New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo begged wealthy Manhattanites who fled the Big Apple during the height of the coronavirus pandemic to return to the city and help ease the financial burden caused by the pandemic.
“I literally talk to people all day long who are now in their Hamptons house who also lived here, or in their Hudson Valley house or in their Connecticut weekend house, and I say, ‘You gotta come back, when are you coming back?’” Cuomo said during a press conference earlier this week, according to the New York Post.
”’We’ll go to dinner—I’ll buy you a drink,'”Cuomo said, describing his conversations with wealthy New Yorkers. “‘Come over—I’ll cook.’”
Cuomo admitted that it’s more appealing for New Yorkers to remain outside of the city because of the high taxes.
The city is currently facing a $30 billion deficit because of the pandemic, and some city officials have proposed raising taxes on the wealthy to make up for that loss.
But Cuomo said that if the city raises taxes, the wealthy will never return.
“They’re not coming back right now. And you know what else they’re thinking? ‘If I stay there, I pay a lower income tax,’ because they don’t pay the New York City surcharge,” Cuomo said.
New York has had one of the worst outbreaks in the country, largely because of Cuomo’s and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio’s reluctance back in March to take early action to shut down the state.
Cuomo, like several other blue-state governors, also spearheaded a disastrous policy requiring nursing homes to accept coronavirus patients even if they lacked the resources to separate them from the healthy population.
Cuomo has continued to deny that he is to blame for this policy, instead blaming the Trump administration, New York’s hospitals, and even the nursing homes themselves.
