Tax Commissioner Honors 40 Killed in Attack

Members of the New York State Society of CPAs State, Municipal & Local Taxation Committee gathered to remember 40 employees of the New York State Department of Taxation and Finance who died as a result of the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11.

“We lost everything,” said Tax Commissioner Arthur J. Roth, a committee member. “There were some shining lights in our department…some who didn’t get out of the building.”

“Key employees have risen to the occasion,” Roth said, referring to employees who both helped their co-workers out of the building on Sept. 11 and helped to rebuild the office in the aftermath of the attacks.

The department’s southern district maintained offices on the 86th and 87th floors of the south tower of the World Trade Center, the second to be hit by a hijacked plane that morning. Almost 240 employees worked in the building. A number of divisions lost most or all of their staffs, along with computers, supplies and important digital information that was slated to be backed-up some time in the near future. Committee and Society leaders held the meeting to honor the 39 killed in the attack—and a 40th employee who died later—and to encourage members to help the survivors deal with the devastating loss of life.

“Our committee has a special relationship with the New York State Department of Taxation,” Chairman Stewart Buxbaum said in opening remarks on Friday, Nov. 2, at the Society’s offices. “We work with them on a daily basis and Arthur Roth is an active member of the committee. The events were a disaster to all of us.”

Roth described the NYSSCPA as a “second home,” especially in the emotional tumult following the attacks.

“I have prepared remarks,” he said. “But, I don’t like to use prepared remarks, especially when I’m with my family.”

The visibly shaken Roth told the committee of his pride in leading a department that added value to the economy of the city and state, and had worked well with the city and the Internal Revenue Service during much of the administration of Gov. George Pataki.

“Then one day, you wake up and this happens,” Roth said. “But how do you deal with it? The enormity is unbelievable.”

Roth said he joined professional counselors in speaking with relatives of the victims, during which one family screamed at the commissioner for two hours, leaving in silence with a nagging sense of futility, which he expressed during a later debriefing with the counselors.

“I said, ‘I don’t like to fail at anything…I felt I couldn’t do anything for that family,’” Roth said. “But that family needed an outlet…and that’s okay.”

Executive Director Louis Grumet commended Roth as a father figure in the department.

“(Roth) was the impetus in getting us a (new) place and acknowledging we all had to get together to maintain the district,” said Sam Cohen, a committee member and a division director with the department. “He really has been like a father.”

Roth’s “shining lights” included Rose Riso, a veteran employee who served as the department’s fire warden in the building and who insisted on evacuating the department’s two floors.

“Many people owe their lives to Rose,” Cohen said in an interview after the meeting. “She had the foresight to realize that after the first tower was hit—she knew the smoke was getting into the ventilation system. She pushed them out. She literally pushed them out.”

Riso died when the second plane hit the south tower.

The department, meanwhile, is rebuilding, officials said. Roth moved the offices to a new location on Broadway within three weeks of finding office space. But the department continues to deal with reverberations of Sept. 11, continuing grief counseling throughout the state and responding to at least one false alarm of anthrax in an upstate office, the commissioner said.

Roth asked members to visit with department employees, and Grumet later announced plans for the Society to host an informal get-together for the department at the NYSSCPA offices on Fifth Avenue.

“The good news is…surely, slowly we’re rebuilding,” said Society President Nancy Newman-Limata. “It is critical as CPAs to do everything we can in the effort to bring back a sense of normalcy.”