So, Speaker Shelly Silver can get the ethics machinery moving when he needs to.
Yesterday, Silver announced that Vito Lopez (D-Brooklyn) will be stripped of his Housing Committee chairmanship and have his legislative staff reduced, among other sanctions — after the bipartisan Assembly Ethics Committee determined that Lopez had engaged in “both verbal and physical sexual abuse” of female staffers.
The episodes — which included groping one staffer and trying to kiss and fondle another — apparently occurred from early June until mid-July, when the victims complained.
The entire process — from the time the harassment complaints were filed to the point when the case was heard and the sanctions finally announced — took little more than a month.
That’s warp speed for Albany — which by itself suggests that an interesting story may be lurking somewhere in the background.
After all, it was with Silver’s sufferance that Lopez parlayed millions of tax dollars into control of a social-services-delivery mega-empire — and the chairmanship of the Brooklyn Democratic Party.
Not to denigrate the seriousness of the charges at hand, but ethics and Vito Lopez have been strangers for a very long time.
Then again, this is an area in which Silver, of all people, should be extra-sensitive.
His former general counsel, Michael Boxley, pleaded guilty in 2003 to the sexual assault of an Assembly aide.
Another woman later stepped forward to upbraid Silver for not taking a prior rape accusation she made against Boxley in 2001 more seriously.
Instead, Silver publicly defended Boxley, and an internal inquiry decided that the charge was inconclusive — leaving Boxley free to assault again.
And there is one further question: If Silver can get the Ethics Committee moving to slap down Lopez, why is he dragging his feet over Naomi Rivera?
On Thursday, the State Joint Commission on Public Ethics opened an inquiry into charges that the Bronx assemblywoman gave two boyfriends publicly funded jobs and used a nonprofit as a personal ATM.
JCOPE thus joins the city Department of Investigation, the US attorney, the state attorney general and the Bronx DA in examining Rivera’s actions.
Leaving the Assembly Ethics Committee as the only oversight entity, well, overlooking what’s going on in Rivera’s world.
What’s the problem, Shelly?
Not “sexy” enough to be of interest?