Andrew Cuomo is leaning on tech billionaires to help New York rebuild

Andrew Cuomo (center) and Eric Schmidt (far right) tour a school in New York in 2014. | Alejandra Villa-Pool/Getty Images

Eric Schmidt and Bill Gates are being asked to “reimagine” New York. Not everybody loves that. Gov. Andrew Cuomo is leaning on tech billionaires to rebuild New York after the coronavirus — a reminder of how the mega-rich are consolidating their power and expanding their influence even as they offer to help respond to the pandemic.
Cuomo has tapped Bill Gates’s foundation and former Google CEO Eric Schmidt to “reimagine” New York’s economy, health care system, and school system, the governor said in back-to-back briefings on Tuesday and Wednesday. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has been chosen to “revolutionize” online learning for the fall and was asked by Cuomo on Tuesday to develop a “blueprint” for how to do so.
And on Wednesday, Cuomo invited Schmidt to appear at his closely watched daily news conference, where Schmidt said he would focus on telehealth, remote learning, and broadband access as the chair of a new commission focused on organizing New York’s economy more around technology.
The appointments will undoubtedly give the two tech billionaires substantial influence in shaping what New York looks like a year from now. And amid a refreshed debate about the role of the ultra-wealthy in society, tapping the former Microsoft and Google CEOs will only increase the concerns raised about this plutocratic power, especially from voices in Cuomo’s own Democratic Party .
Using the word “visionary” to describe Gates and Schmidt on separate occasions, Cuomo portrayed their involvement as acts of benevolence and repeatedly thanked them for their service. And yet the two initiatives are offering a way for private citizens to reshape how 20 million people in New York will live — none of whom voted for Schmidt or Gates (neither of whom technically live in New York).
Details are scarce about exactly how much power these groups will have beyond issuing recommendations or whether their work will be public. But Gates could suddenly have the ability to recommend what types of things are taught to the state’s students in a “reimagined” system. Schmidt could encourage the state to significantly embrace remote health care services that could be controversial. While both have been successful business leaders, the concern would mirror the broader criticism of billionaire philanthropy: that this “help” offers a few wealthy people some undemocratic influence over American public policy.
Gates has burnished his reputation during the coronavirus, emerging as a ubiquitous expert in the media and earning applause for his early (and unheeded) concerns about a possible pandemic. But for all his success in public health, Gates’s record has been viewed as far more mixed when it comes to education work, which is a second pillar of the Gates Foundation’s policy...