Opinion

Met Council scandal gets closer to Speaker Silver

The probe into the reported theft of $5 million from the Metropolitan Council on Jewish Poverty by a key friend and ally of Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver is raising new questions about whether and how much Silver’s chief of staff, Judy Rapfogel, knew about the scam.

Rapfogel’s husband, William Rapfogel, is accused of conspiring for years to inflate Met Council payments to a small Long Island insurance brokerage in exchange for $1 million in kickbacks and illegal campaign donations to various candidates.

Judy Rapfogel denies any knowledge of her husband’s activities, notwithstanding that prosecutors say he stashed hundreds of thousands of dollars in their closet and gave their son $100,000 for an apartment.

Now it turns out that when she ran unsuccessfully for a City Council seat in 1997, her campaign spent a surprisingly disproportionate amount of money on auto insurance — nearly six times more than it did on renting campaign office space.

What makes this significant is that those premiums were paid to the very same brokerage that’s been implicated in her husband’s alleged scam. And the campaign treasurer was her husband’s sister. Moreover, hers appears to be the only campaign that the brokerage, Century Coverage Corp., has insured since records were computerized.

What does it all mean? It’s too early to say, but the criminal investigation by state Attorney General Eric Schneiderman and Comptroller Tom DiNapoli is ongoing.

Judy Rapfogel has been Silver’s top aide for decades, and he continues to defend her. Maybe it’s time he starts asking some serious questions, as well.