Hevesi’s one incontrovertible achievement is his audit of scaffolds, cranes, and rigging. On average, two workers die every day from falls in the US, and New York construction accounts for a disproportionate share of the carnage. According to the audit 39% of audited New York scaffolds didn’t even have permits.

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There’s a safety crisis in New York City regarding fall protection and comptroller Hevesi took serious action to address it when other officials weren’t stepping up prominently. For that alone he gets my vote at a time when employers in New York are bitching about being held strictly liable for scaffold accidents on their jobsites.

If we had more Americans basing their vote on how serious candidates are about workplace safety issues, we’d have a lot more workers coming home alive at the end of the day.