The identification of World Trade Center victims' remains is at risk of being slowed or even halted because of cuts under the state budget, the city medical examiner told lawmakers.
Charles Hirsch told a City Council budget hearing Monday that the job of matching remains for the hundreds of unidentified dead is in peril if the city does not restore a $16 million cut to his agency's funding, the New York Post reported.
"The work of our DNA laboratory will be greatly slowed, reducing our responsiveness to district attorneys and the NYPD," Hirsch said. "We will find it very difficult to continue our ongoing efforts to identify victims of the World Trade Center disaster."
More than 1,120 victims out of the 2,752 killed in the trade center attack nearly 10 years ago have had no remains identified.
The Legislature has not yet voted on the state spending plan.
