For Gazette Opinion, Daily Gazette May 20, 2025
For nearly six years, former workers of St. Clare’s Hospital have been fighting for justice through the courts.
Last week’s ruling by Justice Vincent Versaci allowing their case against the Albany Diocese to proceed to trial reveals a troubling reality — survivors of childhood sexual abuse and pensioners are now being pitted against one another in a zero-sum battle for compensation, as New York state stands on the sidelines, allowing insurers and bankruptcy courts to dictate the terms of their fates.
This crisis was entirely avoidable.
When the Berger Commission ordered the closure of St. Clare’s Hospital two decades ago, the state advanced $28.5 million to cover pension obligations to the dedicated nurses, social workers, and support staff who had spent their lives caring for the sick and vulnerable.
Those workers believed their retirement was secure.
They were wrong.
The pension board, led by the Albany Diocese, had stopped making contributions in 1998, creating a catastrophic $53.5 million shortfall that would come to light only decades later.
Today, over 1,100 St. Clare’s pensioners find themselves without the financial security they earned, many forced into poverty or delayed retirement as a result.
I don’t offer this as some casual bromide. I offer it as someone who was a senior official in the Pataki administration – the very administration that established the Berger Commission.
That commission, officially known as the “Commission on Health Care Facilities in the 21st Century,” was created to address the severe overcapacity in New York’s healthcare system.
At the time, hospitals across the state were operating at barely 65% occupancy, draining public resources and threatening the financial stability of the entire system.
Twenty years ago, the Berger Commission faced the difficult task of restructuring unsustainable healthcare facilities to ensure the long-term stability of New York’s healthcare system.
This included addressing pension liabilities, and I firmly believe that had the Commission known the full extent of the pension shortfall at the time, it would have taken stronger measures to protect workers’ financial security.
It would have amounted to pennies on the dollar to achieve long-term savings.
Meanwhile, over 400 Child Victims Act lawsuits against the Albany Diocese remain in limbo due to these same financial pressures.
The Attorney General’s recent legal victory allowing pensioners to sue despite the diocese’s bankruptcy is ultimately meaningless if it merely forces two vulnerable groups to compete for insufficient resources.
After waiting decades for justice, abuse survivors now find themselves pitted against pensioners for shares of the same diminishing assets.
The state’s passive role in these dual crises is both troubling and untenable. That leaves us to wonder: Is the state running the same cynical actuarial game as the insurers – betting that delays, legal roadblocks and financial exhaustion will wear down survivors and pensioners alike before they can secure meaningful compensation?
New York has a moral and legal obligation to honor its commitments – to both the pensioners who were promised security and the survivors who were promised justice – and to prevent these two groups from being pitted against one another in a bitter struggle for compensation.
The state’s original commitment to pensioners, made decades ago, cannot be abandoned simply because the full scope of the liability was not apparent at the time.
Nor can it allow insurers to run roughshod over CVA claimants, exploiting bankruptcy protections to limit their payouts.
Of course, there are sober realities at play.
A bankrupt diocese, already stretched thin by hundreds of abuse claims and complex financial obligations, cannot alone provide meaningful justice to all those it has harmed.
But this is precisely why the state’s involvement is critical.
Without state intervention, pensioners and abuse survivors alike will be forced into a brutal contest over the remaining scraps of a depleted estate, with insurers seeking to exploit every possible loophole to limit their exposure.
Gov. Kathy Hochul and the state Legislature should immediately create a dedicated fund to ensure that St. Clare’s pensioners receive the full benefits they were promised, without forcing them to compete with abuse survivors for the same limited resources.
The $45 million needed to make these retirees whole represents a fraction of the state’s $254 billion budget—a small price to pay for honoring commitments to those who devoted their careers to public service.
Additionally, Gov. Hochul should finally do her job and require insurers to adhere to the mandate of the Child Victims Act, ensuring they cannot exploit bankruptcy proceedings to avoid their financial obligations to survivors.
It is time for the state to take a stand. These pensioners and survivors have waited long enough.
New York must act now to ensure they receive the justice they deserve, without being forced into a financial Hunger Games for their hard-earned compensation.
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David Catalfamo is executive director of the Coalition for Just and Compassionate Compensation and served as director of communications for Gov. George Pataki during the work of the Berger Commission.