We cried foul last year when Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver secretly shoveled $103,000 in taxpayer money to two women who had accused Assemblyman Vito Lopez of sexual harassment.
We did the same in 2006 when Shelly used nearly $500,000 in public moolah to settle sexual-harassment charges against his own chief counsel.
But now the top ethical minds in the state have weighed in. It turns out that we just didn’t understand Albany rules — where sex crimes are bad, but not the use of taxpayer dollars to make them disappear.
On Wednesday, the Joint Commission on Public Ethics presented charges against Mr. Harassment (Lopez) but cleared his enabler, Mr. Payoff (Silver).
No surprise there. JCOPE isn’t likely to lay charges at Shelly’s feet when the man’s own appointees on the commission have veto power over all its decisions.
Still, Albany remains a cesspit. So in line with the new ethical logic, we’ve come up with a way to play by Albany rules while still doing right by New Yorkers.
It’s called bringing Shelly into the light.
Here’s the deal: Silver gets a $5 million fund every year to make settlements in cases against his members. The catch is that he has to write his hush-money fund into the state budget — putting his $5 million request before the people every year.
No more closed-door meetings, no more back-alley settlements.
Instead, Shelly gets what he wants — a criminal class in Albany that’s protected from prosecution — while New York gets to see what he means by ethics.
For that, $5 million would be a bargain.