Judge Orders Former State Legislator to Pay Fines

A state judge has ordered former Assemblyman Vito Lopez to pay the $330,000 in fines that he owes for sexually harassing female staff members. Lopez resigned his Assembly seat in 2013, not long after he was censured and stripped of his committee chairmanship in the wake of allegations he harassed two female staff members.

After the Joint Commission on Public Ethics (JCOPE) released a report which found that he violated the Public Officers Law on a number of occasions, the Legislative Ethics Commission fined him $10,000 for each of the 33 instances of harassment cited in the JCOPE report. It was the largest fine ever assessed against a state lawmaker.

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