State lawmakers are pushing for pension parity for military firefighters to be included in New York’s next budget.
Assemblyman Angelo Santabarbara, Senator Pat Fahy and Senator James Skoufis are backing new legislation that ensures military firefighters receive the same benefits as their municipal counterparts.
The three Democrats say despite performing the same response and rescue duties, and in many cases, going through additional specialized training, military firefighters are not treated equally under state law.
Santabarbara gathered with his legislative counterparts Wednesday at Stratton Air National Guard Base in Glenville.
"Under the current law, they're excluded from the definition of 'paid firefighter' for the purpose purposes of line of duty injury protections and pension benefits," Santabarbara said. "That means that when they're injured in the line of duty, they don't receive the same salary continuation or the same medical coverage as municipal firefighters do. Most of these firefighters are also in Tier VI. They come up to see me at the state capitol, we talked about Tier VI in the retirement system. And again, municipal firefighters, Scotia, Glenville, the towns around here, the city of Schenectady, they can retire after 20 or 25 years. These firefighters will need to work until age 63. That's a big difference. It's not only unfair, it's unrealistic when you think about the work that has to be done and what they're required to do when it comes to fighting fires and responding to emergencies."
Santabarbara says it applies to about 80 firefighters who serve on three military bases across New York: Stratton, Newburgh and Long Island.
Fellow Democrat Skoufis says the lawmakers are making this push now to ensure the measure gets into the final budget.
"We've worked in this for several years. We passed this bill a couple of years ago, and the governor vetoed it. In her veto message, she made clear that this needs to be done in the budget, so we're looking to do it in the budget this year. It was in both one-house budgets, the Senate and the Assembly. We're probably at the 10- or 20-yard line. We're pretty close to getting this done," Skoufis said.
The governor's office says Hochul will review the legislation.
Nate Fort, a 31-year old captain at the Stratton International Guard-based Fire Department, has served for eight years.
"Day to day, we're experiencing high stress situations. We're having to physically abuse our bodies and perform our job as expected. and with the current retirement that we have for 63 years old, it's just not unrealistic, it's unfeasible. Another factor of this is working until we're 63 years old, we are bound to have health effects because of our job, the nature of the job and the hazards that we encounter. Working a prolonged career in the fire service, till 63 years old, we're only going to compound those health concerns that we're bound to have with this job. So again, it's unsafe and unrealistic for us to continue to work to that extent," said Fort.
Snatabarbara says recruitment and retainment are difficult at Stratton, which is authorized to staff 27 firefighters, but has just 16 on board right now.
Fahy says she "absolutely stands behind" the effort.
"There should be some fairness among how all of our firefighters are being treated and regardless of how we may feel, the fact that we have such a recruitment issue that, in and of itself, is telling here and why this needs to be fixed. We know we have staffing shortages, but there's a real price to be paid when we have staffing shortages, we've already seen some of our airplanes catch on fire. We've seen a number of very disturbing incidences just in the last few months. Now, there may be a lot of reasons for that, but the point is, we have to be ready, and when there are fires, when there are incidences, seconds and minutes matter," said Fahy.
The state budget is due Tuesday.
