New York City has been ordered to pay the legal expenses of an Albany-based nonprofit group for withholding information about the number of undercover cops working for the police department.

Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Kathryn Freed ruled that the NYPD “failed to sustain its burden” of proving that the disclosure of that number — plus the total amount spent on salaries for the undercover cops — “would in any way endanger them, impede their work or give valuable information” to the targets of their investigations.

The information was sought under the state Freedom of Information Law by the Empire Center for Public Policy which, among other things, has a website called SeeThroughNewYork that provides salary information on city and state employees.

Although most of the information on the site involves individuals who are named, the Center in its FOIL request to the city said it would accept aggregate information about undercover cops — no names, just total numbers of cops and the total spent on their salaries— for the fiscal year ending in 2015.

The NYPD refused to release that data, saying that the disclosure of any information about undercover cops would “pose a security threat” and that made the data exempt from FOIL.

Freed said that the police department provided “an insufficient basis” to exempt the broader data from a FOIL request and ruled that the city should pay the Empire Center’s legal expenses because the organization had “substantially prevailed” in the lawsuit and “the information sought is of significant interest to the general public and there was no reasonable basis to withhold” it.

Tim Hoefer, executive director of the Center, said “this case was remarkable because the city refused to answer basic questions about how many people it was paying and what they were making.” He said the judge sent “a clear message to other government agencies that would hinder the public’s right to this type of information.”

© 2017 Daily News

You may also like

State’s Growing Budget Hole Threatens NYC Jobs and Aid as Congress Takes a Holiday

“The biggest problem for the state is the enormous, recurring structural budget gap starting next year and into the future,” said E.J. McMahon of the conservative-leaning Empire Center. “Cuomo clearly hopes that starting in 2021, (Democratic presidential candidate Joseph) Biden and a Democratic Congress will provide states and local government a couple of year’s worth of added stimulus. Read More

How Andrew Cuomo became ‘maybe the most powerful governor’ in U.S.

Ed McKinley ALBANY — When the New York Constitution was reorganized nearly 100 years ago to give the governor more power over the budget process,  noted there was a risk of making “the governor a czar." M Read More

Study disputes Cuomo on Trump tax package; experts say it’s complicated

Michael Gormley ALBANY — A new study by a conservative think tank says President Donald Trump’s 2017 tax law gave most New Yorkers a tax cut, even as Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo insists on repealing the measure because he says it will cost New Yo Read More

Empire Center sues Department of Health over nursing home records

Johan Sheridan ALBANY, N.Y. () — The Empire Center filed a  against the state Department of Health on Friday. “This case isn’t about assigning blame or embarrassing political leaders,” said Bill Hammond, the Empire Center’s Read More

Good news: That New York pork isn’t going out the door after all

The Empire Center first reported Tuesday that grants — 226 of them, totaling $46 million, to recipients selected by the governor and individual state lawmakers — seemed to still be going ahead. Read More

New York Lawmakers Seek Independent Probe of Nursing-Home Coronavirus Deaths

With lingering questions about how the novel coronavirus killed thousands of New Yorkers who lived in nursing homes, a group of state lawmakers is pushing to create an independent commission to get answers from the state Department of Health. Read More

Policy analyst: Cuomo wrong to write-off nursing home criticism as political conspiracy

“The importance of discussing this and getting the true facts out is to understand what did and didn’t happen so we can learn from it in case this happens again,” Hammond said. Read More

EDITORIAL: Nursing home report requires a second opinion

No doubt, the Health Department and the governor would like this report to be the final word on the subject. But if it’s all the same with them, we’d still like a truly independent review. Read More