Spin Cycle

Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos (R-Rockville Centre) has long been the state lawmaker most involved with the Long Island Rail Road, with cordial union ties and a hand in its capital funding. Asked Thursday about state and U.S. probes into a federal board’s suspiciously routine granting of disability pensions, he said: “If somebody’s creating a crime, they’re creating a crime, and they should be punished for it.” He said his house's investigation committee could look into it but indicated that such a decision would likely await the outcome of work by state Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, who has in effect been deputized by Gov. David Paterson for the probe.

Roy Simon, Skelos’ Democratic challenger, said the situation “smacks of someone asleep at the wheel in the Bush Administration's regulatory bureaucracy.” In full, he said this:

"I have the utmost respect for Long Island Railroad employees and the dangerous job they do. I understand, as a lawyer, that Federal Law makes it easier for railroad workers to collect payments for injuries and disabilities than most other employees. At the same time, the sheer percentage of LIRR employees who have received disability awards smacks of someone asleep at the wheel in the Bush Administration's regulatory bureaucracy. In a week when President Bush's lax oversight of the securities industry is front and center, it wouldn't surprise me to find similar largess in the administration of the disability benefit laws. I am sure that Attorney General Cuomo will get to the bottom of it."

Dan Janison