N001506
Thursday, January 10, 2002 3:29 PM
Rescue Workers and the Compensation Fund
Dear Mr Feinberg
As the administrator of my brother's estate I would like to register my
extreme dissatisfaction with the regulations as they pertain to rescue
workers and ask that you somehow find a way to make this a viable option for
us.
1. Our ability to recover from such entities as the City of New York
and the PANYNJ (where our ability to claim eventual court awards was not in
jeopardy - as it may or may not have been in the case of airline
bankruptcies) was limited by congress in exchange for access to this fund.
Because of the subtraction of insurance and other benefits, especially as my
brother was also a reservist, we have no reasonable recourse to the fund.
This is just basically unfair.
2. Police salaries are low in part because of the burden of the
extensive benefits packages offered. These are really negotiated as part of
compensation in a way fundamentally different from other professions. My
brother could not reasonably carry out his duties without them, so he could
not negotiate them away. IN the case of Policemen and similar professions at
least some of the benefits received should be considered part of their
salary and not collateral sources.
3. The scales for compensation are inherently unfair in my brother's
case. He was a member of one of the more skilled and elite law enforcement
units in the world, the NYPD's teams. After completing twenty years in
the NYPD he had a whole range of options for a second career. members
have gone on to consult for major international security and consulting
firms working for corporations, cities, states and foreign countries or
acted as consultants to television and movie productions involving special
police units.
Even for the least ambitious member there are
opportunities to work in Federal Agencies which specifically recruit retired
cops, such as the Federal Marshals or Secret Service. Both these
services have a precedent of waving age entrance limits and specifically
recruiting cops finishing their 20 years in the NYPD directly into
senior positions. So that in this case he would have been earning his full
pension, plus a full wage as a senior Federal Employee and then be able to
retire with 20 years in this second job before reaching mandatory retirement
and so have two full pensions by the time he was 60.
We are not sure of how all these possibilities could be
taken into account in your system. Would we be able to argue he should at
least be given credit for the least ambitious option, despite the fact we
believe he would have achieved a lot more? Or will the fact that he
theoretically could have just stopped working at 40 with a full NYPD
pension, and we can not actually prove he would not have done this, mean he
will not receive compensation for these lost potential earnings?
Sincerely,
Individual Comment