A government watchdog organization in New York is questioning the power of the governor to use broad executive authority under declared emergencies and in a new report warned against the potential for abuse. 

Reinvent Albany's report pointed to the 10 separate states of emergency now in effect that can allow the governor to suspend oversight for contracts and other spending. 

Disaster declarations can afford the state's chief executive flexibility in nimbly responding to a crisis at any given moment. And certainly the last several years have seen a cascade of events for government officials to respond to. 

But the Reinvent Albany report questions whether safeguards should be erected to ensure the authority isn't abused. 

Gov. Kathy Hochul has come under criticism, for example, when a state contractor who also donated to her campaign provided COVID-19 test kits above what comparably sized states paid for them. Hochul has insisted the test kits were necessary to scale up ahead of the omicron variant wave last year. 

Her Republican challenger, Rep. Lee Zeldin, has pledged to declare a crime emergency and freeze the enforcement of criminal justice law changes.  

The group is recommending a package of changes that are meant to add some guardrails. That includes a proposal requiring the notification of the Legislature, affected local governments and the state comptroller the ability to comment prior to emergency orders being extended or modified. 

The group is also calling for the extension of emergency declarations of more than one year to be reapproved by a majority vote in the state Senate and Assembly. 

And the organization wants to codify the restoration of the state comptroller's powers to review state contracts prior to their approval.