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COURIER L 10 IFE, AUGUST 7-13, 2020
CHECKIN’ IN WITH:
State Senator
Andrew Gounardes
BY MEAGHAN MCGOLDRICK
Andrew Gounardes is a member of the
New York State Senate currently serving
the neighborhoods of Bay Ridge, Dyker
Heights, Bensonhurst,
Bath Beach, Gravesend,
Gerritsen Beach, Manhattan
Beach, and Marine
Park.
To celebrate the relaunch
of the Bay Ridge
Courier, we’re “checkin’
in” with each of the area’s
representatives to discuss
a topic of their choosing.
This week, we caught up
with Gounardes about the
ongoing plights of 9/11 survivors
— and how the novel
coronavirus has exacerbated
Andrew Gounardes.
State Sen. Andrew Gounardes’ offi ce
some victims’ underlying
illnesses.
Brooklyn Paper: You’ve done a
great deal in your fi rst term to help
protect and support 9/11 fi rst responders.
What infl uenced your
work on this issue?
Andrew Gounardes: One of the
big things that I’ve worked on over the
last two years has been really picking
up the mantle and doing a lot of work to
help support 9/11 fi rst responders. Obviously
it’s an issue that’s very near and
dear to the people who live in this community,
so I tried to make progress on
and fi x a lot of ongoing issues for which
there had been no resolution for years.
It’s a body of work that I didn’t necessarily
expect to dive into but it’s been a real
signifi cant part of our work and I’m really
proud of it.
More than 10,000 fi rst responders
or other people who have been affected
by the attack on the Twin Towers have
been diagnosed with cancer since that
day — and so many have died. So we
have just continued to see that this crisis
has not gone away.
BP: Can you tell us about some of
the legislation you’ve gotten passed?
AG: Last year, I helped pass three
bills that collectively tackle some of
these isses.
The fi rst one granted unlimited sick
leave to any 9/11 fi rst responder in the
city — something people outside the city
had for a while but people here did not.
The second bill that we did last year
was one primarily for city fi refi ghters
that would allow a fi ve-year look-back
once a member retires from service to
claim disability for 9/11 related illness.
We know that many cancers may take
years to manifest themselves, so that
bill gives New York City fi refi ghters diagnosed
with cancer within fi ve years
of their retirement the presumption
that the cancer was incurred during
9/11 rescue, recovery and cleanup. That
way, they can access Accidental Disability
Retirement pensions.
The third bill addresses delayed in
World Trade Center-related disability
claims by increasing the
number of medical boards
and physicians employed
on New York City Employees’
Retirement System’s
medical board.
This was born out of direct
experience, where
someone said, ‘Look, I’m
sick and my doctor says I
have this,’ but the medical
board doctor doesn’t
connect the dots the same
way their primary doctor
does. It’s about making
sure we have the best
doctors examining these
people.
BP: You recently passed a fourth
piece of legislation pertaining to the
9/11 Workers Protection Task Force.
Why is that bill important?
AG: This year one of our big focus areas
was the task force. It was started in
2005 and the point of the task force was
to convene regularly with experts and
workers who were affected to talk about
ongoing issues like diagnoses, administrative
work, etc. To my understanding,
and what we heard from people who
were appointed to the task force was
that, over time, the utility and effi cacy
of the task force had kind of wained. We
wanted to use this as an opportunity to
reinvigorate and rehabilitate it.
The bill refreshes appointments, expands
the task force’s areas of study and
requires that the group meet twice a
year — which I think is important, even
just to say, look there are no issues right
now.
BP: In a recent interview with
Brooklyn Paper, an advocate compared
the COVID-19 pandemic to
“salt in the wounds” for those suffering
from 9/11-related illnesses
who are particularly susceptible to
the coronavirus. With that in mind,
what else can and should be done for
9/11 fi rst responders and survivors?
Unfortunately, at the onset and even
still at this stage, we’ve realized there
were just so many unknowns about how
COVID would affect people in the long
term. But we did make sure we passed
a line of duty benefi ts bill to guarantee
that any public worker would be presumed
to have contracted COVID because
of their work. I’m very proud of
that bill, and we molded that off of the
9/11 benefi ts bill that took four years to
do. This one took us six weeks.
This conversation has been edited
for brevity. For the full interview, visit
BrooklynPaper.com.
/BrooklynPaper.com