Good morning,
I hope you enjoyed the holiday weekend and are looking forward to the New Year (I know I am). Over the past couple of days, Governor Cuomo’s office posted two more executive orders — Executive Orders 202.85 and 202.86, his eighty-eighth and eighty-ninth Executive Orders during the COVID-19 state of emergency.
Executive Order 202.85, dated December 27, 2020, continues the suspensions and modifications of law, and any directives, not superseded by a subsequent directive contained in contained in Executive Orders 202.66 (found here), as continued and contained in Executive Order 202.71 (found here) and 202.78 (found here), for another thirty days through January 26, 2021. Executive Order 202.85 is effective from December 27, 2020 through January 26, 2021. A copy of Executive Order 202.85 can be found here. It is important to note that while Executive Order 202.85 extends the moratorium on residential evictions to January 26, 2021, legislation passed by the New York State Assembly and Senate, and signed by Governor Cuomo, on December 28, 2020 (The Emergency Eviction and Foreclosure Act of 2020) extends this moratorium beyond January 26, 2021 date, potentially until May 1, 2021.
NEW DIRECTIVES
Executive Order 202.86 (found here) is effective from December 28, 2020 through January 27, 2021. Executive Order 202.86 contains two new directives addressing the COVID-19 pandemic, designed to address both the efforts to combat the actual pandemic as well as minimize the fiscal impact that the COVID-19 crisis has on the New York State budget. To that end, Executive Order 202.86 provides as follows:
Fine for improper vaccine administration
- To ensure that New York State has complete and accurate information about who is receiving the State’s currently limited quantity of vaccine, and to inform the State’s efforts to understand the regions and communities that are receiving the vaccine, healthcare providers shall require any person who is receiving the vaccine to provide information, including but not limited to an attestation that they are a member of a specific priority group that has been determined by the Health Department to be eligible for the vaccine, on a form to be determined by the Health Department. Any licensed healthcare provider who administers the vaccine to an individual who has not certified to being a member of a priority group or where such provider otherwise has knowledge that the individual is not a member of the priority group may be subject to civil penalties of up to one million dollars ($1,000,000) per dose administered and/or the revocation of any state-issued license; and
Pay Raises Suspended
- Notwithstanding any provision of law, nor concurrent resolution of both houses of the legislature to the contrary, the Comptroller shall not increase the rate of salary for any individual serving in the role of Commissioner, whose salary is set in the Executive Law, nor any individual who is holding statewide elected office, and due to be increased on January 1, 2021.
SUPENDED OR MODIFIED LAWS, REGULATIONS AND CODES
As with many prior executive orders, Executive Order 202.86 also suspends or modifies certain laws, codes, rules and regulations to aid in New York’s efforts to combat the COVID-19 crisis this time through January 27, 2021. Executive Order 202.86, by modifying or suspending the applicable laws, codes, rules and regulations and municipal codes, to the extent necessary:
- Sections 6502, 6524, 6905, 6906 and 6910 of the education law and Part 59.8 of Title 8 of the NYCRR to the extent necessary to authorize retired physicians, registered professional nurses, licensed practical nurses, and nurse practitioners licensed to practice and in current good standing in New York State, but not currently registered in New York State, to re-register through use of an expedited automatic registration form developed by the state and to waive any registration fee for the triennial registration period for such registrants; and
- Section 12 of the Public Health Law is hereby modified for purposes of permitting the Department to assess the civil penalties established in Executive Order 202.86 (i.e. the fines for wrongful vaccine administration);