PATAKI DOES THE RIGHT THING

Pataki Does the Right Thing

As this newspaper went to press Aug. 14, Governor Pataki signed into law several bills that provide greater protection, as well as justice, for those who worked at the World Trade Center on 9/11 and during its aftermath, as well as their families.

In a striking contrast with Mayor Bloomberg, whose administration has contested the claims of workers who became seriously ill and in some instances died after assisting in the rescue and recovery efforts, Mr. Pataki ensured that those persons are given the benefit of any doubt that exists regarding Workers' Compensation, upgraded pensions and death benefits for their survivors.

The new laws were made necessary by the nature of the illnesses contracted by hundreds if not thousands of those who came to the site of the Trade Center following its destruction.

In some cases, those illnesses did not immediately manifest themselves, and by the time they did, the deadline had passed for filing Workers' Compensation claims. Mr. Pataki signed a bill permitting them to receive coverage provided they filed for compensation within two years of the symptoms of their illness becoming apparent.

Under another law he enacted, those who retired on an ordinary pension and subsequently discovered serious illnesses that were linked to their work at the Trade Center or at other sites where material was transported to be searched for the remains of those who died there will be entitled to an upgraded pension worth as much as three-quarters of their final salary, tax-free.

The third major improvement signed into law by the Governor will grant line-of-duty death benefits to the families of uniformed workers who die after assisting in the rescue and recovery efforts.

This bill was sparked by the death of Detective James Zadroga of lung disease at age 34, and what can only be called the obstinacy of the Bloomberg administration in fighting his family's bid for death benefits. Mr. Zadroga's case was the first among a growing number of deaths of lung disease among relatively young first-responders to be directly attributed to work at the Trade Center by a medical examiner. The Law Department dismissed the finding by that New Jersey coroner as inconclusive. Mr. Bloomberg for much of his administration has shown a desire to be reasonable in resolving claims against the city, a marked and welcome change from Rudy Giuliani's penchant for fighting virtually all litigation. In dealing with claims that illnesses were derived from work at the World Trade Center, however, the Mayor's administration has been stubborn to the point of insensitivity in fighting claims where there are no other obvious explanations for the serious illnesses and deaths that have occurred.

Undoubtedly there is concern on the Mayor's part for opening the floodgates to what could become costly payments, in the form of both improved pensions and death benefits. There have also been enough scams perpetrated by individuals relying on sympathy because their claim is connected to the Trade Center to require vigilance rather than automatic green-lights of every filing with a price tag that comes along.

But when a preponderance of medical evidence suggests that workers developed serious illnesses because of the time spent at the Trade Center, it is wrong to be lawyering them into eternity. Those who worked there, either in responding to the attacks on 9/11 or helping to search for survivors or their remains in the months afterward, did so from a sense of duty and obligation to the colleagues who risked - and in many cases lost - their lives.

They were not always well-served by government, most notably in the form of the pronouncement by then-Environmental Protection Agency head Christine Whitman - echoed by Mr. Giuliani - that the air around the Trade Center was safe to breathe.

Yet they soldiered on through months of hard work that was both physically and emotionally grueling, more devoted to the recovery work than to concerns about their own health.

In signing the bills, Mr. Pataki showed that he understood that such selflessness must be recognized by the government for which they were working. It is something we owe them and their families, as well as those who died on Sept. 11 during their valiant efforts to get those trapped in the Twin Towers to safety.

Some of those who did so paid with their lives immediately. Others sacrificed their lives or their health over a longer period of time. All of them did this for reasons that go beyond a paycheck and are bound up in the nature of the work that they do, although it had never before extracted such a massive toll. None of them stopped to ask their commanders whether they would be taken care of if something went grievously wrong, or whether their families would receive appropriate compensation if they died. The families of those who died on that day received large sums of money that, if they couldn't come close to taking the place of those who were lost, at least eased their financial concerns. Those who died at a later time because of their rescue and recovery efforts deserve no less.

We hope there is never another occasion where so many public servants here must place themselves at such risk, and with so many casualties. If that day comes, however, they can now respond, thanks to Governor Pataki, without having to give a thought to whether they and their loved ones will be treated fairly if they, too, become delayed casualties of their own valor.

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