LIRR president Helena Williams does not agree with measures the Railroad Retirement Board is taking to better oversee–er, oversee at all–disability payments made to railroad workers.

The federal RRB said it would immediately implement five changes, reports the NY Times, including more independent medical evaluations instead of doctors who are in bed with fraudulent claimants, periodic evaluations of workers on disability (you may find some playing golf at Crab Meadow), and better oversight of the board’s office in Westbury, which was raided by the Feds following the Times‘ article on rampant fraud centered around LIRR disability last month.

Williams thought the revisions unfairly single out the Long Island Railroad, despite clear evidence that the LIRR’s disability claims were absolutely off the hook, compared to every other railroad in the country.

“These steps would be beneficial toward reforming the board’s disability pension system, but they appear to unfairly single out L.I.R.R. retirees and do not go far enough to address what is a nationwide issue,” said Helena Williams, the president of the Long Island Rail Road.

On Day Three of the Long Island Railroad/Employee Disability Scam Scandal (LIRREDSS), federal agents raided the Westbury offices of the Railroad Retirement Board, the shady federal organization that signs off on railroad employees’ dodgy disability claims.

What a scene it must’ve been–career LIRR workers standing on line with their claims, perhaps rubbing “sore” knees and backs for effect, just as investigators burst through the doors. The NY Times reports that they left with nine file boxes and five personal computers.

The feds were good enough to alert the media, it seems. Times lensman Uli Seit has a great shot of a stone-faced fed pushing a huge dolly full of files like a freshman footballer hitting the blocking sled. Seit’s photo reveals another photographer shooting the scene from behind the agent.

[Nice to see Mitt Romney keeping busy after his failed presidential bid…click on to enlarge]

The Times says Gov. Paterson is pushing attorney general Cuomo to blow this thing wide open, and has tapped Congress in the fight as well.

The raid came two days after The New York Times reported that nearly all career employees of the railroad — from 93 percent to 97 percent of retirees every year since 2000 — retire early and soon after begin getting disability payments from the federal agency. The retirement board almost never turns down a claim, and since 2000 has paid more than a quarter of a billion dollars in disability checks to former Long Island Rail Road workers, The Times found.

Responding to the findings, Gov. David A. Paterson immediately directed the state attorney general to begin a wide-ranging inquiry into disability claims at the railroad. On Tuesday, he called on Congress to aid in that investigation.

I think the true victim in all of this, besides taxpayers like you and me and poor bastards on fixed incomes and menial wages footing the bill, are the LIRR workers with legitimate claims, and LIRR workers in general–all of whom are being besmirched by this ugly scandal. Surely plenty of them aren’t claiming fake injuries for pay, and are simply going about their jobs each day like good Americans do.

I can’t imagine LIRR president Helena Williams, who in the most recent Times article asserts that the LIRR should divorce the Railroad Retirement Board and throw its retirement business to the Social Security system, keeping her job amidst all of thus. Despite her claims that she was powerless to fight the rampant fraud going on, it happened on her watch, and it’s not hard to imagine that a phone call to the governor, attorney general or local Congressperson would’ve gotten the ball rolling on changes to an egregiously faulty system.

[image: NY Times]

If you ride the Long Island Railroad or Metro-North, or in any way pay taxes in America, spend the next 20 minutes reading this because some fat Long Island golf guys are stealing your money.

The NY Times has flat-out blasted the L.I.R.R. in a front-cover, 5,000-word story on the scam railroad workers are pulling to command massive paychecks after they’ve retired.

In short, just about every career LIRR worker claims medical disability when he or she retires, and unless they completely botch the paperwork, they get it. Last year, 94% of career LIRR employees who retired after age 50 got disability benefits; fully 97% qualified in 2004. That’s on top of a retirement package that would be the envy of just about anyone I know.

The Times sicced a crew of eight reporters on this one, and they delivered the goods. It appears arthritis and rheumatism is the malady of choice for retiring LIRR guys. From 2001 to 2007, LIRR had 753 claims for both. By comparison, Metro-North–a railroad of a similar size, with similar staff duties–had 32. 32!

If you don’t ride one of those two railroads, you’re probably wondering what all this has to do with you. Well, those claims are paid out in part by Social Security. In fact, Social Security–your retirement home in Boca, your Schlitz money for the final decade of your life–coughed up $3.6 billion on the railroad’s disability claims that were signed off on by the Railroad Retirement Board.

The Times bloodhounds trace the Railroad Retirement Board, a federal organization created in the ’30s, to a crummy insurance office in Chicago. It’s manned by three presidentially appointed employees.

Aptly named Retirement Board inspector general Martin Dickman offered a classic case of passing the buck in his defense of the Board’s nearly 100% approval rate of disability claims (they are only turned down when an applicant fails to complete the paperwork.)

Dickman…acknowledged in an interview that the retirement board’s rejection rate was “almost nonexistent,” but he added: “If Congress wants to change the statute and raise the threshold, that’s up to Congress. That’s not up to us to do.”

The story also unearths some extremely dubious overtime loopholes that are built into the LIRR contracts. It sets the microscope on one Edward J. Koerber, an engineer who routinely got paid for four days while working one–all legal, thanks to arcane LIRR contracts.

Koerber worked his scam–actually, not even a scam, all legal–to boost his annual nut to $276,456–mighty close to LIRR president Helena Williams’ salary of $287,658. Koerber, a heavy-set fellow with a walrus moustache, would quadruple his pay by operating a train with an electric engine (not part of his job duty, extra day’s pay), moving said train to the service yard (not part of his job duty, another extra day’s pay), and accumulating “penalty payments” for things like skipping lunch. (Judging by the Times photo of Koerber, I don’t think he actually skipped too many lunches.)

Edward Koerber, Quarter-Million Dollar Man

Insiders commenting on behalf of LIRR say the railroad is essentially powerless to fight this costly waste, due to the threat of a strike. If the fat-ass engineers and conductors choose to strike, the Metro area is crippled, and the public doesn’t care who’s right or wrong–they just want their 7:07 from Huntington back.

And what do all those able-bodied-yet-disabled retirees do with all their free time? They play golf…for free, no less, thanks to an “Access Pass” for all disabled persons that allows them free activities at state parks.  

Scuzzbags.

Metro-North actually comes across as a band of gentlemen, compared to those Long Island scalawags.

“We don’t have full-day penalty payments here,” says Jane Murawski, assistant director of labor relations at Metro-North. “It would never be that the person works their eight-hour shift and then they get another eight hours and another eight hours for other things. That doesn’t happen here.”

Metro-North, formed in 1983 from the old Conrail commuter lines, largely inherited the work rules of its parent, which was mostly a freight railroad. But because the L.I.R.R. has always been primarily a commuter railroad, many existing labor agreements remained after the authority took it over in 1966.

The disparity in pay between the two railroads is considerable. At the L.I.R.R, 107 nonmanagement workers earned more than $150,000 in 2006, compared with only a handful at Metro-North.

“We have the best work rules in the industry nationwide — I would say worldwide,” said Mr. Quinn, the official with the Long Island chapter of the engineers union. “They’ve never been able to negotiate them away from us.”

It is features such as this that make me uneasy to think about the massive layoffs hitting the newspaper industry. Who besides the NY Times has the resources to put into such a story, and who’s even going to think about doing such enterprise reporting five or ten years down the road?

[top image: NY Times. Disabled LIRR guy Joseph Rutigliano playing golf on your dime.]