CONTACT: Tim Hoefer

(518) 434-3100

The Empire Center has sued two City of New York pension funds–and the New York City Council–for failure to release public records as required by the state Freedom of Information Law (FOIL).

The lawsuits involve three separate Article 78 proceedings:

The lawsuit against the New York City Police Pension Fund, which denied a January 22, 2010 request for names and pensions of retiree police officers has been submitted to the Supreme Court, New York County, for a decision based upon the written arguments submitted by the parties.

The New York City Fire Department Pension Fund, which denied a March 22, 2010 request for pension records, had not responded, as FOIL requires, to the Center’s multiple requests, prior to being served Article 78 papers.

In the third case, the Empire Center argues the City Council violated state law when it failed to comply with a March 1, 2010 FOIL request for information about the Council’s “discretionary” funding, also known as initiative-based or member-item grants. The Council has promised to deliver the data by September 22.

In contrast, three other city pension funds recognize the names of retirees and their taxpayer-financed pensions legally are public information. The city’s Teachers’ Retirement System, Board of Education Retirement System and Employees’ Retirement System all granted similar requests. In addition, so have the New York State Teachers’ Retirement System and New York State and Local Retirement System, whose members include police and firefighters outside New York City.

The lawsuits have already produced one result. After being notified of the Empire Center’s legal action, Council Speaker Christine Quinn announced that the information sought would be released to the Center by Wednesday. “It should not have taken this long … It will not happen again,” Ms. Quinn told the New York Daily News.

“This is a victory for taxpayers throughout New York,” said Tim Hoefer, operations director of the Center and its SeeThroughNY website. “We applaud Speaker Quinn for acknowledging the tardiness of the Council’s response to our FOIL and for her commitment to expanding openness in the future.”

In its effort to promote government transparency, the Empire Center launched SeeThroughNY.net two years ago. The site includes the salaries of 1.5 million public employees, pensions of 478,000 retirees, office expenditures of state legislators and state legislative pork barrel projects, as well as a benchmarking feature that allows users to compare various kinds of municipal and school data.