The New York City Police Pension Fund had no legal basis for refusing last year to release the names of retired police officers in response to a Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) request from the Empire Center, according to an appellate brief filed by the Center this week.

The Empire Center is appealing a December decision by Supreme Court Justice Carol E. Huff of Manhattan, who sided with the Pension Fund in its refusal to comply with the FOIL request. Names and pension benefits of more than 300,000 other retired public employees in New York — including all retired police from agencies outside New York City — already have been posted at SeeThroughNY.net, the Empire Center government transparency site.

In a brief filed with the Appellate Division of state Supreme Court, the Empire Center argues:

The singular refusal of the Fund to make public the names of the individual retirees currently receiving pensions makes it impossible for the Empire Center to provide comprehensive comparative data to the public, and frustrates the public’s ability to exercise oversight on the use of taxpayer funds. The Fund’s refusal violates its statutory duty under FOIL, and defeats FOIL’s core purposes of informing the public about the actions of government agencies and the expenditure of taxpayer funds.

The brief says Justice Huff’s decision was “based on a misreading of a law protecting the privacy of the beneficiaries of pensioners – a law that has no bearing on the names of pensioners themselves.”

Download a copy of the Empire Center’s appellate brief and record on appeal.