Disability Bills Cover Future Ills For 9/11 Workers
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
ALBANY – A group of municipal employees who were employed in New York City at the time of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks would be awarded disability benefits to cover future lung ailments under twin bills sent to Governor Pataki last week.
The bills, which recently passed both houses of the Legislature, guarantee benefits to bridge and tunnel officers, sergeants, and lieutenants who have worked at least five years and showed no sign of illness when they were hired.
State lawmakers also sweetened the pensions of many other city workers connected with the terrorist attacks in the final days of the legislative session. Mr. Pataki last month signed a bill that gives public employees who responded to the attack increased benefits for a variety of disabilities that may or may not be traceable to their work.
Under the disability bill currently before the governor, high-ranking bridge and tunnel workers who have developed lung ailments or do so in the future will be eligible for 75% of their last year’s salary, tax free. An ordinary disability pension is a taxable 50% of an employee’s last annual salary. The new benefit would be retroactive to employees who have already retired, including those who did not retire because of a disability.
State lawmakers passed almost 20 bills expanding pension benefits for municipal workers in the final days of the legislative session this year, raising fiscal concerns among budget-watchers that New York City may soon be unable to cope with the expense. The city’s annual pension costs have grown more than 200% over the past four years, according to the Citizens Budget Commission, to $4.7 billion in 2006 from $1.5 billion in 2002.
“While one sweetener may seem small, when you start talking about the Legislature doing dozens of these at the end of session, the costs add up,” the deputy research director at the CBC, Elizabeth Lynam, said. “It’s not that any one of them will break the city’s back, it’s that when you do a dozen of them at the end of every session, they add up beyond what’s affordable.”
A spokesman for Mr. Pataki, Michael Marr, confirmed that the bridge and tunnel workers bill had been sent to the governor. He said Mr. Pataki would review it in the days ahead. Spokesmen for the Assembly and Senate sponsors of the enhanced disability bill did not respond to inquiries yesterday.
