Following the agency’s illegal refusal to turn over basic data, the Empire Center for Public Policy today filed a lawsuit in state Supreme Court in Kings County against the Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) over the Authority’s failure to follow the Freedom of Information Law (FOIL). Read More
Following a court ruling ordering the New York City Fire Pension Fund to release the names and pension amounts of retirees, the Uniformed Fire Officers Association is vowing to continue efforts to keep the records from being made public. Read More
If you’ve spent any time at a little league baseball or soccer game, or any children's sporting event, you know the cry of "hustle up" means move faster. It’s a way adults try to keep the game moving—and remind the players of what they ought to be doing. Read More
Calling the ruling "another win for transparency," a state judge has ordered the New York City Fire Pension Fund to release the names and pension amounts of its retirees to a fiscal watchdog group. Read More
New Yorkers are used to seeing the leaders of various municipal employees unions get hot and bothered about relatively trivial issues. It's who they are; it's what they do. Being anything but shrinking violets, these outspoken union bosses like the attention their outrage generates. And being seen as standing up in defense of their supposedly put-upon members always helps when they run for re-election. But even understanding that phenomenon, we're at a loss to understand the righteous indignation of several fire unions over a ruling that the New York City Fire Pension Fund must make public the name and pension amounts received by retirees. Read More
After five years of lawsuits and appeals, a Brooklyn judge has definitively upheld the right to know who’s drawing public pensions and how much they’re being paid. Read More
The names of former New York City firefighters and the public pensions they are receiving must be released under the state Freedom of Information Law to a group that is building a database of public employee pensioners, a judge ruled. Read More
Municipalities are not required by law to maintain websites. They come with a cost, they need to be maintained and they require a certain amount of in-house computer savvy to keep current. Nevertheless, good websites should be part of every municipal package because their value to taxpayers is well worth the effort. Several area municipalities took that seriously after receiving a failing grade last November when the Empire Center for Public Policy released a SeeThroughNY Website Report Card on municipal websites. The center examined 500 websites for contact information, spending date, labor contracts and public meeting records, and the ease of locating those items, and graded them accordingly. Read More