City Evaluating Repayments By Reservists

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Bloomberg administration officials told a City Council panel they are reconsidering how much in back wages city employees who left their jobs to fight in the military reserves in Iraq and Afghanistan must repay the city.

“Well, I’m looking at my watch because we’re already at work on this today, and we’ll get back to it the minute we leave here,” Commissioner Martha Hirst of the Department of Citywide Administrative Services told the panel yesterday afternoon. Many lawmakers yesterday rebuked the administration for enforcing the debt in the first place.

Under a program begun by Mayor Giuliani in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, attacks and continued by the current administration, military reservists who work for the city could choose to continue receiving their salaries and job perks — including health insurance and pension benefits — while at war if they agree to reimburse the city for the lesser of the two salaries. About 95% of the approximately 1,725 city workers deployed to war signed up for the plan.

Because the city figures in the cost of room and board the military provides when calculating “military pay,” the city salary usually ends up being the lower salary. Most jurisdictions, including the federal government, include food and housing in their calculations, Ms. Hirst said.

The reservists say they shouldn’t be held to the agreement because, often with just days to leave their homes to go to war, they didn’t fully understand what they were signing.

Ms. Hirst provided a robust defense of the current program as one of the most generous in the nation — providing city-employed reservists with more than the law mandates.

City officials have estimated the price of food and housing in the salary calculations to total between $4 million and $18 million, Ms. Hirst said.

Council Member Michael McMahon of Staten Island has introduced a resolution calling on the Bloomberg administration to abandon food and housing in its income calculations. Another council member, Andrew Lanza, also of Staten Island, said he would introduce legislation to forgive the debts.

Ms. Hirst said she didn’t know how much Mr. Lanza’s proposal would cost the city, and an attorney for her agency, Lewis Finkelman, said that forgiving the entire debt could violate the state constitution — a statement that prompted jeers from the audience.


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