Joins in the fight
Workers turn to Albany nonprofit for attempt to restore full benefits
A law service that helps lowincome people is stepping in to probe collapse of the pension at the former St. Clare’s Hospital.
A law service that helps lowincome people is stepping in to investigate the pension collapse of the former St. Clare’s Hospital.
So far, the Legal Aid Society of Northeastern New York has two former hospital workers as clients, said Victoria Esposito, advocacy coordinator for the Albanybased not-for-profit group.
Esposito said she will be investigating the troubled pension fund that covers more than 1,100 workers at the former hospital, which closed in 2008 as part of a state-ordered consolidation. “Whatever relief we might obtain for our clients might also be helpful to other former employees,” she said.
She said she is being assisted Gary Stone, a lawyer with Brooklyn Legal Aid who is part of the group’s Mid-atlantic Pension Counseling Project. Esposito is a former assistant district attorney in St. Lawrence County who joined Legal Aid in 2011.
Legal Aid offers legal help for people who meet income requirements, which are set at a household income of no more than 125 percent of the federal poverty level.
Late last year, hundreds of former St. Clare’s workers learned that pensions would be reduced or eliminated because the fund was millions of dollars short of what would be needed to pay full benefits.
St. Clare’s Corp., which remained in place after the hospital merger to run the pension fund, blamed the fund’s crisis on the economic recession that started in 2008.
Corporation President Joe Pofit has said the fund would need at least $29 million to restore reduced pensions to more than 660 former workers who have lost all benefits.
That would bring their pensions up to 70 percent of what had been promised, which is now being provided to 434 workers who had retired before November 2015. Pofit has said the pension would run out of cash entirely by 2024 if pensions were not slashed.
During the 1990s, officials at St. Clare’s Hospital sought and received federal approval for a religious exemption for its pension, which up to that point was federally insured as a private plan. The hospital then got a $90,000 refund for its previous premiums, but the plan was then left uninsured from fiscal calamity.
The fund was also exempted from requirements that could have alerted former workers of financial underperformance.
Founded in Schenectady by Catholic priests and Franciscans in 1949, St. Clare’s from its beginnings has been linked to the Albany Roman Catholic Diocese. Bishops also served on the hospital board of directors.
Albany Bishop Edward Scharfenberger, who is on the St. Clare’s board, has said the diocese empathizes with retirees, but does not have the money to restore the pension fund. He said the diocese believes a state bailout would be needed to salvage the fund.
A spokeswoman for the diocese declined comment on Tuesday.
Retirees have also turned to Albany Law School for assistance from labor lawyer David Pratt. Retirees are holding a meeting there 6 p.m. Monday, he said.