LIRR Taken for a Ride

What appears to be an obvious abuse of the disability pension system by some Long Island Rail Road retirees has spurred investigations by both Federal and state officials.

The probes were spurred by a New York Times report that at least 93 percent of the LIRR's retirees have been receiving disability pensions, which provided them with roughly a quarter billion dollars in Federal payouts since 2000.

Whatever job hazards exist at the LIRR would also likely prevail at its sister agency covering Westchester and counties farther north, Metro-North. So there is something shocking about the disparity in disability retirements between the two agencies. Statistics for disability retirements caused by certain conditions showed that the rates for the LIRR were at least 15 or 20 times greater than for Metro-North.

Those kind of disparities suggest something rotten in the workings of the Federal Railroad Retirement Board. The huge number of employees who sought disability payments is a clear indication that they believed the system was ripe to be taken advantage of.

The cloud cast over those payments is bad not only for the LIRR retirees with legitimate disabilities but for all public workers.

Blatant abuses of the system such as what seems to have occurred at the LIRR inevitably produce a backlash that could spread beyond punishing those who are culpable. If there becomes a public perception that a system meant to fairly compensate those who were disabled by their job activities has been perverted into a free-for-all rip-off at the taxpayer's expense, one likely consequence is that some retirees who deserve the benefit will wind up being denied it.