We are glad that Acting Manhattan state Supreme Court Justice Melissa Crane reads this page and that, just two weeks after we scolded her tardiness in an important government transparency case, she ruled mostly the right way.
Crane, rightly honoring the state Freedom of Information Law, directed the NYPD Pension Fund to hand over to the Empire Center for Public Policy the names of retired cops and the pension amounts they collect, consistent with the 2014 unanimous opinion of the state’s highest court. The names and dollars will now appear along with those of every other public pensioner on Empire Center’s invaluable See Through NY website.
Asterisk: Crane only ordered the disclosure of the data for cops who’ve retired since 2014. She ludicrously reasons that since the Empire Center never went to court to fight a denied FOIL request from 2014, it can only get post-2014 stuff.
How stupid. By that logic, anyone else in the world, except the Empire Center, is entitled to all the names.
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