An opinion from New York’s highest court last month begins as follows:

Petitioner, a New York City police officer, retired in 2004 and was awarded accident disability benefits. In the following years, the police department received information indicating that petitioner was not disabled; that he had made false representations to the Pension Fund; and that he had ingested cocaine, thus becoming ineligible to return to duty. The City, understandably, claims that it should not have to continue paying him a pension.

Under New York law, however, the City is wrong, the court reluctantly concludes. Meanwhile (via Philip Howard’s Common Good) a New York law forbidding the closure of a unionized facility without a year’s notice has meant that a disused juvenile detention center upstate is being kept going with no clients: New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo says “We’re paying 30 staff people to baby-sit an empty building,” and calls it “bizarre.” And another state law requires that school districts field buses with capacity to seat every eligible child every day, which means that in districts like Port Washington, L.I., where many eligible children come to school by other means, buses routinely travel half full, at an unneeded cost the Port Washington superintendent estimates at $2 million a year.

Filed under: New York, public employment, schools