Metro

Sheldon Silver closing Micah Kellner’s district offices

ALBANY— There’s not much reason for Assemblyman Micah Kellner to go to work any more.

Speaker Sheldon Silver announced Wednesday that he’s closing both Kellner’s district office and his Albany office and is reducing his staff budget to zero after determining that the Manhattan legislator “engaged in additional sexual harassment beyond the matters that were the subject of the 2013 investigation”.

Silver also said Kellner hired an intern for his Manhattan office after specifically being told last year he could no longer do that.

In a letter to Kellner the Speaker noted that an investigation last year found Kellner made inappropriate comments to a female staffer from 2009 to 2011. At that time Kellner was stripped of his leadership role as chairman of the Libraries Committee and was told not to employ any more interns.

But according to the Assembly Ethics Committee’s most recent findings, Kellner had an intern working in his office, obstructed a mandatory climate survey of the office and engaged in the “additional sexual harassment.”

There was no immediate response from Kellner’s office.

The Manhattan assemblyman, who is not seeking re-election, is firing back at Silver saying his recent sanctions are politically motivated.

“Speaker Silver’s decision to close my offices is a classic example of the politics of personal destruction,” said Kellner is a statement Wednesday.

Kellner claims because he was granted “due process”, by a Silver appointed judge, in an appeal of the first sanctions, and was granted the right to see the evidence against him, the new charges and sanctions were made out of spite.

“The Ethic Committee is grasping at these new allegations and its secret star chamber report as weapons to prejudice the appeals officer against me while simultaneously trying to get me to drop the appeal,” Kellner said.