Divvying up of 9/11 aid leaves few happy

As the special master of the September 11 Victims Compensation Fund, Kenneth Feinberg knows a lot about the anguish of bereaved families. He also knows that he can never make all of them happy.

Ever since the fund's interim rules were announced, they have been called too stingy, too generous, unfair to high-income families, unfair to low-income families, unfair to uniformed rescue workers, and unfair to those who lost family members in the Oklahoma City bombing or US Embassy terrorist attacks.

The fund's managers are still working towards a Jan. 21 deadline of agreeing upon a final set of rules and formulas to determine how to distribute federal funds among the families of Sept. 11 victims. But already the fund managers are discovering that, in trying to allocate who gets what and how much, they're having to grapple with a multifacted moral conundrum worthy of Solomon: How much is a life worth?

"I don't think this program can in any way, shape, or form correct all of life's inequities," says Mr. Feinberg. "I hope that it will solve some of them and minimize others."

While, it's a common adage that one can't put a price on life, courts do it all the time. But in this case it's the federal government, rather than federal judges, who will determine how the compensation money will be distributed.

While individual circumstances are likely to be factored into determining how the money is ultimately divvied up, victims' groups, New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, and several US senators have already been critical of the fund's proposed rules. In particular, they're worried that the $250,000 "pain and suffering" payment, which every family will automatically receive, might be too low. Adding to the dispute is a proposal that life insurance and pensions be deducted from the award, and that an earnings cap of $231,000 be used to calculate lost wages. On Thursday, the groups held a public rally in Manhattan to urge Mr. Feinberg to change the rules.

Critics note that Congress's airline bailout bill, which called for amends to Sept. 11 victims, also came paired with a cap on airlines' liability in lawsuits resulting from the tragedy. The protection is of concern to some.

"They said they wanted to treat everyone equally," says Stephen Push, whose wife was a passenger on American Airlines Flight 77, "and I think they're accomplishing that - they're shortchanging everyone." The way Mr. Push, who serves as treasurer of Families of September 11, reads the statute, the fund should pay families the same amount they would see from a successful tort case. If the final procedures don't offer significant changes, he says, his group may consider suing the Department of Justice.

But others call the fund generous. It makes costly and lengthy litigation unnecessary, and they point out that it is both unusual for such victims to be reimbursed to this extent and unlikely that a lawsuit would have been successful even without the liability cap.

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