As I stated last time, Michael Bloomberg, sadly five years after 9/11 and two years after FEMA created the WTC Insurance Fund, appointed his own World Trade Center Health Panel to analyze the after effects of the city’s efforts to help the WTC rescue workers who had been living in varying degrees of illness ever since. I’ll leave aside for a second the fact that upon becoming elected in 2002, one would logically assume that a full investigation of these issues would be one of the first steps a new mayor would take if he were running a city dealing with the aftermath of the nation’s largest terrorist attack. Instead he callously defended Christine LaSala and the WTC Insurance Fund until enough pressure was raised by state and federal representatives angered at the thought of $1 Billion being used not to help those it was earmarked for, but to fight against the WTC rescue workers claims. I won’t rehash my last post and some of the World Trade Center Health Panel’s findings that indict the way the WTC Insurance Fund has been run, but I will show you the most damning evidence yet that shows the mismanagement and, arguably, corruption exercised by Bloomberg and those who run the WTC Insurance Fund.

The WTC Health Panel, remember Bloomberg’s handpicked crew set to analyze the WTC Insurance Fund, came forth with the following recommendation. “that Congress re-open the Victim Compensation Fund (VCF) so that victims can quickly get fair compensation for injuries suffered as a result of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. At the same time the VCF is re-opened, the report says Congress should eliminate the liability of the City and its contractors for claims arising out of the clean-up at the World Trade Center and, since the World Trade Center Captive Insurance Company (WTC Insurance Fund) would no longer be needed, Congress could also liquidate the insurance company and put its $1 billion into the re-opened VCF. The new proposal would use federal money to compensate claims without the need to prove fault on the part of the City, its contractors or anyone else and would eliminate the delay and expense inherent in litigation. The re-opened Victims Compensation Fund would address those individuals who couldn’t seek its help before the Fund’s closure in December 2003."

Is this not the solution that concerned members of Congress, New York city residents concerned about the health of their neighbors, and everyone other American citizen who has heard the health horror stories of the WTC rescue workers is seeking from the WTC Insurance Fund and it’s $1 Billion endowment? And this recommendation was made over a year ago and yet Christine LaSala, while retiring this year, is still earning $350,000 running the WTC Insurance Fund and Michael Bloomberg is still concerned about potential liability from lawsuits rather than reopening this Victim’s Compensation Fund and acting on this panel’s recommendations. Bloomberg’s handpicked panel has even agreed that Congress should alleviate liability of the City and contractors in order to expedite paying those whose health is deteriorating while this plays out in courts and in Washington D.C. This was always Bloomberg and LaSala’s main defense of their cavalier handling of the WTC Insurance Fund. Most telling in the WTC Health Panel’s recommendation that the WTC Insurance Fund (as run by Captive Insurance Company) would no longer be needed and that the $1 billion (or what’s left of it after La Sala and the attorneys she hired to fight these claims got their share) could immediately be used to compensate claims without having to prove fault on the part of the city. This, to me, is a key point. Both Christine LaSala and Michael Bloomberg have stated that the problem facing the WTC Insurance Fund is that all of these lawsuits are contingent upon finding fault with the city itself. The WTC rescue workers aren’t looking to sue the city they valiantly tried to help out of spite (despite what Bloomberg seems to intimate about the need for the WTC Insurance Fund to protect the city’s interests); they need help to cover their mounting health expenses. This panel is saying that Congress should immediately alleviate this worry and proceed with actually helping those who helped this city recover and dissolve the WTC Insurance Fund and begin helping the rescue workers recover like they helped the city recover.