A year and a half after a giant NY Times investigative report on extraordinarily high disability claims among retiring LIRR employees, the New York attorney general has closed its investigation, reports the Times. Andrew Cuomo issued 108 subpoenas related to the case, to doctors, insurance companies, LIRR execs and “every worker who retired in 2009,” but brought just one person up on felony charges.
The initial Times story, from September 2008, revealed that virtually all retiring LIRR workers who applied for lucrative disability pensions received them. The numbers were way, way out of whack with other railroads, such as the neighboring Metro-North, suggesting widespread institutional fraud and abuse.
The L.I.R.R.’s disability rate suggests it is one of the nation’s most dangerous places to work. Yet in four of the last five years, the railroad has won national awards for improving worker safety.
“Short of the gulag, I can’t imagine any work force that would have a so-to-speak 90 percent disability attrition rate,” said Glenn Scammel, long one of Capitol Hill’s top experts on railroads. “That defies both logic and experience.”
Frederick S. Kreuder, a former manager of the railroad’s pension office, was brought up on charges that he charged workers $1,000 to coach them on how best to score disability benefits.
Kreuder may have committed ethical violations, ruled the judge, but not criminal ones.
Reports the Times:
A judge threw out most of the charges in December, saying his moonlighting may have been unethical but was not illegal. The attorney general’s office dropped the case last month in exchange for Mr. Kreuder’s resignation, payment of a $1,500 penalty and agreement not to work in the public sector.
So what’s the net result of the mammoth investigation? The LIRR will hire an independent examiner to review its safeguards, reports the Times, against abuse of the railroad’s disability pension system.
But the Times says that measure was agreed to not long after the paper’s front page expose:
In fact, the agreement, announced Monday, appears to echo reform measures the railroad undertook shortly after The Times’s report.
A big, costly investigation that didn’t get much done–that can’t help Cuomo’s potential campaign for the governor’s seat.