New York Daily News: Scaffold Law keeps N.Y. from building

By: Nick Langworthy

As any homeowner can tell you, the cost of construction is high and getting higher.

The cost of building materials, lumber, concrete, and steel have spiked in recent years. Housing costs across the nation have risen accordingly.

The same is true for government. Building critical infrastructure throughout our state is key. New York’s road and bridge systems upstate as well as commuter rails, subways and tunnels downstate are all in need of repair. These improvements are also key to the New York economy and the growth that attracts businesses and jobs.

Regardless of where one is on the political spectrum, we can all agree that a key function of government is to make sure that our transportation infrastructure is modernized and improved. Since the days of President Eisenhower who promoted the interstate highway system, the federal government plays a significant role in assisting states in financing our transportation system.

And we know that taxpayer money is precious. It should not be wasted.

Yet, the State of New York needlessly inflates the cost of building everything by continuing an antiquated liability law dating from 1885. That law, commonly known as the Scaffold Law, raises the cost of building in our state from housing, to factories, to offices, and every form of transportation infrastructure.

It is estimated that this law increases the total cost of construction by between 5-10%. That equates to hundreds of millions of dollars each year added to the cost of construction in our state.

People don’t see that cost, so they don’t know that it is happening. But it is.

The Scaffold Law was originally intended to protect construction workers, and it was adopted prior to extensive legal and regulatory measures to ensure safety on the job. Every state in the Union which had such a law has repealed it, the last one being Illinois in 1995.

But 30 years later Albany has never reformed or repealed the law, so it lingers silently adding to costs and protecting no one but the small group of trial lawyers to handle these legal cases.

The law confers absolute liability on contractors and building owners when a worker is injured on a construction site. It doesn’t matter if the worker contributed to the injury by ignoring safety procedures or came onto the job site under the influence of drugs or alcohol. The contractor and the property owner must pay.

The result is that fewer insurance companies will write policies in New York and prices charged by those who do keep escalating because this law incentivizes litigation. And as ABC News recently documented, the law has brought forth a spate of staged construction accidents as fraudsters seek to milk the legal system for damages, often using gullible migrant laborers as plaintiffs.

I’ve introduced the Infrastructure Expansion Act in Congress, which would override the state law on any federally funded project. This override, or preemption, would require that the standard of liability for any actions brought in court be comparable negligence and not absolute liability. This is the standard used in every other state in the Union. It simply would assess fault for an accident between the parties and compare their negligence in determining any damages.

The federal government is investing billions in New York — $7.5 billion for the Gateway rail tunnel, $6 billion for Penn Station, billions more for the MTA, and $6 billion for Micron near Syracuse. Every one of these projects is unnecessarily more expensive because of this outdated statute. All these projects will be made more costly by this wasteful law. If we don’t preempt New York law, it would be the equivalent of watching hundreds of millions of tax dollars going up in smoke. I’m determined not to let that happen.

Some trade unions mistakenly believe that the scaffold law makes their job sites safer. But data from the federal Department of Labor over many years disproves that assertion. New York workers are no safer because of this law, but the citizens of our state pay more and get less for their construction dollars because Albany refuses reform.

It’s time to end this silent tax on taxpayers. Albany won’t act — but Congress can. Let’s stop wasting the people’s money.

Langworthy represents New York’s 23rd congressional district covering the western part of the state.