Arrogant stonewalling under the leadership of Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver has verged into an unlawful coverup that must bring the end of his reign.
Silver’s longtime top laywer — a key figure in concealing Vito Lopez’s sexual harassment — reportedly defied a subpoena to conceal harassment by yet another Assembly member.
The speaker insists he knew nothing of William Collins’ coverup within a coverup. Take that denial for what it’s worth. At the least, on Silver’s watch, under a culture he fostered, his office deceived a duly authorized investigation.
Remember that it was Silver and his team who failed to properly investigate sexual harassment charges against Lopez in the first place. Instead, they conspired with the once-powerful Brooklyn Democrat to quietly settle the case — using $103,080 of taxpayers’ money while enabling Lopez to victimize yet more young female staffers.
When these facts came out last year, the Joint Commission on Public Ethics launched a probe and hit the Assembly with multiple subpoenas — including a demand for records of any sexual harassment cases not involving Lopez.
Despite Silver’s promise of full cooperation, however, the thousands of pages produced by the Assembly included nary a mention of a 2009 incident involving Assemblyman Micah Kellner — which only came to light last month, after JCOPE had closed the books on Lopez.
As with Lopez, Silver’s Assembly chose to bury the Kellner case rather than refer it the Ethics Committee. Nor, when JCOPE came calling, did they share his 15 pages’ worth of inappropriate computer messages to a female staffer.
The excuse is that the case was not technically covered by the subpoena because the victim never filed a formal complaint. Which is absurd, since everyone, including Silver, now recognizes the case as worthy of inquiry.
Whatever Collins did or did not do, the buck ultimately stops with Silver. Silver presides over a shop where hiding dirt and protecting the powerful is business as usual — and one of the ways that the speaker maintains leverage over his members. That culture has now led someone on Silver’s team to defy an ethics panel that Silver himself helped to establish.
Silver further rigged JCOPE so that his appointees could secretly veto investigations of him and his members — which is how he dodged formal charges in the original Lopez probe.
Assembly Democrats love to posture as champions of women and voted this year to impose tough sexual harassment requirements on private employers.
Yet they have stuck with Silver even as he has been repeatedly caught tolerating mistreatment of female staffers and covering up for perpetrators. Only by finally removing Silver as their speaker can they live down that shame.
