The dark secrets of federal pensions

[Geee]

Washington Times:

It’s national Sunshine Week across America. During this week, good-government groups advocate for open government and transparency. One area that remains hidden is federal pensions.

 

Imagine if you could review your congressman’s pension, including amount contributed, years to break even and total payout to life expectancy. Or what if taxpayers could view the pensions of former Internal Revenue Service chief Lois Lerner or former Secret Service boss Julia Pierson? But we don’t know because we can’t see them. The data is not merely opaque, but literally housed and hidden in a Cold War-era underground complex in Pennsylvania.

 

Recently, our organization, American Transparency, filed a Freedom of Information Act request to reveal individual federal pensions. The Office of Personnel Management rejected it as “a clear unwarranted invasion of personal privacy.” Still, our request for the active salaries of the 2.5 million federal employees was fulfilled, with seven-year histories. We post these salaries on our website, OpenTheBooks.com.

 

But if active salaries (by name) can be transparent, why would posting federal retiree pension amounts, service credits and contributions be an invasion of privacy? The same privacy law underlies both records. The Obama administration’s legal argument against revealing pension data is arbitrary.