It was a big weekend for the Andrew Cuomo's Mistakes Department, ranging from the former governor and leading mayoral candidate dropping a plan for New York City's housing crisis marred with nonsensical gobbledygook, to being the subject of a scathing audit finding that while governor, the state bought almost half a billion dollars in pandemic gear that was never distributed.
Let's start with the latest oopsie: On Saturday, Cuomo released his housing plan. And while most of the 29-page plan itself is fairly unremarkable—much of it is spent talking about Cuomo's (dubious) accomplishments as governor, and laying out just how hard it is to find and build affordable housing in New York City—something curious appears on page 28.
As reported by Hell Gate on Sunday night, that page, headlined "Appoint Rent Guidelines Board Members Who Will Make Decisions Bbjectively [sic]" features several nonsensical, unedited statements that appear to, in part, have relied on the use of ChatGPT. See the embarrassing errors and his team's response in our full story on that here.
Meanwhile, on Friday, New York Comptroller Tom DiNapoli dropped a bombshell new audit finding that Cuomo's administration spent almost $453 million at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, stockpiling about 248,000 pieces of equipment like ventilators and X-ray machines— and then distributed ONLY THREE OF THOSE ITEMS.
What happened to the rest? According to the state comptroller, who had auditors review databases supposed to keep track of the items, they're sitting around in warehouses across the state, gathering dust. All of that equipment is currently not being used, and not getting the maintenance they require to be put to use in the future.