Ten years ago last month, Rep. Christopher Lee resigned after it was revealed the married former Congressman had been sending flirtatious emails to a woman he met on Craigslist.

When the news broke, Lee immediately resigned his post. It was the honorable thing to do. The seat was filled roughly three months after Lee’s resignation by Kathy Hochul and the business of governing could resume. Lee’s personal issues didn’t affect his constituents.

Contrast that with Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a politician for whom the unflattering news just keeps coming. Three women have accused Cuomo of sexual harassment, and a report late Thursday night by The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal say the governor’s office knew the toll COVID-19 was taking in the state’s nursing homes as early as last July, when aides to the governor scrubbed the information from an allegedly non-partisan state Health Department report on the state’s response to COVID-19 in nursing homes.

The Times and Journal reported that the original drafts of the report had included the more than 9,200 deaths until Cuomo’s aides said it should be taken out. Late Thursday night, the governor’s office sent out a news release stating the information was taken out of the report because it hadn’t been properly vetted and confirmed.

That may be true, but why then the additional seven months of stonewalling to release the information? Why did it take a lawsuit for the information to be released? Legislative leaders began asking for the information in July, according to debate Thursday on the Assembly floor between Assemblyman Richard Gottfried, D-New York City, and Assemblyman Andrew Goodell, R-Jamestown, yet the Health Department told Gottfried the information didn’t exist.

Also shot to bits is the Cuomo Administration’s argument it couldn’t release the nursing home data because of a looming federal investigation. The information existed long before the Trump Administration ever hinted at an investigation.

To quote the Times article, “The back-and-forth went well beyond the usual process of the governor’s office suggesting edits to an agency report, and became”intense” at times, according to two people with knowledge of the discussions.”

Why is Christopher Lee’s situation relevant?

The state Legislature is debating nursing home legislation that is likely based on incomplete information. That information is incomplete, in part, because of the deliberate actions of Cuomo, Cuomo’s aides, and Cuomo’s hand-picked state health commisssioner Dr. Howard Zucker.

Lee chose to resign because he knew constant controversy limited his ability to govern effectively. While we aren’t calling for Cuomo to resign at this time, we do wonder how effectively he can govern while also dealing with the one-two punch of sexual harassment claims and continued revelations about withholding necessary information from the public.