‘Dereliction of duty’: NYC Dems push back against de Blasio, Cuomo for no mask mandates amid COVID spike
Mayor de Blasio and Gov. Cuomo came under fire from fellow Democrats on Monday over their continued reluctance to reinstate indoor mask mandates in New York despite a delta variant-driven uptick in COVID-19 infections across the state.
Public Advocate Jumaane Williams pointed fingers at both de Blasio and Cuomo over the mask punting, charging it’s as if the two men “have learned nothing in the last 17 months” and that holding off on an indoor mandate at this stage amounts to “a dereliction of duty.”
“New York: Just because the mayor and governor have so far failed to adopt CDC guidance doesn’t mean we should,” Williams said. “To protect ourselves, our neighbors, our city, please mask up in indoor spaces.”
But Cuomo spokesman Rich Azzopardi said Williams was barking up the wrong tree in calling out the governor.
“[Williams] once again doesn’t care to know the facts,” Azzopardi tweeted, adding that only local governments, not Cuomo, can implement mask mandates at the moment because the governor’s pandemic emergency powers expired earlier this year.
Williams didn’t buy Azzopardi’s explanation, however.
“Let’s not pretend the governor has ever been afraid to claim and exert power when he thinks it will help him — and delay and duck when he thinks it won’t,” he tweeted back at Azzopardi.
Other Democrats trained most of their ire on de Blasio, who on Monday announced a mask advisory for the city, under which New Yorkers are recommended — not required — to wear masks in public indoor settings, regardless of vaccination status.
“An advisory at this point on mask-wearing is not enough,” Manhattan Councilman Mark Levine, chairman of the Council’s Health Committee, told reporters in a virtual press conference. “We’re too far into this at this point. ... This virus is moving so fast.”
New York Rep. Adriano Espaillat concurred.
“It should be a mandate,” the upper Manhattan congressman said in the same press conference. “If we are to suffocate the virus and not allow it to take control again in our city, we must be presenting stricter public policy recommendations.”
De Blasio has maintained he wants to focus on boosting vaccination instead of masking, even though all five boroughs of the city are seeing COVID-19 transmissibility rates that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention deem problematic enough to warrant a return to an indoor mandate.
Levine said it’s time for the mayor to focus on masking and vaccinations at the same time.
“You can push vaccinations and masking both,” he said. “It’s not one or the other.”
