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
Tag: Transparency
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
In a ruling that favored the Empire Center's position, a state Supreme Court justice in Brooklyn today ordered the New York City Fire Pension Fund to release the names as well as pension amounts of its retirees. Read More
If you want to have a grim sort of fun, go to the Empire Center online and take a look at the Spend-O-Meter, which keeps track of New York’s spending, according to the 2015-16 budget, in real time. The first thing you notice are the dollars spinning like pinwheels. Read More
In the digital age, government should be more open than ever. Unfortunately, it isn't. Read More