Superb: Government pensions must be disclosed

Subject: Superb: Government pensions must be disclosed Tue Mar 25, 2014 5:26 am

It’s an open-and-shut case: The public has a right to know which retired public employees are earning pensions and just how much they’re pocketing.

Superb: Government pensions must be disclosed Court-room-web

Superb: Government pensions must be disclosed Court-room-web

It is relevant to taxpayers, for instance, that Schools Chancellor Carmen Fariña collects $199,579 a year over and above her $212,614 salary. And that groper and former state Assemblyman Vito Lopez gets more than $64,000 annually in retirement pay.

From top officials to rank-and-file employees, these are taxpayer-funded disbursements about which government has a responsibility to be transparent. Period.

It should be just that simple for the seven judges on New York’s highest court when, on Wednesday, city and state pension funds argue to keep secret the names of retired public employees earning, collectively, billions of dollars .

Chief Judge Jonathan Lippman and Associate Judges Sheila Abdus-Salaam, Victoria Graffeo, Eugene Pigott, Susan Read, Jenny Rivera and Robert Smith should excoriate the funds for their actions — and slam a slew of lower-level judges who have aided the cover-up.

This all started a few years ago when a think tank, the Empire Center for New York State Policy, requested the names of retirees and the amounts of their pensions.

The funds turned over only dollar figures — no names. Which is about as helpful as seeing crime stats without locations or years attached.

The denial, which reversed longstanding law and practice, relied on a tortured reading of the law that confused who’s a retiree (a pension recipient) and who’s a beneficiary (the surviving spouse of a deceased pensioner). The former have always been public; the latter have never been.

And over the years, through bad ruling after bad ruling, the courts cemented the confusion.

Now, all five city pension funds and the statewide teachers retirement fund keep basic information secret. Only the two funds overseen by state Controller Tom DiNapoli disclose what they should.

Open the blinds and let the sun shine in.

http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/public-article-1.1732438

Superb: Government pensions must be disclosed

Superb: Government pensions must be disclosed

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