Senate Passes 9/11-Tied Fatal Illness Benefit

By GINGER ADAMS OTIS

A measure guaranteeing accidental death benefits to uniformed first-responders who become fatally ill with diseases linked to Ground Zero toxins moved one step closer to fruition last week.

MARTY GOLDEN: 'They earned this benefit.'

Brooklyn State Sen. Marty Golden, a key sponsor of the legislation, announced March 1 that the Senate had given the bill final passage. The Assembly approved a similar measure Feb. 14.

'Least We Can Do'

"This bill makes the necessary corrections to the 2005 law that ensure our first-responders, who risked their lives to save others, have the necessary accidental death benefits," said Senator Golden. "As a former Police Officer, I know that these families are counting on our support to aid them and their families financially. For all that these brave men and women did for our city, for our state and for our nation, this is the very least we can do for them."

Senator Golden added that he was "hopeful" Governor Spitzer would sign the bill into law.

Detectives' Endowment Association President Michael Palladino, one of the key union figures pushing for the bill, said his office "was in talks with the Governor, who already has the legislation, and we hope he signs it."

Both the Assembly and Senate version of the bills close a loophole in previous legislation awarding disability pensions to 9/11 first-responders who are ill. The 9/11 Disability Bill, signed by Governor Pataki, awards pensions to uniformed workers and other first-responders who are afflicted by certain diseases and can prove they worked at least 40 hours at specific 9/11-related sites. But the bill doesn't provide death benefits for the families of workers who die from their 9/11-related illnesses.

Who's Covered

If signed into law, the Zadroga bill - named after Det. James Zadroga, the first uniformed worker whose death was officially linked to exposure to 9/11 toxins - would provide an accidental death benefit for members of the Police Department, Fire Department, Sanitation Department, Sheriff Deputies, State Troopers and other uniformed personnel who participated in the rescue and recovery response on Sept. 11.

To qualify, uniformed first responders must have worked at least 40 hours between Sept. 11, 2001 and Sept. 12, 2002 at either the former World Trade Center site, the Fresh Kills Landfill on Staten Island, the city morgue or the temporary morgues set up at the West Side piers, or on the barges that ran between lower Manhattan and Staten Island.