Steven Kuhr, head of New York’s Office of Emergency Management, fired for misusing Superstorm Sandy cleanup workers
A tree trimmer removes branches from a power line on City Island November 1, 2012 in New York. Clean up continues from the damage done by Hurricane Sandy.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo has fired Steven Kuhr, the director of New York’s Office of Emergency Management, for sending government workers to clear a fallen tree from his driveway during Superstorm Sandy, the New York Times reported.
A Cuomo administration source told the New York Times that Kuhr asked the Suffolk County Office of Emergency Management to get a government crew to move the tree at his Long Island home at a time when emergency workers were needed to deal with more urgent matters.
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"When we found out about it, we fired him immediately," a Cuomo aide told the New York Daily News.
The $153,000-a-year bureaucrat had been on the job for about a year, the New York Daily News reported.
According to the New York Times, the federal Energy Department reports that 240,000 New Yorkers still do not have power.
“I’ve got people sitting in their homes with two inches of snow outside, they have no electricity, no hot water, they’re sitting in their homes and freezing to death,” State Senator Martin Golden Golden told the New York Times. “This guy’s only worried about his own home? It’s sad. The governor made the right call.”
The Cuomo aide told the New York Daily News that Kuhr's firing will not hamper the state’s Sandy cleanup efforts.
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