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. Monday, January 07, 2002 8:21 PM Benefits Offset Sirs, Your rule provides that an offset shall be made for collateral sources including "life insurance, pension funds, death benefit programs.." Inclusion of pension funds and life insurance raises a number a ambiguities. You should carefully spell out how these are to be resolved so that people can make an informed decision as to whether or not to apply for your program. Let me give you a few examples: 1. Unlike life insurance, pension funds eventually accrue to an individual (and his/her family) even if he/she is not deceased. An event that triggers initiation of a pension benefit is only a windfall for a family if the present value of that benefit exceeds the present actuarial value of the benefit given that the family member had not died. Only the net increase in value of the pension benefit should be offset against the government-provided compensation. 2. Some pension benefits should be construed as deferred compensation and should not be considered a collateral source. 3. Are social security benefits considered to be "pension benefits"? 4. Employers differ in their mix of retirement plans between defined-benefit (i.e. "pension") plans and company-match defined-contribution (e.g. "401-k" or other plans). Self-employed individuals may have no defined-benefit pension. Unionized and blue collar workers often have no "401-k" savings, but will have a pension program. If you only include defined-benefit plans as an eligible collateral source will you not be discriminating against employees whose employers elected to emphasize defined-benefit types of retirement plans? Or, will you include 401-k, IRA and other tax-sheltered and/or company-subsidized retirement savings programs under the rubric of "pension benefits" ? 5. Individuals (or their employers) pay fair value for life insurance premiums. Why should an insurance payout be considered a windfall for the employee's family, especially if the insurance premiums were paid for by the deceased individual. When paid for by the employer, these paid life insurance benefits are really a form of compensation. Also, why should benefits from term life policies (whose entire payout can be construed as triggered by the death of the individual), be treated the same as other "whole" forms of insurance in which a substantial part of the payout is really a return to the family of retirement savings by the individual? 6. Pension benefits are usually taxable, insurance benefits are not. Is the offset to be before or after tax? 7. Beyond the issue of the potential for extreme unfairness in the treatment of different types of retirement programs, there is a significant practical issue that should be born in mind. Most professional workers (and one can assume at the least that a good-sized minority of the victims were white collar professionals) have substantial insurance and pension benefits. Most companies offer at least 2 times salary in life insurance plus some form of pension benefit, at the very minimum. It would not be at all surprising if one-third or more of the victims of the 9/11 disaster would, in effect, lose $250 thousand (or more) apiece due to the collateral offsets rule. You must spell this out in stark black and white for the applicants to this program, or you will have another very significant human catastrophe on your hands. You should make it clear to individual applicants when their particular circumstances deserve close scrutiny by an experienced legal/accounting advisor. If these people are soundly advised, I would predict that a very substantial majority will elect to pursue compensation through conventional legal means rather than through the government program. Individual Comment September 11 Email: Date The local time and date when the message was written. 2002-01-07 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 dojN001427.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. 2002-01-07