Office of Information Practices

U Memo 19-15
June 28, 2019
Judges’ Pension Information

Requester sought records relating to two judges’ “IRA’s and pensions with financial institutions or national banking associations.”   The Employees’ Retirement System (ERS) denied access and advised Requester that it did not maintain records of the judges’ accounts with financial institutions or national banking associations, and the records that it did maintain–estimates of pension eligibility for one judge–were protected from disclosure under the UIPA.

OIP concluded that ERS does not offer individual retirement accounts, so ERS was not required to search for records of such accounts in order to determine that it did not maintain them.  ERS’s response that it did not maintain the requested records (with the exception of the estimates of service retirement benefits for one judge) was proper under the UIPA.  ERS also properly withheld that judge’s estimates of service retirement benefits.  Because the judge had a significant privacy interest in the records that was not outweighed by the public interest in disclosure, they fell under the UIPA’s privacy exception.  See HRS §§ 92F-13(1) (2012) and -14(a) and (b)(6) (2012).