The following is an editorial from the Times Union.
Please take some time to read it and contact your local representatives and tell them NOT to support these efforts.
A congressman tries to strongarm the state Legislature into changing a law.
And here we go again: Another New York representative is trying to get Congress to do an end run around New York lawmakers.
So goes another perennial battle over New York’s so-called Scaffold Law, a fight that seems to enrich no one except lobbyists and the campaign accounts of lawmakers willing to carry their water. And if Rep. Nick Langworthy, a Buffalo-area Republican, has his way, taxpayers will be stuck with the bill for his misguided crusade.
Mr. Langworthy, a former state Republican chairman elected in New York’s 23rd Congressional District in 2022, wants Congress to withhold funding for any public projects subject to New York’s Scaffold Law as a way to force the state to do his bidding.
Created in 1885 to address safety issues in the construction industry at a time when skyscrapers were rising, the law as applied by courts holds employers financially liable when a worker is injured from a fall, even in cases where the worker might arguably be at fault to one degree or another. Construction companies have been pushing for decades to change the law. So have businesses, schools and municipal groups that say it adds to the cost of insurance and consequently the price tag of public projects, which ultimately costs taxpayers money. It also drives up the cost of private construction, they argue, making offices and homes more expensive, too.
Defenders of the law — in particular labor unions — counter that if employers provide proper safety equipment and other measures, the law as written doesn’t cover workers injured by their own negligence. The industry claims that in practice, absolute liability prevails in court.
It’s also worth noting that New York state and New York City have some of the nation’s better workplace safety records, according to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Efforts to change the law have failed in the state Legislature, where both chambers are run by Democrats.
Enter Mr. Langworthy, who proposes that Congress punish New York by withholding federal funds on public projects if it won’t change the law.
His bill is similar to another one proposed unsuccessfully by former U.S. Rep. John Faso of Columbia County in 2018.
As we said back then, this kind of federal strongarming is not how this issue should be approached. That all the more true in 2025 for a Congress that has enough trouble doing its own job: The legislative branch has lost the script when it comes to acting as a coequal branch of government alongside an increasingly autocratic president.
If Mr. Langworthy wants to write, rewrite or repeal New York laws, he should run for the New York Legislature, not for Congress. The same goes for anyone else – including the North Country’s Rep. Elise Stefanik, who has tried to use her federal office to neuter New York’s strong gun laws.
If passed, Mr. Langworthy’s bill would hurt rather than help New York taxpayers, because if the Legislature doesn’t bend to his will, they would have to make up for the loss of federal funding on public projects. Is that what constituents sent him to Washington to do?
As we’ve said before, the pros and cons of the Scaffold Law, and the need for any reforms, must be debated by the Legislature. The state Legislature in Albany, that is. Not the federal one in Washington, D.C., whose members ought to be minding their own constitutional business.
