The son of state Senate leader Pedro Espada Jr. today will resign from a specially created $120,000-a-year state job after The Post found he wasn’t at work and the attorney general launched a probe.
Pedro G. Espada’s sudden departure as the Senate’s “deputy director of intergovernmental relations” came as Attorney General Andrew Cuomo began looking into whether the elder Espada had arranged for the position in violation of state law.
The resignation also follows The Post’s discovery yesterday that the younger Espada was MIA from his new state job — which a source in Cuomo’s office said triggered his decision to bail out.
Since last Thursday, when he was put on the state payroll, Espada was supposed to be working at 250 Broadway, where the state Senate has a suite of offices. But yesterday, The Post watched him arrive at the Soundview Health Center in The Bronx in his white GMC Yukon at about 10 a.m.
His appearance at the center, where he has worked for eight years — and where his stepson told The Post Tuesday he was still working — comes after a source said this week that he hadn’t been seen at 250 Broadway.
Yesterday, the elder Espada walked outside the health center and insisted his son was no longer employed at Soundview as “director of environmental care” and was working full-time at his state post.
When pressed on why his son was in the building, the senator groped for an explanation: “His official date of resignation is when . . . I really don’t know. He’s cleaning out his personal stuff.”
Soon after, the son called a Post photographer’s cellphone and insisted he was in fact already at the Senate’s offices at 250 Broadway.
Later that afternoon, Senate Democrats agreed to show The Post a room purported to be the younger Espada’s office in the Senate’s 19th-floor suite at 250 Broadway.
But Espada — who arrived at the building only after being told that The Post was on the scene — seemed unfamiliar with the layout of the office suite. At one point, he appeared to take direction to his office from a Senate spokesman who chaperoned the interview.
The room was dark when Espada arrived, with nothing on the desk.
He appeared nervous and fiddled with his BlackBerry when asked to recount activities of the day.
He was unable to log on to the computer or point to a single item in the room that could confirm the office had belonged to him.
The younger Espada told his presumptive boss, Deputy Senate Secretary John Flateau, about his intention to resign at 5:30 p.m., shortly after his meeting with The Post and reports of the Cuomo probe.
“He informed him that he was going to be resigning because he didn’t want to be a distraction,” said Paul Rivera, a spokesman for the Senate Democratic majority.
In a statement last night, the elder Espada said he supported his son’s decision, adding:
“. . . after consulting with high-level staff in the Attorney General’s Office and reviewing the pertinent sections of the public-officers law, I believe this action is appropriate.”
Meanwhile, the Cuomo probe is looking at the Espada hiring because state law bans elected officials from participating in “any decision to hire, promote, discipline or discharge a relative” for any paid state position.
“Does anyone believe that the Senate Democrats hired Espada’s son without any input, direct or indirect, from his father the senator?” said a source close to Cuomo.
“And if there was input, the law may well have been broken.”
The Post has also learned that the younger Espada is spending time at a home in Connecticut.
On Tuesday, neighbors in the leafy community of Fairfield confirmed that Espada lived in a house with his wife and three children and that his white SUV left early each morning and returned late at night.
The younger Espada insisted he lives in Westchester, not Connecticut.
The Espadas and Senate Democrats also denied the son’s job was part of deal for his father to side with the Senate Democrats, giving them control of the chamber.
The elder Espada’s return to the Democratic fold ended a five-week legislative stalemate that began when Espada and another Senate Democrat sided with the Republicans.
Since the stalemate, several key coup players have secured perks and promotions for favored staffers.
Additional reporting by Liz Sadler and Fredric U. Dicker