The trustees of the city’s largest public pension fund have agreed to live up to the transparency demanded by the state Freedom of Information Law. Good move. Many thanks.

Meanwhile, the United Federation of Teachers thumbed its nose at the statute and shrouded key information in the Teachers’ Retirement System from public view.

From time immemorial, the city’s five pension funds had made public beneficiaries’ names and the amounts of their pensions. But then the Police Pension Fund chose secrecy and prompted a union rush toward withholding recipients’ identities.

Under the law, pension records are as available for public inspection as general payroll data, and for good reason. Openness can be an important check on skulduggery. For example, were a pension fund to conceal the names of recipients, no one could check on whether an individual was entitled to disability benefits.

The police fund claimed that confidentiality was needed to protect the safety of NYPD retirees. In a suit brought by the Empire Center taxpayer watchdog, a judge bought this lunatic argument and sanctioned the closure.

Although the decision will surely be overturned on appeal, and although teachers, clerks and other city workers have no security issues, the rest of the retirement systems followed suit.

Mayor Bloomberg and Controller John Liu managed to turn that back at the biggest fund, the New York City Employees Retirement System. With support from Public Advocate Bill de Blasio, all five borough presidents and, to its great credit, District Council 37, the NYCERS board declared that the data will again be available.

Bloomberg and Liu had no such luck at the Teachers’ Retirement System. Though the board favored transparency, the UFT used its veto to stay in violation of the law. Who cares about the law? Not President Michael Mulgrew.

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