Photo Courtesy of Benjamin Kanter/Mayoral Photography Office
The Sept. 11 Victim Compensation Fund is significantly decreasing future payouts to claimants, which include City first responders, its special master said on Friday.
By Michael V. Cusenza
The Sept. 11 Victim Compensation Fund is significantly decreasing future payouts to individuals who suffered physical harm or were killed as a result of the terrorist-related aircraft crashes of Sept. 11, 2001, or the debris removal efforts that took place in the immediate aftermath of those crashes, the fund’s special master announced on Friday.
“Unfortunately, the situation the VCF currently faces is a difficult one,” said Rupa Bhattacharyya.
The fund published on Friday its Seventh Annual Status Report and the Third Annual Reassessment of Policies and Procedures. While Bhattacharyya noted that 2018 “was an incredibly productive year for the VCF,” in which it issued 8,619 compensation determinations, with initial or revised determinations on almost 7,000 claims, totaling almost $1.5 billion in awards, the largest amount of compensation awarded in a given year since the fund’s inception in 2001, the VCF also received a record number of new claims last year. Bhattacharyya attributed the sudden increase in new claims, in part, to the fund’s Notice of Inquiry published last October, in which it indicated that “current projections, using data as of Aug. 31, 2018, and at the current rate of disbursal, suggest a possibility that the funds that have been appropriated to compensate claimants…may be insufficient to compensate all claims (including those filed and those anticipated to be filed) under the current policies and procedures guiding the calculation of awards.”
The special master said the NOI “likely prompted many individuals—who may have otherwise waited to submit their claims—to file them now.” However, she pointed out that the bump in fund claims in 2018 “was also due to a number of other factors, most notably the increased rates of serious illnesses suffered by members of the 9/11 community, [and] the increasing number of deaths that can be attributed to 9/11 exposure.”
As of Friday, Bhattacharyya noted, the fund has awarded nearly $5 billion in original and amended determinations on more than 21,000 claims.
“That leaves approximately $2.375 billion of the $7.375 billion appropriated funding available to compensate all pending and anticipated future claims filed through Dec. 18, 2020, the VCF’s statutory end date,” she added.
So, what does this all mean for those pending and anticipated future claims?
For any claim or amendment submitted on or before Feb. 1, 2019, the payout will be reduced by 50 percent. For any claim or amendment submitted on or after Feb. 2, 2019, the payout will be reduced by a staggering 70 percent.
“I am painfully aware of the inequity of the situation. I also deeply regret that I could not honor my intention to spare any claim submitted prior to this announcement from any reductions made due to a determination of funding insufficiency,” Bhattacharyya said on Friday. “But the stark reality of the data leaves me no choice.”
City Police Commissioner Jim O’Neill said “Congress needs to do the right thing and fully invest in the fund.
“We’ve seen growth in these cancer cases and it’s clear that disease doesn’t adhere to the structures, balances and schedules of the current fund,” he added.
