Good for Chief Judge Jonathan Lippman. He cut right to the heart of the matter during oral arguments this past week about keeping information about public pensions secret from New York’s taxpayers.
“What about the taxpayers’ right to know?” he repeatedly asked those who were arguing the pension info must be kept from the people who have to pay for them.
Here’s the background to this case. The Empire Center for New York Policy wants to post on its Web site the names of retired government workers and the size of their pensions. Disclosing this information is the norm in most every state. It was here, too, until 2010, when the police pension fund abruptly refused and was upheld by the courts. Other unions followed suit. The Empire Center appealed.
The good news is that during last Wednesday’s oral arguments of this appeal, the justices seemed skeptical of claims that disclosing the pension information (in this case, of retired teachers) would violate retirees’ privacy or leave them open to identity theft.
Let’s remember, too, that it’s not only curiosity that’s served by disclosure: It was precisely the availability of this kind of information that allowed The Post and others to expose public-pension disability scams involving the FDNY.
Moreover, knowing who gets what puts a clearer focus not just on the abuses, but also on the costs of New York’s increasingly overburdened public-pension system. Which is why the public-employee unions are working so hard to keep citizens in the dark about all the retirement benefits they are on the hook for.
In other words, we think the taxpayers would agree that it’s important for them to know not only that ex-state Sen. Carl Kruger and other corrupt pols are collecting lucrative pensions while behind bars, but that Schools Chancellor Carmen Fariña’s pay is augmented by a pension nearly equal to her $212,000 salary.
The Legislature could have resolved this situation by ironing out some ambiguities in the law that lower courts, to our mind, have consistently misinterpreted. But while the union-dominated Assembly has passed such a bill, Senate GOP leader Dean Skelos has blocked this fix by refusing to bring it to a vote.
Everyone in New York talks “transparency” these days, but few are willing to ensure it. Let’s hope the Court of Appeals shows Albany what real transparency means.