Trump administration cuts claim 16 jobs at World Trade Center Health Program

WASHINGTON — Sixteen World Trade Center Health Program employees received notices that they could lose their jobs in the Health and Human Services Department’s downsizing, despite promises the program’s staff would not be reduced, a 9/11 health advocate said Friday.

Those notices, not previously reported, went out this past week as HHS stirred a furor among lawmakers and ailing 9/11 first responders by dismissing WTC Health Program Director Dr. John Howard and others in the department who provided essential services to the program.

Benjamin Chevat, executive director of Citizens for the Extension of the James Zadroga Act, said Friday that he learned that 16 of the current 86 WTC Health Program staff members had been put on notice that they are in line to be dismissed. HHS press officials did not answer questions about those notifications.

Lawmakers and those who provide services are raising concerns that the orders by President Donald Trump and HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to reduce the HHS workforce by 20,000 employees will undermine the WTC Health Program and other health initiatives.

"They continue to go at the core, the guts, the heart of this program, pulling the rug out from under our first responders, who have always had bipartisan support in the past," Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) told Newsday in a phone call.

"The assault on the program continues. It has not been reversed or even stopped," Schumer said, adding that proves "this is not an accident or a mistake." 

Rep. Andrew Garbarino (R-Bayport) said Wednesday that he met White House legislative staffers in his office Wednesday and they said they would work to reverse the most recent dismissals.

Kennedy, who in February reversed the layoffs of the WTC Health Program's probationary staffers, told ABC News Thursday that studies and staff that were cut this past week that should not have been cut will be reinstated. 

By Friday neither Kennedy nor his department had reinstated Howard or other department staffers whose work is essential for the WTC Health Program.

HHS deputy press secretary Emily G. Hilliard said in an emailed statement, "All statutorily required programs will remain intact, and as a result of the reorganization, will be better positioned to execute on Congress’s statutory intent."

She said, "The WTC Health Program’s Clinical Centers of Excellence and Nationwide Provider Network are continuing to provide services to program members at this time. Direct patient care is functioning, and program members are being seen by doctors and nurses at clinics."

But on Friday, Lauren Cimineri, the health care benefits branch chief of the WTC Health Program sent an internal email to clinic staff, contractors and vendors saying that as of Tuesday all enrollment and certification letters have been paused in the absence of a center director. "We are in the process of determining who has authorization to sign those letters," she wrote.

Lawmakers and advocates said the HHS employment reductions threaten to harm the WTC Health Program’s medical treatment and health services for 137,000 ailing first responders and survivors of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on Manhattan, the Pentagon and Shanksville, Pennsylvania.

A bipartisan group of 30 members of Congress stepped up pressure for the reinstatements on Friday with a letter led by Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) and Garbarino to Trump and Kennedy urging them to restore all staffing needed for the program.

"Once again, President Trump is using 9/11 responders and survivors as political pawns, abandoning the heroes who stepped up and risked their lives in our nation’s darkest hour," Gillibrand told Newsday.

Chevat said, "If the program is to function properly, all the staff of the CDC and NIOSH that supported the program, need to be restored to full strength, including the program’s own staff that have apparently been riffed."

One staffer, who requested anonymity to speak candidly to Newsday, reported getting an HHS email notice last week titled "Notice of Intent to Conduct a Reduction in Force," which said the dismissals would take place on June 30. The staffer said other workers had received the notice.

The government invokes a reduction in force when abolishing positions, though workers can pursue other government employment. 

Officials in two hospital clinics with WTC Health Program contracts to provide care said they worry about the dismissals of staff who handle the contracts and medical approvals.

One New York clinic official who requested anonymity for fear of retaliation told Newsday that eliminating those HHS staff members "is blowing a hole in the World Trade Center Health Program."

With Laura Figueroa Hernandez