institutions that are subject to FOIA have used the pandemic as an excuse to stonewall the free flow of information.
Case in point: A well-known Michigan journalist, Charlie LeDuff, recently filed a FOIA request with the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services for several months of data related to COVID deaths in nursing homes. But his request was denied, with the department claiming exemptions for privacy of health records.
“We are taking the Health Department’s word on everything, and that’s the problem,” says Steve Delie, an expert on transparency and open government with the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, Michigan’s leading free-market think tank.
The Mackinac Center Legal Foundation has agreed to represent LeDuff in a lawsuit challenging his FOIA denial.
A similar lawsuit filed by a think tank in New York helped prompt further scrutiny there, so legal action in Michigan may be what it takes to break through the opaqueness of state government.
Just as in New York, the people of Michigan deserve to know exactly what’s been happening in the state’s nursing homes and how Whitmer’s policies have impacted these vulnerable lives. It shouldn’t be this hard to find out.