Assembly

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Politics, like the natural world, abhors a vacuum.

So imagine an alternate world where the Vito Lopez sexual harassment scandal actually forced Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver to resign the job he’s held since 1994.

On this Earth-2, the factionalized fight among the 100-some-odd Democrats to form the right combination of coalitions to determine a successor would make the 2009 Senate leadership coup look like a garden party.

In other words, the chaos we’ve seen in a chamber of 63 lawmakers would be transferred to a body more than twice its size — a cataclysm that would have a devastating impact as a slew of complex issues remain under negotiation.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo, naturally, stands the most to lose in such an equation as he pushes a post-budget agenda that he’ll need the powerful speaker to sign off on.

Cuomo yesterday a news conference said he didn’t equate Lopez’s alleged crimes with Silver’s office’s attempt to keep the initial sexual harassment complaints a secret.

“I believe the speaker mishandled the complaint and the situation,” Cuomo said. “It is different, however, than what Vito Lopez did, which is actually be the person who was abusing women. One is you didn’t handle it well, the other is the actual act.”

Silver, for better or worse, needs to stay in office to preside over a chamber he’s been able to skillfully keep in line for three decades now.

Yes, the speaker and the governor haven’t always gotten along since Cuomo took office in 2011.

They’ve sparred over keeping the millionaires tax and have even tried to one-up each other in news conferences and timed released of bill legislation.

But ultimately Cuomo needs stability in the state Legislature, especially given the volatile nature of the Senate, which is now under a power-sharing coalition of Republicans and four Democrats that tacitly received the governor’s backing.

Cuomo says it’s not his place to determine who leads the legislative conferences in another branch of government.

He’s likely mindful of the fights Eliot Spitzer tried to pick with Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno and Silver himself.

But he also knows the mindset of the rank-and-file lawmaker in Assembly. And at the end of the day, most seem to consider Silver to be a good boss who attends to their needs and listens to their complaints.

Cuomo knows that picking a fight with one Assembly speaker means he’s picking a fight with an entire legislative conference (minus Buffalo’s Michael Kearns) that could completely stall what’s left to do this spring.

The governor is already running smack into a wall of opposition in the Senate, where Republicans (and at least one Democrat) don’t want to hold a vote on a measure to strengthen abortion laws or allow for the public financing of political campaigns.

Silver is not an ally of Cuomo’s, but for a governor who has touted functionality of state government above all — three on-time budgets in a row is a major feather in his cap — stability in the Legislature is paramount.

Ultimately it appears there’s little chance of Silver losing his job anytime soon.

This is not the first time Silver has been criticized by newspaper editorial boards or unelected Republicans like state party chairman Ed Cox and it won’t be the last.

Kearns, who announced was splitting from the Democratic conference over the Lopez affair, was never supported by the Assembly leadership to begin with, having run on an anti-Silver platform. That’s political catnip to Buffalo voters.

Meanwhile, he held a news conference outlining his plans to change how sexual harassment cases are resolved in state government. And, in a rare moment of public contrition for the powerful speaker, Silver apologized.

“Mistakes were made,” Silver said, “and I deeply regret that.”

In the days after learning of allegations of sexual harassment made by legislative aides of Assemblyman Vito Lopez, top staffers to Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver said they were “disturbed” by the possibility of “sensationalized press,” according to the Joint Commission on Public Ethics report released this morning.

That concern, in part, would help drive the effort to keep more than $100,000 in settlement money a secret from the public and from members of the Assembly Ethics Committee.

The report also lays out that while lawyers for the Assembly staffers never explicitly sought a confidentiality clause in the settlement, it was the Assembly that pushed the language.

To be sure, the commission found no criminal or civil wrongdoing on the part of Assembly aides or Silver. The speaker admitted last year that keeping the settlement a secret was wrong, but the Assembly followed the proper guidelines.

Lopez, meanwhile, was accused in the report for violating the public for his conduct toward the women.

Staffers in January, along with Silver, met to discuss the allegations made by two women working in Lopez’s office that he had sexually harassed them over a period of months.

Concerns arose that celebrity attorney Gloria Allred was representing one of the woman.

“Legislative counsel Bill Collins “had concerns about the likelihood of sensationalized press, because Gloria Allred was one of the lawyers representing the women. (Silver aide Jim) Yates said that he was “disturbed” by this possibility as well.”

It was during that meeting that Silver agreed with the recommendations of his staff to enter into confidential mediation.

Silver “made clear” that he wanted to separate the Assembly’s interests and liability from Lopez. He said in the meeting the Assembly would only pay for its liability and what was potentially owed by Lopez, according to the report.

As the confidential mediation with Lopez, the Assembly and the staffers wore on, Lopez was able to hire three more women, two of whom would later accuse him of sexual harassment even as the settlement money was being approved.

A lawyer working in the Office of the Attoreny General recognized as an expert in employment law was contacted, who immediately determined the AG’s office could only work with the Assembly on a broad basis, given that the office only provides counsel during litigation.

The attorney told JCOPE that she was even unaware that it was Lopez who was accused of sexual harassment. The attorney would later tell JCOPE her office had ceased “confidential” settlement agreements.

Later the Assembly would contact Ken Kirschner, identified as an employment lawyer whom Silver was familiar with, to help with the confidentiality clause of the settlement.

In an email, Collins wrote to Kirschner “[m]oney flow and our desire to keep this away from media scrutiny complicates [sic] the resolution of this matter a bit.” Kearns’s notes also indicate a concern about publicity. In describing a conversation with Lopez’s counsel, Kearns noted that there are “quotes” in the recordings made by Complainant 1 that are “headline-making.”

After the Assembly Ethics Committee was made aware of the allegations of the first two women along with the subsequent allegations of the spring and summer of 2012, the panel voted to condemn Lopez’s actions and Silver’s office released the news widely.

As questions arose from the settlement money, Yates told Mariann Wang, a lawyer for two of the staffers, that the Assembly was under media pressure to explain the settlement terms.

The Assembly would later issue this statement: “The only instance in which a complaint would not be handled by the ethics committee would be if a victim insisted for reasons of personal privacy that it not go before the committee. The Assembly would only keep such a matter confidential at the express insistence of the victim.”

After Wang complained the statement was a “complete misrepresentation of the facts” Collins admitted her concern was “not inaccurate.”

No correction to the statement was made.

In speaking with the ethics panel, Silver “admitted that “maybe ‘insist’ was too strong a word.’”