State Comptroller Tom DiNapoli's recent report on the projected $89 billion funding shortfall for New York's infrastructure projects ("DiNapoli warns of a funding gap," Dec. 20), should be a wake-up call for elected officials. Our infrastructure is crumbling, and deferring critical maintenance now will only mean dramatically higher costs in the future.
The report highlights the increased cost of commodities, like fuel and asphalt, but fails to address another major cost driver – the cost of insurance. According to the 2011 figures from Insurance Services Office, it costs 479 percent more to insure a bridge or elevated highway project in New York City than it would in Chicago, and 1,600 percent more than a similar project in Ohio.
Why the staggering difference?
Because New York is the only state with the scaffold law, a statute that holds contractors and property owners automatically fully liable in lawsuits for gravity-related injuries. The costs of this law have skyrocketed in the last decade, thanks to an explosion of opportunistic litigation. Between 1998 and 2008 the construction injury rate in New York fell by nearly 20 percent, yet the number of scaffold law cases increased 66 percent.
Borrowing from the federal government is hardly a solution. At best, it's a costly Band-Aid, sentencing future generations to pay interest for our inability to get things done. To solve this problem, step one should be repealing or reforming the costly and ineffective scaffold law.
SCOTT HOBSON
Legislative analyst
Lawsuit Reform Alliance
of New York
Albany