ALBANY (WBEN) - It remains to be seen whether the New York State Assembly will continue impeachment proceedings against Andrew Cuomo in light of his resignation Tuesday.
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On Monday, Democratic Chairman of the State Assembly Judiciary Committee, Charles Lavine, said “impeachment itself would be moot” if Cuomo resigned prior to proceedings, but there may be a push to continue the impeachment process so that Cuomo would be prohibited from running for office in the State of New York.
State Assemblymember Monica Wallace, serves on the Assembly's Judiciary Committee, but she noted it's too early to tell what the next steps will be.
"I think it's something that we'll be discussing as members of the Judiciary Committee," said Wallace. "I was just in Albany (Monday), and we met and decided what the procedure would be moving forward, so we obviously haven't had an opportunity to discuss it since the news broke.
"We are scheduled to be there next week, and my understanding is that we'll probably continue to go next week and have a discussion about it at that point," she continued. "In the meantime, as it stands right now, the investigation continues to be ongoing."
State Assemblymember Pat Burke, who was among the first of the local legislators to call on Cuomo to resign months ago, believes it will be more important to focus on other matters as opposed to impeachment.
"The impeachment process, like it is everywhere, is a political process," Burke began. "The goal of that was to put pressure on the governor so he would resign so that we could focus on our work, and if any of his actions have legal consequences, there are district attorneys that are investigating that right now.
"If there is a legal matter to continue with, then I would put that in the hands of the district attorneys to see that through," he continued. "But we've got a lot of work to do, so I would prefer we focus on our work - if there's a criminal matter at hand, then the district attorneys in Albany or maybe even New York should take this up and handle it on that level."
State Senator Sean Ryan said he'll leave it to the Assembly to figure out where to go with impeachment, but he hopes the Assembly will at least release the Impeachment Inquiry Papers.
"They paid an outside firm just like the attorney general did to come up with an investigation and a report, so I'd be interested, and I think the taxpayers would be interested in seeing what else was in that report," said Ryan.
New York State GOP Chairman Lick Langworthy released the following statement Tuesday, calling on the legislature to continue and complete the impeachment process:
“New Yorkers can breathe a collective sigh of relief that Andrew Cuomo will no longer be able to wield the immense power of the governor’s office to commit his corruption and abuse, but make no mistake, this resignation is simply an attempt to avoid real accountability for his numerous crimes. Thousands of lives have been destroyed by Andrew Cuomo and the legislature must continue to move forward with impeachment to ensure he can never run for office again."
However, Congressman Brian Higgins doesn't see the value in continuing the impeachment process at this point.
"If the objective of impeachment is to throw you out of office, and you resign from office, what's the purpose of impeachment?" said Higgins. "I don't think anybody want to be dragged through this again. We are all very familiar with the allegations that are deemed to be highly credible based on the investigation of the attorney general, so I think the best thing we can do over the next 14 days is move in a new direction with a new leader..."
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