A controversial analysis of New York's Scaffold Law has become the subject of dueling inquiries by advocates, who in recent days have filed requests under state Freedom of Information Law for documents and communications related to the report's creation.Scaffold Law, which places "absolute liability" on employers for gravity-related workplace injuries, is supported by labor unions but opposed by business groups that claim it needlessly drives up construction costs. Opponents would like to see New York move to a "comparative negligence" standard that would make workers proportionately responsible when their own actions contribute to an accident.
A December report from SUNY's Nelson A. Rockefeller Institute of Government included a statistical analysis that concluded nonfatal construction injuries in Illinois dropped after the state repealed its version of the Scaffold Law in 1995.
Labor advocates blasted the report, and highlighted the fact that it was paid for with $82,800 from the state Civil Justice Institute, the research arm of the Lawsuit Reform Alliance of New York, a business-backed group that wants to see Scaffold Law amended.
The director of the Albany-based Rockefeller Institute, Thomas Gais, has in recent weeks made public what he sees as flaws in the study's Illinois analysis -- conducted by a Cornell University researcher -- and the fact that the report was released before a final round of vetting. The Times Union reported on the dispute last week.
The Lawsuit Reform Alliance last week filed a FOIL request with the SUNY Research Foundation seeking all communications after April 16 regarding the report involving Gais, researcher Michael Hattery and the institute's Board of Overseers -- particularly its chairman, Carl Hayden.
The group has intimated that Hayden, an ally of Democratic Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, was involved in the institute's decision to back away from the study's Illinois findings. Scaffold Law opponents have long criticized Silver, who is counsel to the personal injury law firm Weitz & Luxenberg, for blocking measures that would reduce the number of such lawsuits.
The alliance's FOIL, first reported Thursday by Gannett News Service, also requests communications between Gais and a reporter for the Chronicle for Higher Education, which released an article on the controversy last week.
On Friday, the labor-backed Center for Popular Democracy filed its own FOIL query for all materials related to the Civil Justice Institute's initial "Request for Proposals" inviting scholars to undertake the report, plus any other communications between the institute and the anti-Scaffold Law entities since January 2013.
The Center for Popular Democracy in April issued "Fatally Flawed," a broadside against the Rockefeller Institute study.
"We are now turning our sights on the money trail that financed this bogus work," said Connie Razza, the center's director of strategic research, in a statement. "Industry should not be allowed to try to buy credibility from institutions like SUNY."
The Rockefeller Institute's spokesman Robert Bullock defended the integrity of its research, and called the flaws in the Scaffold Law study and its release uncharacteristic of its work.
" ... The Rockefeller Institute has no agenda outside of its mission to independently inform public policy," Bullock said in a statement. "It cannot be influenced and always follow the facts wherever they may lead."
Also: "Assertions that the Rockefeller Institute's board or any of its members would attempt to influence our research are absurd," Bullock said.