A little too close? Assembly Speaker Shelly Silver (r) has vexed five governors, including Andrew Cuomo (l) — who seems terrified of him. (AP)
Regarding the Vito Lopez sex-abuse scandal, here is what Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver had to say this week: “The degradation and emotional duress endured by the young women who were harassed while they served in the Assembly weighs heavily on me. I accept the criticism.”
Here’s the simultaneous translation from Albany-speak: “I would like to apologize to the woman who had to sandpaper Vito’s fingerprints off her upper thighs, as well as the young ladies who had to put up with that lecherous Quasimodo leering through the second and third buttons of their shirts, and so on and so forth, blah, blah, blah. I thought it was just boys being boys.
“Now I see the political damage these things can cause when they become public. So I’m sorry, my bad, won’t happen again.
“To prove it, I’ll ask my colleagues to pass a bill saying I can’t do it again. And they will do that, because . . .well, because they just will.
“So, case closed. May we please get back to business as usual?”
Don’t you just love it? Shelly accepts the criticism, but not the consequences. Big of him.
Consequences, of course, rarely attach to misconduct in Albany. As long as people like Silver stand one millimeter inside the line separating moral misdemeanors from actual felonies, everything is good.
And because people like Silver — and Lopez — write the laws, that line is embarrassingly easy to walk. Albany has been a notorious piggery for decades, with Lopez’s antics only slightly more loathsome than the norm.
And, of course, Silver did his level best to cover them up — not for the first time. He’d engineered secret, taxpayer-funded payoffs — that is, “settlements” — not only to a pair of Lopez’s many victims, but also to the victims of a former top aide, who had preyed on female Assembly staffers.
How many other “settlements” have there been? That’s anybody’s guess — but it would be foolish to believe the total is none.
Because, why shouldn’t there be others? Shelly Silver, speaker of the house, is in many respects the most powerful politician in the Empire State. He got that way by playing exquisitely close attention to his Democratic colleagues’ needs — and when he calls upon colleagues to perform a service for him, who dares say no? Or would even be inclined to?
Silver has vexed five governors since assuming the speakership in 1994:
* Mario Cuomo, Andrew’s father, who was just leaving.
* George Pataki, who soon learned to go along to get along.
* Eliot Spitzer, who — before his own spectacular fall from grace — painfully discovered that steamrolling is for highway construction, not Albany politics.
* David Paterson, who was, well, just befuddled.
* And Andrew Cuomo, whose ambitious 2010 reform platform was essentially shredded by Silver — and who now appears to be bug-eyed terrified of the man.
“I don’t see any comparison between what Vito Lopez did and what Shelly Silver did,” says Cuomo. “There is a magnitude of difference.”
Yes, the difference between committing sexual abuse, and covering it up.
The difference between a powerful condemnation of a despicable abuse of power, and docile acceptance of it.
The difference between reforming Albany, and being consumed by it.
Cuomo talks a strong, but shockingly imprecise, reform agenda.
New York needs specifics.
Now.
Specifics that deal not only with the issues raised by the Lopez affair and its accompanying coverups and payoffs. There is also the humiliating — but by no means surprising — series of indictments and arrests that have been so prominent in the news lately.
So Cuomo has two discrete scandals — either one proper grounds to scrub Albany clean. The opportunity is obvious, if not the commitment.
Sure, as they say, governors propose and legislatures dispose. So Cuomo needs to propose, before the moment passes. And if Silver doesn’t feel like disposing, well, then, Cuomo needs to think about deposing — the speaker.
Cuomo murmurs that such interference would have constitutional consequences. But that’s nonsense. Just ask former Senate Majority Leader Ralph Marino, dumped in a snow bank by Pataki the same year Silver rose to power.
Indeed, Cuomo got it right when he took office:
“The words ‘government in Albany’ have become a national punchline, and the joke is on us,” said the governor on Inauguration Day, 2011.
It still is.
Your move, Andrew. Shelly’s not going to fix himself.