The firefighters’ union plans to sue City Council Speaker Melissa
Mark-Viverito over the Council’s role in thwarting a more generous
disability pension package for uniformed workers, the group said.
 |
Uniformed Firefighters Association (UFA) President Stephen Cassidy and the union charge in the lawsuit that Council ledership ‘interfered with the legislative process.’ |
Uniformed Firefighters Association president Steve Cassidy and newly
hired firefighters will hit the Council with a suit Tuesday charging
that “over nearly a 10-month period the Council leadership interfered
with the legislative process (and) ignored its own transparency and
inclusiveness rules,” according to a media advisory released Monday.
The Council threw its support behind Mayor de Blasio’s pension plan for
cops and firefighters on disability in a last-minute vote in June.
Notice went out that the item had been added to the agenda just half an
hour before a morning hearing, and it was debated and voted on the same
day, drawing fierce criticism from the union.
A competing resolution to back the pension deal the unions want - which
would give all seriously injured service members 75% of their salary in
disability benefits regardless of when they were hired - never got a
vote, despite backing by a veto-proof majority of Council members.
UFA also charges the speaker’s office used attorney-client privilege to avoid disclosing public documents under the Freedom of Information Law.
Details of the legal claims were not immediately available before the lawsuit was filed Tuesday.
A Mark-Viverito spokesman said he could not comment before seeing the lawsuit but said, “We have a commitment to transparency.”
No comments:
Post a Comment