Hasta La Vista, Vito!
Assemblyman Lopez will resign amid sex scandal...to run for city council
ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) — Democratic Assemblyman Vito Lopez said Friday he will resign, not for the sordid claims of sexual harassment of women staffers over, but to run for New York City council.
The veteran Brooklyn lawmaker and one-time powerful borough political boss has been under growing pressure to resign. Last year, it was revealed the state secretly paid two women staffers $103,000 to settle the first sexual harassment claims against him. Two more young women staffers he hired to replace them started reporting sexual harassment claims against them even as the settlement was being worked out last summer.
Two blistering reports this week, from a special prosecutor and the state’s Joint Commission on Public Ethics, painted an ugly picture of unwanted comments and contact from the 71-year-old assemblyman, but said there was no evidence to charge him with a crime.