Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Department of Justice Emails Description An account of the resource The Department of Justice received more than 11,000 e-mails in response to the agency's public solicitation for comments upon its plans to distribute the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund of 2001 established by Congress to benefit the victims of September 11 and their families. These e-mails have been organized here by date. September 11 Email September 11 Email: Body The basic content, as unstructured text; sometimes containing a signature block at the end. Thursday, January 17, 2002 10:40 AM Calculation of earnings Attachment 1: January 16, 2001 Kenneth L. Zwick Director, Office of Management Programs Civil Division U.S. Department of Justice Main Building Room 3140 950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW Washington, DC 20530 Re: Comments to the Interim Final Rule Dear Mr. Zwick Under the interim rules, for purposes of determining economic losses a victim's base compensation appears to be his or her pre-tax earnings for the three-year period 1998-2000, including salary and bonus plus certain employer benefits. I understand that the rational behind this is to come up with a reasonable compensation figure t o use as a starting point. Using the average of three years would likely iron out any aberrations caused by large increases or decreases in a particular year. I agree with the goal, but I see two major problems its application under the interim rules: 1. In the case of some workers, there have been major promotions and additional job responsibilities taken on that render the earlier years much less applicable. For example, if a young worker was an inexperienced employee in 1998 paid at a salary of say $45,000 per year. Yet, he spends the next three years learning job skills and attaining confidence of his employer and increases in responsibility and compensation and his salary moves to $60,000 in 1999, $80,000 in 2000 and $100,000 in 2001. How is the 1998 compensation figure relevant? Would this person every go back to his state of inexperience during his projected work life? Are the large increases in pay an aberration or does the $100,000 level constitute a base for which future increases will be added? It would seem to me that in a situation like this the 2001 compensation level should be given the most weight, yet under the interim rules it is not even considered. 2. Even if you do (wrongly) decide to use the three years 1998 through 2000 as a starting place, that figure gives a snapshot of an average compensation figure for the victim for mid-year 1999. Since death occurred in September of 2001 this figure should at least receive an adjustment to get it to September 2001. Using your figures this would be one and a half years at 6.6 percent for those under 30, 5.1 percent for those aged 31-50, and 4.2 percent for those over 50. To do otherwise would be to have a starting place that doesn't even reflect keeping up with inflation. Thank you for considering the above. Very truly yours, Individual Comment Concord, MA September 11 Email: Date The local time and date when the message was written. 2002-01-17 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource dojN001931.xml 911DA Item Elements describing a September 11 Digital Archive item. Status The process status of this item. approved Consent Whether September 11 Digital Archive has permission to possess this item. full Posting Whether the contributor gave permission to post this item. yes Copyright Whether the contributor holds copyright to this item. yes Source The source of this item. born-digital Media Type The media type of this item. email Created by Author Whether the author created this item. yes Described by Author Whether the description of this item was submitted by the author. no Date Entered The date this item was entered into the archive. 2002-01-17