ALBANY — Noting the safety of workplaces was a significant concern when COVID-19 was spreading rapidly, the state attorney general’s office is proposing the state create a new agency that would be modeled after the federal Occupational Health and Safety Administration.

The labor bureau chief at the attorney general’s office, Karen Cacace, said she believes OSHA lacks the staffing to sufficiently deal with workplace safety violations in New York.

With the permission of the federal government, Cacace noted several states, including California, have already created their own agency for dealing with workplace safety issues arising in the private sector.

“If the state created an OSHA, the employees would be state employees and then they would be regulating the private workforce,” Cacace said in response to inquiries from lawmakers.

She said she was not immediately able to estimate how many inspectors would have to be hired should such an agency be launched with state funding.

Cacace acknowledged state law allows both the attorney general’s office and the state Department of Labor to take action to ensure the safety of workers on job sites, but noted there are legal questions following the resolution of a case the state brought against Amazon in 2021, dealing with conditions at the online retail company’s Staten Island facility.

After the state prevailed in a lower court, Amazon went to an appellate court and won an order dismissing the attorney general’s case on the basis the initial case was moot due to fact that the COVID-19 workplace guidance the state had wanted to enforce had later been withdrawn.

An OSHA spokesman based in Boston told CNHI there was no information immediately available about the total number of OSHA inspectors assigned to New York.

Data released by OSHA a year ago indicated the agency finished the 2021 fiscal year with the lowest number of inspectors in its nationwide ranks in decades — 750. Federal officials have acknowledged OSHA has faced challenges in hiring and retaining workplace inspectors.

A state version of OSHA could help fill the gaps in New York, Cacace suggested.

Asked by Assemblyman John McDonald, D-Albany County, if employers might be puzzled over whether they have to follow the federal OSHA rules or the mandates of a similar state entity, Cacace said the federal government can give states the green light to enforce their own state regulations for workplace safety.

“Once you do that, then it’s the state laws that would apply,” Carace explained. “So I don’t think there’d be any confusion about which laws are applying.”

California’s state occupational safety agency fielded complaints this month from staffers working with physically and developmentally disabled students. They said their agency is dangerously understaffed, leaving both workers and students at risk for injuries and violence, according to published reports.

Whether the proposal from New York’s attorney general’s office gains traction at the statehouse remains to be seen.

Justin Wilcox, executive director of Upstate United, a pro-business advocacy group, said he’s unconvinced the state needs its own OSHA.

“The last thing New York needs is an additional layer of bureaucracy,” Wilcox told CNHI.

The proposal for a state OSHA surfaced at an Assembly Labor Committee hearing led by the panel’s chairwoman, Assemblywoman Latoya Joyner, D-the Bronx.

Lawmakers are examining what Joyner said has been a steady increase in worker “quit and separation rates,” a phenomenon that reached an all-time high in 2021, the year after the pandemic reached New York.

Many industries have been impacted, and Joyner said it is important lawmakers gain an understanding of the forces driving the trend so they can craft solutions that benefit workers.