Old-School Disability

There used to be a break room at Penn Station somewhere between track 15 and track 18, back before it was upgraded to a “modern” station. My grandfather worked as a conductor for the LIRR starting in the 1940’s right through to the 1970’s and retirement.

There’s an old family story that says he put my aunt through college by gambling in that break room with the other LIRR conductors. An ongoing pinochle game (or it might have been poker – the exact details are fuzzy) was his daughter’s ticket to a higher education. My grandfather, it seemed, worked a late shift on the train, went to work at a bank during the day, and gambled on his break. He did things the old fashioned way.

My aunt told me she didn’t believe it for a long time, but then one day my grandfather brought her to the break room and introduced her to the gang.

“So you’re the girl we’re putting through college,” one of the conductors said.

The others all nodded and shook their heads. There could have been a lot of cigar smoke and the stale smell of sweat, or it could just be my imagination.

My grandfather didn’t need a disability scam. He just needed a pinochle deck and some willing marks — I mean, players.

That, some luck, and a second full time job to supplement the first.

–Joe Lunievicz

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.

Frederick Kreuder, charged with taking money from LIRR employees to help them get lucrative disability benefits, was cleared of most, not all, charges by a Long Island judge Friday.

Kreuder reportedly got $1,000 for his services, which the NY Times said included instructing workers “to pay a doctor $1,000 in cash, to save up his vacation time to get a larger pension, and to take physical therapy for documentation.”

In one case, Kreuder accepted a check for $100 toward the teen baseball team he coached, and did not explain where the remaining $900–to be paid once the Railroad Retirement Board green-lighted an applicant’s disability claim–went. Kreuder was a former pension manager with LIRR who then shifted to manager of budget analysis. He was suspended without pay following his arrest in November 2008.

At the time, state attorney general Andrew Cuomo’s office said in a statement:

“Today’s arrest is the first time that someone is being held accountable for the culture of entitlement and systemic abuse that plagued the LIRR and Railroad Retirement Board. Moving forward, this office will continue to pursue criminal charges against any individual who facilitated such unchecked abuse, and will continue working to correct the systemic abuse in the disability benefits program.”

The Nassau County judge saw it differently. Kreuder might’ve committed ethical violations, said the jurist, but for the most part did not commit criminal violations. The charges he was hit with pertained to not paying taxes on the money he made coaching LIRR employees about disability.

Newsday has the link, but it’s only for Cablevision/Newsday subscribers.

Just over a year since the NY Times’ landmark investigative report on rampant disability fraud among career Long Island Railroad employees, the Times reports that close to 100% of all L.I.R.R. disability claims are still approved.

So blatant was the misuse of the disability policy among railroad employees that Gov. Paterson got involved, giving attorney general Andrew Cuomo full power to clean up the chronic corruption.

Four days after the front-page story broke, feds raided the Long Island office of the Railroad Retirement Board, the hard-to-pin-down federal organization that signed off on–and paid out–the disability claims. (OK, technically, it was you and me that paid out the claims.) The feds wheeled out nine boxes of papers and five computers.

Two weeks after the story broke, L.I.R.R. president Helene Williams set up an “internal compliance unit” to “act as a watchdog,” she said, for cheating railroad vets.

Two months later, Fred Kreuder was arrested for coaching railroad vets on how to have their best shot at scoring full disability.

Here’s what’s shocking today. When the Times blew the whistle last fall, some 95% of L.I.R.R. applicants for disability were approved. Now, with all the new watchdog measures in place, the approval rate is 97%, according to a report from the Government Accountability Office that came out Friday.

The Times reports:

As part of its oversight plan, the retirement board reviewed the cases of 74 retired L.I.R.R. employees who were receiving disability payments. As of April, benefits were continued in 73 of those cases; in the other case, the worker was found to have died, according to the report.

Here’s the official GAO report:

Since 2000, about $250 million–yes, a quarter-billion–has been paid out to former LIRR employees. To be sure, much of the money goes to perfectly legit claimants–hard-working folks who bust their butts to make sure the trains run smoothly for annoying commuters such as me. But it sure appears like anyone who asks for disability pay gets it.

One final note: the Railroad Retirement Board spent $248,000–your money, my money–to implement the new measures meant to weed out faulty disability claims.

When Long Island-area’s lifelong train employees retire, some head straight for the golf course for a free round afforded all disabled–and “disabled”–workers.

Career train guys in other parts of the world seem to have a tougher time occupying themselves once they hang up the train belt buckle and ticket clicker for good.

One “Odd Horten”–yes, real name…he’s Norwegian–is such a fellow. In a film by Norwegian filmmaker Bent Hamer (yes, real name…he’s Norwegian), Mr. Horten “is rewarded with a silver-plated miniature locomotive after 40 years of service,” reviews A.O. Scott of the NY Times.

“A railway man to the end, he has never been in an airplane and causes some havoc when he visits a friend at the airport, where the rules and protocols are nothing like what he’s used to.

Horten’s adjustment to his new life is Mr. Hamer’s main theme, one he explores with a dry, unsentimental warmth. Here is a fellow who has spent most of his life ruled by a timetable and traveling in straight lines. What will happen when he is allowed to stray, to meander, to loaf?

Even if Hamer’s filmmaking isn’t quite your style–Scott compares it to Jarmusch’s–you at least might have some fun with the Norwegian names in “O’Horten”.

(Please, no hate emails from Norwegian uber-nationals!)

I was on the 6:33 heading toward Hummerville last night. Our ticket-taker had the typical Metro-North conductor’s Irish-by-way-of-Brooklyn mug. He also had a pronounced limp–the sort of lurching gait associated with some sort of fairly serious ailment. I don’t know exactly what the ailment is–polio, perhaps?–but you see someone walking in this manner–one knee pointing dramatically toward the other–in the city just about every day.

Anyway, I don’t mean to single this guy out for his handicap. But amidst all the stories about LIRR employees cashing in on lucrative, and often completely bogus, disability claims (not that “middle-class moronism” isn’t a legit ailment), here’s a guy whose clearly not functioning at 100%, but is working nonetheless–on his feet the whole shift, lugging those pain-in-the-ass doors open.

I don’t want to beat up on the LIRR either. I don’t doubt the vast majority of its employees show up to work when they’re supposed to, fight through aches and pains, and certainly work on the major holidays–something I’ve thankfully never had to do. Surely many LIRR employees are collecting disability for completely legitimate injuries.

I’ve gotten a fair amount of comments on the LIRR scandal since it broke in September, I’m guessing the majority of them from LIRR employees. It’s worth noting that most of them continue to defend the widespread practice of filing bogus disability claims, even after everyone from the governor to the attorney general to LIRR president Helena Williams said the practice was essentially indefensible, and one DC railroad expert compared the LIRR’s reported disability rate to that of a gulag’s.

In fact, many commenters felt TJ was simply jealous that his employer didn’t offer substantial payouts–and free golf at state-owned courses–for fake injuries.

Wrote Jon Parissi, who presumably likes the CAPS:

LIKE ANY ONE OF YOU WOULDNT TAKE AN EXTRA DAYS PAY FOR A CONTRACT NEGOTIATION VIOLATION. oH NO THANKS BOSS i’LL JUST TAKE THE 1 DAYS PAY SO i CAN BE A NICE GUY. SOUNDS LIKE SOUR GRAPES TO ME. JEALOUSY IS A STRONG EMOTION.

Wrote Harvey:

I guess you make less than Mr. Koerber did [Ed. Note: Edward J. Koerber is a retired engineer pulling in $170,000 a year. Yes, we do make less than Mr. Koerber]. Instead of knocking his work rules, why not get a better job, or put in a resume?

Wrote Jeff Rosenburg:

As the RRB IG (Railroad Board Inspector General) said, “It’s the law.” Applying for what is yours is not fraud, plain and simple.

Maybe you should try to get job there.

Wrote CathyAnne:

All who are complaining are just jealous that THEY don’t have those work rules, or the pay the LIRR workers do.

You get the picture. Unless I’m missing something, it sounds like, say, a bank ATM that was known to give out an extra twenty every time you visited, until the bank got wise and fixed it. After that, the people who used to get the free twentys were furious at the bank for fixing the ATM, and at the citizen who told the bank the ATM was busted.

Maybe I’m missing something.

Either way, I salute the Metro-North guy limping his way along on the 6:33 yesterday.

[photo is wealthy retiree Edward J. Koerber from NY Times]

Amidst all the coverage the New York Times has given the Long Island Railroad disability claim scandal, I believe today is the first time the paper has given the story front-page, middle of the page, big ol’ photo treatment. “The Railroad Disability Board That Couldn’t Say No” is the latest cobblestone on the path to Pulitzer glory for Walt Bogdanich and Nicholas Phillips.

As the name indicates, it shines a light on the dodgy Railroad Retirement Board, a federal outfit in Chicago that green-lights nearly every disability claim that comes its way–to the tune of $250 million paid out in the last eight years.

As the story notes, LIRR President Helena E. Williams wanted to meet with the RRB to see exactly why so many of her employees were retiring early and living on disability. She inquired about attending the next RRB meeting, then found out the $34 billion Railroad Board had not met in two years, with no next meeting on the schedule. The three board members, full-time presidential employees earning about $150,000 a head, communicate via email when they have to.

The article isn’t so much about the LIRR and its larcenous disability record, but about the various bureaucracies who set out to fix the broken system, but ultimately gave up after deciding it would take too much effort, or because they figured some other outfit–consultants, Social Security, Congress–was taking care of it.

One gem the reporters unearth: the Railroad Board took 50 years to update what were supposed to be temporary standards for disability, so archaic conditions such as “cretinism,” “imbecility” and “middle-class moronism”–not to mention having a “repugnant scar”–were all deemed legit disabilities for railroad workers.

Imbecility, indeed.

A man who collected hefty sums for coaching retiring LIRR employees on how to score disability benefits for often fake injuries was arrested today for his role in the rampant LIRR-disability scam.

LIRR creep Fred Kreuder, not to be confused with Nightmare on Elm Street creep Freddy Krueger, was charged with receiving a reward for official misconduct, a felony, and official misconduct, a misdemeanor.

Kreuder, a 20-year LIRR vet from Bellmore, Long Island, reportedly charged $1,000 to help an employee get a pension. According to Newsday, the first $100 was in the form of a donation to the Babe Ruth teen baseball squad he coached.

The former pension office manager for the railroad, Kreuder would steer clients to a doctor he knew would rubber-stamp the disability application. He’s hit with misconduct because he conducted such business on company time–and on an LIRR computer, no less.

Newsday says Kreuder had been flagged for lucrative pension-counseling in the past:

Kreuder was suspended without pay by the railroad Monday, according to a statement released by the LIRR. He had been suspended with pay from his $95,000-a-year job last month when his alleged actions first surfaced during a hearing Cuomo held in Old Westbury on possible pension abuses by LIRR employees.Kreuder has been working as a budget analyst - supervising one other employee - since being moved from his role as pension office manager in June 2005 when he was found to be inappropriately counseling employees on how to obtain pensions, the railroad said.

If convicted, he faces a maximum of between 1 and 4 years in prison.

The New York Times, which has owned the LIRR-Disability story, has more here.

The icing on the cake of the NY Times’ September expose about LIRR retirees living on falsified disability claims was the free golf. How do these “disabled” railroad workers spend their endless free time? By enjoying golf on state-park golf courses–on the public’s dime.

That may end, reports the Times.

The laws and regulation governing the passes do not mention railroad workers with occupational disabilities, Eileen Larrabee, a spokeswoman for the Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation, said on Thursday. “They made a leap at some point along the line.”

The parks agency will decide in the coming weeks of it rescinds the railroad guys’ passes or takes other action, says the paper.

The history of park passes for the disabled dates back to a 1978 law that allowed those who were blind or unable to walk, as well as amputees and disabled war veterans, to enter the parks–and, if they were able to, golf–for free.

The law didn’t say anything about railroad workers with phony bad backs and knees.

Finally, I appreciated that an article about golf was written by a guy named Duff Wilson.

Fearing that too many riders thought “Slippery Rail” was the reason LIRR workers gave for their bum knees and sore backs on their disability forms, the MTA issued printouts on Metro-North yesterday informing riders of the autumnal peril alternately known as Slippery Rail and Slip-Slide.

“This condition is created by a slimy substance left by crushed leaves on our rails that gets even more slippery and slimy after it rains,” it reads. “When a train attempts to speed up or slow down, this gelatinous “slime” can cause the wheels to slip or slide along the rails. In severe cases the train will automatically make an emergency stop, because the on-board computer system perceives “slip-sliding” as excessive speed.”

Slipping-sliding cars get flat wheels, the MTA explains, the cars are taken out of service to make the wheels round again, and riders are jammed into sometimes half the number of cars as is normal.  

The “ditto,” as we called them several decades ago, then explains the various measures the MTA is employing to combat Slippery Rail, such as reprogramming the software of the M7 fleet to allow the braking system to adjust to slip-slide conditions, reducing speeds through leafy patches, using rail-washers and scrubbers to remove dead leaves from tracks, and also shooting sand onto the tracks to make them grippier. (Yes, we just made up “grippier.”)

These measures actually made Slippery Rail a non-factor last year. (If I recall, the leaves started falling much later last year.) Will Metro-North win the battle again this year?