By WILLIAM NEUMAN
Courtesy of The New York Post
The state attorney general's office is stepping into an ugly fight between the firefighter's union and family members who accuse labor officials of trying to hold onto some $60 million in 9/11 donations.
The lawyer for a group of relatives from 60 families fired off a letter to Attorney General Eliot Spitzer's charities bureau yesterday, asking the agency to investigate the handling of the Widows and Children's Fund of the Uniformed Firefighters Association.
"What the union is doing here is outrageous," said the lawyer, Randy Mastro.
Spitzer's office said it would take a look at the dispute.
"These families have already been victimized by the horror of 9/11. They shouldn't be victimized again by the very union that represented their fallen loved ones."
Mastro has asked the charities bureau to consider taking the union to court over the fund, which stood at less than $1 million before Sept. 11 and then ballooned to between $60 million and $70 million.
The families are angry because the union wants to invest that money and then dole out relatively modest amounts to the relatives over many years.
Under the union plan, the money would not only go out to relatives of firefighters who died on Sept. 11, but would also reach the families of other firefighters who died in the line of duty.
However, only widows and children would benefit - meaning the kin of single or childless firefighters would not see a penny, Mastro said.
The fund would pay eligible families $20,000 up front, followed by $3,000 a year for each widow and child. Once kids reached the age of 24, they would get a final payment of $50,000.
Instead, the families want the UFA to keep only $3 million as a reserve and distribute the rest immediately, with the money divvied up equally between the families of both single and married firefighters killed on Sept. 11, and firefighters who died beforehand and left widows or children.
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