ALBANY — Local government leaders are clamoring for a taxpayer-financed investigation of the state’s management of the COVID-19 response to include a review of the role played by counties in scrambling to offer their services.

While local governments were initially assigned a back bench role by former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, state officials eventually realized that a massive effort to get vaccinations into the arms of New Yorkers could not be achieved without assistance from county health departments.

“This was a public health emergency that our public health departments and directors are trained to respond to,” said Mark LaVigne, deputy director of the New York State Association of Counties. “There were many aspects of the state’s response that went around or did not include the experienced county officials.”

The Hochul administration has selected the Olson Group as the winning bidder for a $4.3 million contract to conduct the study. The contract is now going through an approval process.

David Bliss is chairman of the Otsego County Board of Representatives. Since the outbreak began, his county has experienced 159 COVID-19 fatalities, including those at local healthcare facilities.

Bliss told CNHI: “I absolutely agree the experiences of counties should be documented in this report because we are the ones with boots on the ground and had to deal with the consequences of Gov. Cuomo not providing information to anyone, including his own health department.”

Bliss was referring to information uncovered in a scathing report last year from the state’s attorney general’s office, which had undertaken a probe into allegations that Cuomo sexually harassed 11 women, allegations Cuomo disputed.

That same inquiry also took testimony from a female physician who swabbed Cuomo’s nose during a demonstration of a COVID test. Dr. Elizabeth Dufort told investigators that state health experts were directed by the Cuomo administration to refrain from collaborating with medical teams working for the New York City government and had to channel all of their communications through Cuomo’s office.

“We were not allowed to collaborate with our peers in the local health departments and New York City Department of Mental Health and Hygiene, which is a critical component in an outbreak response, to collaborate with different facets of public health,” Dufort said, according to a transcript released last year as part of the report issued by Attorney General Letitia James.

Representatives of Cuomo have brushed off the James report, arguing it was politically motivated. James initially ran for governor after Cuomo resigned but folded her tent to clear the way for Gov. Kathy Hochul in this year’s Democratic primary.

Current plans call for the Olson Group’s work to be overseen by Hochul’s office and the state Division of Homeland Security.

William Hammond, a senior analyst for the Empire Center for Public Policy, an Albany think tank, said: “The roles played by local government — by every city, by every county — should absolutely be part of any review of the pandemic.”

“When there is a crisis such as the one that we had, you want the different levels of government to be talking — and it turns out they weren’t,” Hammond said.

The Association of Counties has produced a detailed book stitching together the oral histories of county leaders who were on the front lines in their communities coordinating local services needed during the pandemic. It is titled: “Our Darkest Hours: New York County Leadership and the COVID Pandemic.”

Stephen Acquario, director of NYSAC, said: “We think it’s vital that the experiences and perspectives of county leaders captured in this book be included in the final report.”

Just months after the contagion reached New York, and with the then-governor already holding daily briefings where he captured headlines by releasing fresh data on fatalities and infection numbers, Cuomo notched a $5.1 million book contract for a memoir about what he described as the “leadership” he provided during the crisis. Cuomo was later scolded by the attorney general’s office for undercounting the number of COVID-related nursing home deaths in New York. The state eventually released the data in response to a Freedom of Information lawsuit brought by the Empire Center.

Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-Saratoga County, has vowed to push for a House of Representatives inquiry into the alleged coverup of nursing home deaths in New York in the aftermath of a Cuomo administration directive requiring nursing homes to accept COVID-positive patients from hospitals.

Stefanik has accused Hochul of “complicit involvement” in Cuomo’s nursing home policies, citing the fact she was his lieutenant governor at the time.

Stefanik argued at a House hearing that the nursing home directive requiring the facilities to take in COVID patients was not in accordance with guidance from the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

Stefanik vowed to use subpoenas in the House investigation. The House will be controlled by Stefanik’s party in January as a result of the midterm elections.

At the statehouse, Republicans are skeptical the inquiry being authorized by Hochul will get to the bottom of the controversial pandemic decisions made during Cuomo’s tenure.

Sen. Tom O’Mara, R-Big Flats, said the inquiry is “too little, too late and just another in-house, multi-million-dollar whitewashing of the truth.”