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The Joint Commission on Public Integrity’s investigation of Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver’s “confidential” cash settlement with two women who accused Assemblyman Vito Lopez of Brooklyn of sexual harassment will likely wrap up before the Nov. 6 elections, The Post has learned.
State lawmakers, sources said, want the probe finished by then to clear the way for a special legislative session right after the elections that could vote to grant lawmakers a much-anticipated pay raise.
The “base’’ salary of the lawmakers has been frozen at $79,500 a year since 1999.
“There’s no way we’re going to have a pay-raising session until this investigation is over, until the cloud is, hopefully, lifted,’’ said a source close to the Legislature.
A source close to JCOPE said the agency was working “full-bore’’ on the probe, which is designed, in part, to determine if Silver violated state ethics laws or criminal statutes in approving the $103,080 payment, which was not made public.
Some key officials speculate that JCOPE will determine Silver’s settlement wasn’t illegal or even “secret’’ — as has been charged by critics — since aides to Attorney General Eric Schneiderman and state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli reviewed portions of the settlement in advance.
Silver, who admitted erring by agreeing to keep the payment from the public, said the women who received the money had demanded anonymity.
Staten Island DA Dan Donovan is conducting a criminal probe of Lopez’s conduct in the wake of the Assembly ethics committee’s finding, subsequent to the settlement, that the disgraced ex-Brooklyn Democratic chairman sexually harassed two other women.
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Aides to Gov. Cuomo are furious at the state’s largest public-employee union for claiming days ago that it was ready to settle a long-running dispute over care of people who are mentally disabled — but then failing to offer a single suggestion on how to do so.
The dispute involves a Cuomo-sponsored new law creating the Justice Center for the Protection of People with Special Needs to investigate reports of abuse of severely disabled people at state-run and state-funded facilities.
The Civil Service Employees Association has refused for months to negotiate a schedule of administrative penalties for workers found guilty of patient abuse or neglect — saying it would do so only if the state agreed to pay $4 million-plus in questionable health-care bonuses to its members.
The deadlock appeared broken two weeks ago, when CSEA officials notified Lawrence Schwartz, Cuomo’s secretary, that chief union negotiator Ross Hanna would put a new proposal on the table.
An aide to Schwartz called Hanna, “but he wouldn’t even agree to meet with the state, much less put any new proposal on the table. He had nothing,’’ said a source familiar with the situation.
“It’s an insult to the public. It’s disrespectful to the disabled population and their families, and it suggests that the union leadership is speaking out of both sides of its mouth,’’ the source continued.
CSEA has refused for months to negotiate the penalty schedule unless the state gives 1,700 workers special bonuses of up to $3,000 each for agreeing to drop out of the state’s costly health-insurance plan.