Fire Commissioner Sal Cassano promised yesterday to call back retired firefighters for medical reviews if questions arise about the legitimacy of their tax-free disability pensions.
“We haven’t done it a lot, but if a story comes out, we would recall, either way,” he said.
“If somebody didn’t get a disability who thought they should get a disability, we would bring them back and let them run through it to see if they deserve it, and the same if somebody got it — like the stories we’ve seen in the paper — we would bring them back, and we would look at it.”
Cassano’s comments came in response to stories in The Post detailing how a 42-year-old firefighter who worked at Ground Zero and retired with asthma and other ailments is collecting $74,624 a year while participating in mixed-martial-arts matches.
The Post also reported that a retired FDNY lieutenant is competing in marathons and triathlons while receiving an $86,000-a-year pension for lung disease.
Cassano is one of Mayor Bloomberg’s three appointees to the FDNY pension board, which has the right to summon firefighters once a year for medical checkups if they retired on disability pensions with less than 20 years on the job.
But in the last 35 years, the board hasn’t reopened a single case in which an FDNY member’s disability was questioned — even though disability retirements are reaching new records.
Last year, 84 percent of all 405 FDNY retirees qualified for a three-quarters-pay, tax-free disability pension. In 2008, 90 percent of the 457 who left the force made the disability cut.
The Mayor’s Office, responding to Post inquiries, agreed to undertake a review of red-flagged disability cases.
Cassano stressed that a retired firefighter with lung problems might be able to compete in sports competitions in a clear-air environment without necessarily being able to work for the FDNY, a job where noxious fumes are a daily reality.
Meanwhile, Gov. Paterson has vetoed two bills intended to enhance retirement benefits for public employees.
The first bill, sponsored by Sen. Diane Savino (D-SI) and Assemblyman Peter Abbate Jr. (D-Brooklyn), would have extended through 2011 an early-retirement program created in 1988 to make up for health damage suffered by exhaust-breathing toll takers with the Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority.
The second, also sponsored by Savino and Abbate, would have allowed some State University employees to leave a cheaper “defined contribution” plan in favor of a more expensive “defined benefit” plan.