One of New York’s top public employee unions just ejected 100 members. The goal: to escape federal oversight.

The Public Employees Federation did nothing illegal in shedding its only private-sector local, which represents clerical workers and technicians at Eastern Niagara Hospital, and encouraging the affiliate to join health care workers union 1199SEIU.

But the move is still noteworthy, since PEF has already lost about 54,000 dues-paying members, according to the Empire Center’s Ken Girardin, in the year since the US Supreme Court’s Janus ruling boosted workers’ rights to escape union fees.

Dropping the private local lets PEF avoid tougher federal disclosure rules meant as safeguards against mob influence and corruption. The union now only has to satisfy New York’s Taylor Law, which doesn’t require annual disclosure of union assets, receipts or expenditures. The feds also no longer have oversight of the union’s elections.

As Girardin points out, this means PEF will no longer have “to explain what it does with the $36 million in dues it collects each year from members.” Reporters and the public will no longer be able to pull up PEF salaries, spending and other financial details online.

Yet the union has some history of corruption. A top PEF officer was convicted in 2003 on federal charges for promising to steer union work to a PR consultant in exchange for campaign help. In 2014, a local leader was arrested for spending over $30,000 in union dough on personal expenses.

Kevin Jones, a dissident member of PEF’s executive board, told the Times Union that when it comes to union elections, free speech rights and internal political disputes, New York law has fewer teeth than federal regs. “It’s a big disservice to union members that the state doesn’t protect their right to see where the money winds up or ensure that union executives are following their own rules,” Girardin told the paper.

The Trump administration is looking at a regulatory change that would restore PEF’s transparency obligations: The rule would apply federal disclosure and election oversight to any union whose national affiliate (like the SEIU, in PEF’s case) represents private sector workers in at least one state.

Then again, if Gov. Andrew Cuomo and the Legislature wanted to protect workers’ rights, they could toughen New York law on their own.