Member of the Office of the Ari Brown State Assembly
New York has been tied up by an outdated law that has not been found anywhere else in America for 140 years: the scaffolding law.
This law was issued in 1885 and imposed the owners and contractors in connection with “absolute liability” for increased accidents, even if the negligence of the employees is the real cause. Every other state in the nation has reformed or lifted such laws. New York is the last to adhere to it – and the damage is obvious.
I've been in the construction business for over five decades. I saw first -hand how this law controlled insurance costs, delayed or canceled projects and sent investment dollars to other states.
It improves the costs for the construction of schools, streets, bridges and living space in Long Island by hundreds of million dollars every year.
The Nelson A. Rockefeller Institute of Government estimates that taxpayers alone pay almost 800 million US dollars in costs that arise from the Scaffolding Act. This money should not go into the pockets of process lawyers in classrooms, infrastructure and affordable living space.
The law has also created an epidemic of staged accidents and fraudulent lawsuits, which are often made possible by unscrupulous law firms and medical specialists. Insurance agents have fled the New York market instead of taking the risk and leaving the builders, developers and local administrations with jumping bonuses and fewer options.
This does not protect workers – it punishes the people who build and maintain our communities.
And the larger costs are most difficult to see: the projects that never happen. The scaffolding law drives the new construction of Long Island and completely from New York.
Developers and investors bring their dollars in states with fairer, modern liability standards. Real estate and construction work are the driving forces of the New York economy.
When you slow down, everything slows down: Creation of jobs, living space, infrastructure and tax assessment that supports our schools and services.
We already have heavy protection at the workplace. Osha regulations, federal laws and state security standards protect workers in the workplace. The scaffolding law does not add any security – it adds costs, fraud and delay.
That is why there is now a growing coalition that requires change.
Almost 50 organizations nationwide – including four of the best known on Long Island, the Long Island Association, the Long Island Builder Institute, the Long Island Contractors Association and the Association for a better Long Island – are calling for a reform. You know that this outdated law suffocates our economy.
At the federal level, the US representative Nick Langworthy from New York introduced the infrastructure expansion law to exclude the state -financed or approved projects in New York from the standard liability standard of the Scaffolding Act.
His legislation, which was already supported by other members of the New York delegation, would enable federal projects such as Penn Station, the Second Avenue -U -Bahn expansion and even resilience to the army resilience in order to go forward without the destructive exposure to the legal costs.
His calculation will not solve everything, but it seems a bright light about how destructive this law really is.
Here in Albany I will introduce laws to exclude the counties Nassau and Suffolk from the scaffolding law. My bill would determine a comparative negligence standard-the same legal approach that is used anywhere else in the country.
According to this standard, the judges could weigh actual mistakes and responsibility instead of automatically accepting the owners and contractors regardless of the circumstances. This reform will help to restore fairness, reduce costs and to keep projects – and jobs – on Long Island.
As a member of the ranking of the assembly of the local government committee, I hear every week from urban leaders, school officials and taxpayers who bear the main burden of this law. You know that the scaffolding law is not just a legal relic – it is a daily drainage of our budgets, our economy and our future.
New York can no longer adhere to a 19th century policy that no longer makes sense in the 21st century. If we want affordable apartments if we want to train modernity if we want a reliable infrastructure and want to keep work and investments here, we have to reform the Scaffolding Act.
Long Island deserves better – and I intend to fight for it.
The member of the state assembly Ari Brown represents the 20th meeting district, the