State Comptroller Tom DiNapoli comes from Long Island but is a creature of Albany’s dark corridors — as secret e-mails released by his office last week confirm.
DiNapoli said last month he had nothing to do with the $103,000 payout that settled the Gropez scandal — the serial sexual attacks perpetrated by Assemblyman Vito Lopez and the efforts of Assembly Speaker Shelly Silver to cover them up.
But that was all baloney.
DiNapoli’s office actually wrote portions of the settlement and advised Assembly lawyers throughout, according to internal e-mails released through a Freedom of Information Law request filed by The Post.
Though his office said it was not a party to negotiations, the truth is that it was “extensively involved” from the first, and that top lawyers from DiNapoli’s stable “went on to provide formal advice to Silver’s legal staff on how to financially craft the settlement,” The Post reported Thursday.
So DiNapoli says one thing.
The truth rebuts him.
Two of DiNapoli’s top staffers have been subpoenaed by the Joint Commission on Public Ethics — though DiNapoli himself has so far managed to stay above the fray.
He’s too smart for that — decades in Albany taught him not to leave fingerprints at a crime scene — so no memos or e-mails seem to have passed his desk while the settlement and coverup were being planned.
But it’s simply impossible to believe that he was unaware of the arrangements.
Still, we doubt he lost any sleep worrying about whether to approve the checks that were inked for Lopez’s accusers.
What’s that? You thought the state comptroller was an independent official who worked for the betterment of New York?
Alas, DiNapoli was installed in his office by Shelly Silver in 2007. So when Silver told him to pony up the $103,000 settlement, DiNapoli did exactly that.
It’s clear that he lacks the will to think for himself and the scruples to stop a deal that ripped off taxpayers to hide Lopez’s shameful misconduct. The e-mails show DiNapoli knew what was happening in Lopez’s office — and what was being done to save his skin.
Which makes him nothing more than Shelly Silver’s puppet.
Which is why the speaker gave him his job in the first place.