New York governor Andrew Cuomo was paid $5m for a ‘Covid leadership’ book hardly anyone read

New York governor, Andrew Cuomo made a $5.12 million pay day for his book about “leadership lessons” as a result of the pandemic.

Not exactly the most sensitive thing for a public official to do, when more than 52,000 people in the state have died from coronavirus under his leadership.

Ahead of Monday’s deadline for tax returns, Cuomo released the details of his $5.12 million contract for his book titled “American Crisis: Leadership Lessons from the COVID-19 Pandemic.”

Last year, he received $3.12 million last year ($1.54 million after taxes and $117,000 in expenses) and is set to get another $2 million in the next two years.

Despite the governor pledging to donate a “significant portion” of the money to charity, he gave away just $500,000, to the United Way of New York State.

To put that into context, that is just a tenth of his total pre-tax proceeds.

He also took a tax break for the gift, deducting $300,000 of it this year and $200,000 to show up next year.

It’s important to note that Cuomo is the highest paid governor in the United States with an annual salary of $225,000.

Cuomo also took it upon himself to utilise his resources/powers as a public official, after staffers revealed they worked on his book.

State Comptroller, Tom DiNapoli asked Attorney General Letitia James in April to investigate whether Cuomo had used the “resources of the state for personal purposes.”

Although governor’s office claimed staffers efforts were voluntary, young staffers were under the impression they didn’t have a choice on whether to co-operate.

What’s worse is that Cuomo still gets paid even though Crown Publishing ceased promoting the book and canceled plans for a paperback version in March.

This is because it was revealed that reporting Cuomo’s top aides had rewritten the state Health Department’s whitewashing report to conceal the true number of nursing-home deaths.

For a state that saw the nation’s second-highest COVID deaths per capita, instead of profiting $5 million from a “leadership” book, maybe Cuomo should get better at doing his actual job that people voted and trusted him to do.