A000240
Saturday, December 01, 2001 9:50 AM
mycomments and suggestions
November 30, 2001
Kenneth L. Zwick, Director
Office of Management Programs
Civil Division
U.S. Department of Justice
Main Building, Room 3140
950 Pennsylvania Avenue
Washington, DC 20530
Dear Director Zwick:
Before I begin let me apologize for possibly being late in sending this to
you. I read in a national news magazine that the deadline was November 30th
but went to your website and read that it was November 26, 2001 for
submission of comments. I would appreciate your consideration should I be
late in sending this and am available to discuss my thoughts should you
desire.
I wish to offer suggestions as to how the billions of dollars in charitable
and government grant monies should be disbursed. I have tried to consider
as many of the constituencies I could identify as well as taking into
consideration the obligations that we as citizens, both living and deceased,
have to the American society (i.e. U.S. Government). The stakeholders I
have considered are the donors, the recipients, the uniformed personnel, the
state, local and federal governments as well as what I believe to be
humankinds sense of fairness.
I have contemplated the secondary and tertiary effects of the promises made
in the wrath of tragedy, researched the financial payments made already,
committed to and deliverable to the most high profile victims (i.e.
uniformed personnel). Furthermore, I feel with frustration the burden of
inequality that some families will be forced to bear should high-impact
victims be compensated at a higher rate at the expense of those
non-uniformed personnel (i.e. like the chefs/cooks at who worked for a subcontractor and have no medical benefits as of today).
In this letter, I offer policy recommendations and methods to implement
solutions that I believe will support the following:
An American belief of being indivisible, just, and equal;
A sense of offering compassion and consideration to the stakeholders;
Expecting an accountable ?grant? process, and;
Moderating the future economic obligations to the victims and the next
generation of Americans.
I begin by offering the questions that lead to my soul searching which
motivated me write to you.
Is it fair that some of the survivors of the terrorist attacks of
11-September become millionaires while others struggle to find medical care
to replace that lost when the family breadwinner was murdered?
How, you ask, are millionaires being created? Please follow along:
One-time payments:
$155,000 from Federal Law Enforcement grant
$100,000 commitment from Mayor Giuliani from WTC Fund (due by
Christmas)
$40,000 estimated value of tuition (per child) to send victims
children to college
$295,000
Recurring Payments
$50,000 (est.) Tax free Annual Pension for Life to spouse of Police and
Firefighters based on prior years wages including overtime
$18,000 (est.) Social Security payment to spouse (survivor annuity)
$6,000 (est.) Social Security payment to each child (survivor annuity)
$7,500 estimated value of annual health insurance premiums for family
$81,500 annual annuity
40 years (estimated remaining lifetime of 38 year old female spouse)
$1,026,444 Present value of $81,500 annuity payment at 7.5% for 40 years
Please note that the numbers do not include United Way, Red Cross, NY City
9-11 Funds or any of the numerous other charitable funds set up for the
benefit of the victims but which often target the uniformed personnel, which
press reports have totaled to be over One Billion dollars. For instance,
the NY Stock Exchange has a Nine million dollar fund just for the families
of the emergency service personnel numbering about 400. This will be an
additional $22,500 onetime payment that the cook, security guards and window
washers will not be even considered for.
I wish to depart from the cold, callous numbers above and ask you to
consider this point: the survivors of a New York City UNIFORMED victim will
collect more than $1 Million, while the cook/chef at might collect $25,000 and their family medical benefits ended today (November 30,
2001). Any onetime payments payable are yet to be determined.
These non-uniformed victims who were not members of NYPD, FDNY will not be
getting a tax-free income for life, most probably have lost their primary
bread-winner and family medical care and, since they are disproportionately
minorities, most often do not possess the ?spin? or personal fortitude to
get on television with Bill O?Reilly or Larry King which would put them
closer to the top of the charity list.
What should be done
Treat all equally by taking into consideration the time value of money, the
economic value of all gifts (like tuition), the public defined benefit
obligations (OASDI) already in place and the tax-free income lifetime income
to firefighters spouses. The end result should be that all compensation to
survivors should result in all deaths being valued equally.
The final US government grant monies should be distributed regardless of the
victim?s income, marital status or employment status at time of death and
when totaled with all the charitable donations received by the Victim?s
family, should be very near equal. For purpose of my proposal, this will be
called and should be considered the maximum compensation offered to
everyone, be they the dishwasher at making $7 per hour, a career civil servant at the Pentagon making $7,000 per week or the Bond trader at making $700,000 per year. For discussion purposes, I will call this monetary award the ?Victims of Terror Equality
Reimbursement (VOTER) Grant?.
What types of compensation comprise the Victim Equality grant?
Tuition & other Non-cash Grants
Offers have been made to pay the college tuition for children of victims.
This offer should only be made available to direct and legally adopted
children of the deceased, or those born by June 30, 2001 (to account for
conception on the morning of September 11, 2001 and a 44 week pregnancy!)
and should be payable only for the children to go to an accredited college
of their choosing and ability.
The maximum amount payable should be the average annual State University
Resident tuition, including room and board, for all State universities in
the US and should not be based on the annual tuition and board for Yale or
Harvard. Structuring the tuition grant in this manner will not penalize
those students that are not able to gain entrance into a Yale or Harvard by
compensating them less and should provide comfort to those that do gain
entrance into a private university, such as Yale, when a large portion of
their tuition is paid for.
Additional terms of the any tuition grant should be that it is renewable
annually for a maximum of five years and should cease upon the attainment of
120 credit hours or completion of a Bachelor?s degree or equivalent,
whichever comes sooner. All students should be held to a standard of
fairness and no student should be allowed to take advantage of this tuition
grant by delaying their studies or taking credit hours towards a
post-bachelor?s degree.
Furthermore, all students should be required to maintain an average of C or
better in order for any funding to continue. The student should also be
protected as regards other college funding that may be available such as
Pell Grants, Student Loans and Work Study by not having this tuition grant
offset the awarding of these college-funding sources.
Cash
This should be paid only after the considering and valuing of all
non-economic gifts to the victims families and should include the economic
value of all non-current commitments that have been offered to the survivors
and the children of survivors.
How do we strive for acting as one and being fair when your dealing with the
memories of the victims of the terror acts of 11-September? I suggest that
all grant monies be delivered to the victim?s family in the aggregate,
taking an all-in approach and payable only to the dependents of the victims
at the time of the victims death or to their estate if no spouse or children
exist or survive them. A grant should not be paid based on the number of
children dependent that were dependent on the victim. This need is met by
the Old Age, Survivors and Disability Insurance program; commonly referred
to as Social Security and to do otherwise would value the family
circumstances of one victim greater than another.
To base grants on the number of children would penalize those without
children and equally to pay only those victims with spouses would penalize
those without a significant other. The grant should be payable to a
domestic partner equally as if they were a spouse but should not be
increased to compensate for an employer not recognizing a domestic partner.
All grant monies should be applied first to outstanding income and estate
tax delinquencies, any outstanding Federally guaranteed student loans,
payment of all delinquent child support payments and alimony in arrears and
then any remainder to the surviving family/dependents. We should remember
that others may have relied on the income of the victims of September 11th
and address those needs on an equal footing with the surviving family.
In the case of victims who may have had alimony obligations to prior spouses
and those who may have had support obligations to children (from prior
marriages or court ordered support obligations in the case of paternity),
these obligations should be honored and defeased as part of this VOTER
grant. However, no alimony payments should be made to a divorced spouse if
the survivor was employed on the date of the tragedy; that is what life
insurance is for. By these examples I wish to suggest that no economic
incentives should exist in the grant administration process to expand the
pool of applicants just because they have a feeling and sense of
entitlement.
To address the needs of ex-spouses and children that were dependent on the
income of the deceased, an inflation-adjusted annuity should be set up to
provide an income for these parties for the period defined in the original
separation agreement or divorce stipulations. An administrative facility to
manage this payment process already exists.
For example, in New York State the Support Collection Unit already offers a
collection and disbursement process for alimony and child support. This
could easily become the administrative facility for the payment of annuity.
Additionally, the Support Collection Units have audit processes in place
that would prevent payments for alimony and child beyond the terms of the
stipulation agreements. If the net present value of the total obligations
due under the child support obligations exceeds the maximum of the VOTER
Grant as defined above, then no funds should be disbursed to the survivors
of the victim. To do so would be unfair to other victims and value one life
more than another.
We should not politicize our memories of the dead by turning this tragedy
into a social reengineering and income redistribution project.
I have been quite detailed in suggesting methods to actually implement any
grant disbursements and thank you for your patience in time to read this. I
hope I have given your agency some thoughts to consider as you implement a
policy and guidelines to share the charity given by all Americans: an
indivisible bounty of being one.
Thank you for the opportunity to share my thoughts with you.
All the best of the Holiday Season,
Individual Comment