There shouldn’t be any gray area whether or not state workers used state taxpayer-funded time on former Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s book, “American Crisis: Leadership Lessons from the COVID-19 Pandemic.”

Yet Cuomo and his spokespeople have claimed over and over again that state workers who helped on the book did so of their own volition, on their own time even though two investigations show work being done during regular state working hours. That begs the question, if state employees took time off to help write Cuomo’s book, when did they make up the time. Were they using paid time off to do book-related tasks? Were they given an opportunity to say no?

It is in that vein that Sen. Todd Kaminsky, D-Rockville Centre, has introduced S.7613 in the state Senate to prohibit public officers from using their authority to compel or coerce subordinates to use their official government work time to perform activities intended to benefit a private business or other compensated non-governmental purposes. There is only one reason why this legislation wouldn’t pass both houses of the state Legislature unanimously and be signed nearly immediately by Gov. Kathy Hochul, and that reason has been voiced by Cuomo’s team often in recent weeks — even if we did it, you do it too.

“The Assembly report is hypocritical, revisionist and damns themselves as the Assembly effectively forces employees to volunteer on their political partisan campaigns as standard practice and if they want to debate it we welcome it,” Azzopardi said.

Frankly, it doesn’t matter if Cuomo was the only public officer to use state workers for public use or if such use of state employees is as rampant as Azzopardi says it is. The behavior is wrong and needs to be stopped.