Opinion

Let the sun shine, Shelly

It looks like 2013 was a very, very good year for Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver. The man who single-handedly runs half our state Legislature got a raise of as much as $400,000 — all in his spare time.

Silver reported earning between $650,000 and $750,000 for his role “of counsel” to the tort-law powerhouse Weitz & Luxenberg, up from between $350,000 and $450,000 in 2012. That’s on top of the $121,000 he’s paid as the Assembly’s highest-ranking official.

Problem is, we don’t know what he does for all that cash. And Silver has labored mightily to ensure neither he nor any other lawyer-legislator will ever have to tell us.

Indeed, Shelly wouldn’t even disclose his outside income until forced to by a 2011 ethics law. And he furiously resisted when the anti-corruption Moreland Commission — saying part-time jobs create “the risk of criminal behavior” — demanded a full list of his and others’ clients. When Gov. Cuomo disbanded the commission in a backroom deal, they were all off the hook.

For more than three years now, The Post has pressed for a complete disclosure of this information. But while Silver insists he represents no clients doing state business, the problems go much deeper than that.

Silver, after all, has been a one-man roadblock to tort reform, which would seriously impact his firm’s earnings. He fights repeal of the Scaffold Law, a measure unique to New York that balloons the cost of construction projects. He named his firm’s founder to a judicial screening panel that will help select judges who later could preside over W&L’s lawsuits. And three upstate counties, which rely on Silver for funding, hired W&L to recover overbilled Medicaid funds.

Shelly’s not alone: The Senate’s top two leaders, Dean Skelos and Jeffrey Klein, also rake in six figures from their work for outside law firms.

Our solution has been the same for years: more sunlight, via full disclosure and full transparency. But Sheldon Silver remains Albany’s Prince of Darkness.