The state’s highest court ruled Wednesday that the names but not the addresses of retirees who receive public pensions must be disclosed according to the provisions of New York’s Freedom of Information Law.

The decision decided an action brought in 2012 by the fiscally conservative Empire Center for New York State Policy, which sought disclosure of the names of those receiving pensions from the state Teachers’ Retirement System and the system covering retired teachers in New York City.

The 6-0 decision is “a big boost to the public’s right to know,” said E.J. McMahon, the president of the Empire Center.

The think tank’s six-year-old SeeThroughNY database compiles payroll and pension information as well as other data. Its most current data for the teachers’ systems covers 2010, while its information for the state Employees Retirement System is current to 2013.

The most recent data show about 136,000 members of the state teachers system and another 68,000 for the New York City system.

“If you want to think about how important it is, contemplate how it would have been if it had gone the other way,” McMahon said. “We wouldn’t have gotten any new information in the future about who’s receiving public pensions.”

Attorneys for the Times Union supported the think-tank in the case.

The decision turned on the definition of a “beneficiary of a public employees’ retirement system,” according to state Public Officers Law.

In what McMahon called “a strange misreading” of past decisions, lower courts that had ruled on the Empire Center’s appeal had interpreted the word to mean any recipient of a pension, while the Court of Appeals fell back on the narrower past definition “a family member of an employee or retiree who is entitled to benefits after the employee’s or retiree’s death.”

Those individuals’ names and addresses will remain exempt from FOIL.

The court acknowledged the educators retirement systems complained the disclosures of names should be denied as an “unwarranted invasion of personal privacy.”

“They suggest that, by the use of modern technology, it might not be difficult for someone with a list of the names of retirees to find most, if not all, of their home addresses, thus frustrating the purpose of (the exemptions in Public Officers Law) and exposing the retirees to intrusive communications,” the decision said. “On this record, however, the idea that anyone’s privacy will be invaded is speculative.”

“It doesn’t invade anyone’s privacy any more than the Internet already does,” McMahon said, adding that the same argument could be used to prevent all public disclosure of taxpayer-funded salaries and benefits.

The center now plans to seek updated lists from the teachers systems, and similar data for retired New York City police officers who had initially refused its request.

© 2014 Albany Times Union