Look up your NYPD Blue Mafia's pension pay-out.
Here read this:
"NY’s Top Court Orders Disclosure of Union Pension Record
By JACOB GERSHMAN — Wednesday, May 7th, 2014 ‘The Wall Street Journal’ / New York, NY
New York’s highest court on Tuesday held that the names of state and local government retirees receiving pensionsmay not be shielded from the public.
The 6-0 decision by the New York Court of Appeals, which reversed a consistent string of lower court rulings, was a setback to public employee unions in the state that have fought for years to prevent a conservative fiscal watchdog group in Albany from collecting the pension records and including them in a searchable database.
The Empire Center for New York State Policy submitted a Freedom of Information Law request to the New York State Teachers’ Retirement System and the New York City Teachers’ Retirement System, asking for a list all retired members of the fund, including names, and their gross annual benefits.
The teacher pension funds argued that the release of the data would create an “unwarranted invasion of personal privacy.”
Lower appellate courts agreed, citing a 1983 state ruling that exempted the names of pension beneficiaries and their addresses from disclosure. The Empire Center argued that it wasn’t seeking any addresses.
After a lower court ruled against the center in 2011 in a separate case involving retiredNew York City police officers, the teacher funds resisted handing over the records as well.
“The idea that anyone’s privacy will beinvaded is speculative,” wrote Judge Robert S. Smith in Tuesday’s ruling. The court also directed the retirement systems to pay the Empire Center’s litigationcosts.
Timothy Hoefer, executive director of the center, called the decision “a huge win for the public’s right to know.”
The group has posted online the names and pension benefits of hundreds of thousands of retired state and city employees in New York. The database has been widely used by media outlets to track spending patterns and put a spotlight on individual cases, such as so-called double-dippers who collect pension benefits and a public salary at the same time.
“We are disappointed with a decision that allows a right-wing think tank to get the names of pensioners in order to embarrass them,” said Carl Korn, a spokesman for New York State United Teachers, a statewide teachers’ union.
A spokesperson for the state teachers’ retirement system wasn’t immediately available for comment."
