Centerport agrees to pay $350G to 22 volunteers who were denied pension credit for service after 65
By Elizabeth Moore
Newsday
Copyright 2007 Newsday, Inc.
CENTERPORT, N.Y. — The Centerport Fire District has agreed to pay $353,229 to settle a federal age discrimination lawsuit brought on behalf of 22 volunteers who were denied pension credit for service after they turned 65.
Stanley Wertheimer, the Centerport firefighter who filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in 2001 at age 69, will receive $33,855 under the consent decree approved by U.S. District Judge Thomas Platt and announced this week.
But fire officials agree the settlement itself has become a footnote to the tidal wave of similar complaints, legislation, local referenda and tens of millions of dollars in additional taxes that have been triggered throughout New York since Wertheimer’s complaint exposed a flaw in the state’s benefit law for firefighters.
Under the state’s Length of Service Award program, firefighters with at least five years’ service are entitled to a monthly stipend of up to $30 for each year they are active, up to 40 years. They start receiving the benefit at an “entitlement age” agreed on by voters in their district, which can be as early as 55.
But under the 1988 law, firefighters no longer could accrue new pension credit once they reached entitlement age. Wertheimer, who served from 1959 to 1981 and then rejoined in 1994 at age 62, was told he would get no credit for his service directing traffic with Centerport’s fire police because he would reach entitlement age after just three years.
That, the EEOC said, violates the Age Discrimination in Employment Act, which protects workers 40 and older from age discrimination. And because pensions are a form of compensation, volunteer firefighters are considered workers.
“Firefighters who volunteer to help people when they are in need are entitled to benefits based on their service, without regard to age or when earned,” Spencer Lewis, district director for the EEOC’s New York office, said in a statement.
The EEOC filed a similar lawsuit against the Valley Stream Fire Department.
Many fire districts have already set aside money to pay age-discrimination settlements. Hicksville, for example, reserved $755,000 in 2005, according to counsel Joseph Frank. Frank said complaints are pending in five or six of the 30 Long Island districts he represents.
Many other Long Island fire districts have added a second stipend to their benefit programs, payable to volunteers who remain active after they begin to collect.
This has led to concern that the service award is making volunteer service too attractive to the oldest volunteers. Many departments don’t require their longest-serving members to answer many alarms, and they can earn pension credits by going to meetings and parades.
“The whole objective of the legislation was getting people to be truly active, going on calls, taking drills, driving trucks and running into burning buildings,” said Edward Holohan, a private actuary who administers service award programs.
A Newsday review of a sample of 2002 service records found that a significant share of volunteers earning pension credits were classified as physically unfit to enter burning buildings.
Fire districts could avoid age discrimination without increasing payouts, said EEOC attorney Michael O’Brien. For instance, they could allow volunteers to remain active as long as they want - but not to begin collecting benefits until they leave active service.
Frank said he knows no Long Island district that has chosen this approach, but says the debate requires perspective.
“Seniors are remaining much more active than in the past,” he said. “They are still very productive and important members of the volunteer fire service and you have to do whatever is necessary to be fair to them.”
But Wertheimer, now 75, says the service award program has been a mistake.
“It’s a good thing for me,” he said in an interview last year. “But the intent of the whole program was to recruit firemen and it did the exact opposite - it kept the deadwood.”