(Shannon DeCelle)
A former state Assembly worker now running for state Senate yesterday claimed she, too, was once the subject of harassment by Albany pols and called for an investigation into Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver.
“Vito Lopez is just a smoke screen and coverup for something much bigger,” blasted Senate hopeful Monica Arias Miranda.
“Why are elected officials calling for Mr. Lopez’s resignation yet are not willing to say the same about the speaker, who is the one responsible for using $100,000 of tax-dollar money to hush the sexualharassment allegations?”
Miranda called a press conference to claim she was harassed — beginning in 2006, when she landed a job as a budget analyst for the Assembly Ways and Means Committee, until 2008 — and rattled off a litany of alleged incidents at the hands of what she called the “good-ol’-boy culture.”
At one point, Miranda said her boss, whom she did not publicly name, regularly told her, “Resistance is futile.”
Miranda praised the four women who came forward with sexual-harassment claims that last month got longtime Assemblyman Lopez ousted as chairman of the Housing Committee and stripped of much of his power.
Lopez’s accusers were paid $103,080 in a “hush money” deal approved by Silver.
“I stand here today to ask other victims to step forward,” Miranda said. “Stepping up to speak on something like this, especially when those involved are powerful people, [is] very scary.”
Miranda denied suggestions that she was speaking out in a bid to better her chances in Thursday’s primary, where she is up against two other Democrats in a battle for the 46th Senate District seat in Albany Country.
She said she didn’t previously speak up about the “harassment, intimidation and culture of perversion” in Albany “because no one would hear me.’’
Miranda claims a formal complaint she filed against her boss was ignored and she was retaliated against.
She doesn’t claim any physical contact but says female staffers were given demeaning nicknames in the office and routinely humiliated and treated to derisive comments.
Miranda rattled off a list of more than a dozen Albany Statehouse scandals since 2004 — including former top Silver aide Michael Boxley’s rape arrest.
“I am demanding a full investigation by the state attorney general and/or an independent body, she said, blasting Gov. Cuomo’s newly formed independent Joint Commission on Public Ethics as ineffective.
An Assembly spokeswoman said Miranda never filed a harassment complaint.