Top aide to Gov. Josh Shapiro faced sexual harassment complaint months before his abrupt resignation, documents show

The sudden resignation this week of Mike Vereb, Gov. Josh Shapiro’s top liaison to the General Assembly, followed an accusation that he’d sexually harassed an aide earlier this year, according to documents reviewed by The Inquirer and sources familiar with the matter.

Vereb’s accuser, who worked for him for less than two months before resigning her position in March, said he repeatedly made sexual advances toward her and lewd remarks about other staffers and a female state senator. Ultimately, the accuser alleged, when she reported his behavior to higher-ups in Shapiro’s office, Vereb retaliated against her.

“I was uncomfortable with how Mike was acting in the office — his constant sexually charged comments, and how he was addressing work-related issues,” the woman said in a March 22 statement to investigators with the state Office of Equal Employment Opportunity, part of the executive branch. The statement and a separate complaint that the accuser filed with the independent state Human Relations Commission in June were both obtained by The Inquirer this week.

Vereb, 56, whom Shapiro appointed to his cabinet in January as his Secretary of Legislative Affairs, did not respond to multiple requests for comment. His accuser — whose name The Inquirer is withholding because of her sexual harassment allegations — declined to comment.

But the documents detailing her allegations shed new light on the circumstances leading up to the abrupt resignation of a man who had been one of Shapiro’s top allies in Harrisburg for two decades.

They come months after an earlier sexual misconduct scandal rocked Democrats in Harrisburg, prompting the resignation of then-Rep. Mike Zabel (D., Delaware), and raised questions about when the governor’s office was first informed of the woman’s accusations against Vereb and what steps the administration may have taken to address them.

A spokesperson for the governor declined to answer questions Thursday about the woman’s allegations or Vereb’s departure, saying the decision was a private personnel matter. But, the spokesperson said, the Shapiro administration “takes allegations of discrimination and harassment seriously.”

“Robust procedures are in place for thoroughly investigating reports of discrimination and harassment,” said Shapiro press secretary Manuel Bonder in a statement. “These procedures are implemented whenever complaints of discrimination or harassment are made and provide detailed guidance to help ensure that allegations are promptly and fully investigated and that employees feel comfortable to report misconduct.”

It remains unclear just how far the complaint against Vereb progressed through the investigative process of the EEO and the Human Relations Commission — both of which handle complaints of workplace discrimination from government employees and typically conduct their probes in secret.

The commission’s chief counsel declined to confirm the existence of a complaint, discuss the extent to which it had an opportunity to vet the accuser’s account, or whether the governor’s office had been notified. Under the state statute laying out the commission’s process, implicated parties must be notified of allegations filed against them within 30 days.

Chuck Pascal, a lawyer representing Vereb’s accuser, said Wednesday that a complaint was filed to the commission in June, but declined to discuss the allegations it contained. Pascal added in a statement that he “cannot at this time confirm the existence of any settlement, agreement, or other resolution of this matter.”

State Rep. Abby Major (R., Armstrong) said that Vereb’s accuser confided in her about her experiences with the secretary in March, after Major came forward with her own accusations of sexual harassment by Zabel. Vereb’s accuser later shared a copy of the complaint with her in July, saying it had been filed with the Human Relations Commission a month prior.

The woman’s accusations gained new notice in the last week as copies of her supposedly confidential complaint and statement to EEO investigators began circulating among lawmakers and lobbyists in Harrisburg, prompting hushed conversations about Vereb and his future with the governor’s office.

In the statement, the accuser detailed how she leaped at the chance to work for the Shapiro administration when she was offered a job in January after 19 years working in politics.

“He is a one-of-a-kind leader and I felt compelled to work for this type of leader when offered the opportunity,” she wrote of Shapiro. “I took a $25,000 pay cut to come into that role.”

But within days, she said, her excitement had turned into discomfort. Vereb made repeated suggestive comments and innuendos that left her feeling uneasy, she claimed in the document.

The accuser alleged that, within weeks, other staffers in Shapiro’s administration were making jokes about a relationship between her and Vereb and warning her that he’d faced earlier misconduct accusations from women.

The accuser maintains that when she warned Vereb about the office gossip in February, he turned on her and demanded to know who had been discussing his past. He then made sexual advances toward her, the complaint states, insisting that if they decided to have a sexual relationship “it would be our business.”

“If you decided you wanted to do that,” Vereb allegedly told the woman, according to her complaint, “Go close the door to this office, tell me to bend you over this conference table, hike your skirt up and [have sex with her]. …. That would be our decision to make.”

She told investigators Vereb suggested she wear lower-cut tops and higher-slit skirts and compared her to another female staffer whom he said he wasn’t interested in sexually because she was a “type A personality” who would “probably make [him] iron her sheets and pillow cases before having sex.”

“That’s just not my style or the way I like to” have sex, Vereb said, according to the accuser’s statement.

When the accuser reiterated that she wasn’t interested in Vereb, she said, he uttered an obscenity and raised his middle finger.

Their conversation continued later that night following a reception at the governor’s mansion, the woman would later claim in her complaint. An apparently inebriated Vereb called her to again suggest a sexual encounter — saying he knew how to hide from security cameras in the tunnels under the Capitol — and to interrogate her about who in their office was talking about them, she said in her interview statement with EEO investigators.

“I was physically shaking in my office,” she said. “I was fearful, and was not sleeping well.”

Days after that encounter, the complaint states, the accuser was invited to a meeting with the human resources department for the governor’s office. When she questioned Vereb about the meeting, he made vague references to “performance concerns” with her job, she said.

The woman said she reported her encounters with Vereb at that meeting on March 3 and a subsequent meeting with other Shapiro administration staffers on March 6 but was confronted with vague allegations that she was performing poorly in her job.

She told investigators she ultimately decided to leave her position in early March, after less than two months in the role, when staffers refused her request to be reassigned to a different position with limited contact with Vereb. In her statement, she said she decided to come forward in hopes of preventing other women from having to face the same treatment.

“I am scared of what he will do, the rumors he will spread,” she said of Vereb. “I am scared for my professional career. I am putting it all on the line because I am fearful, he will do this to someone else.”

It remains unclear when Shapiro himself first learned of the woman’s allegations — and the extent to which the widening awareness of her account influenced Vereb’s decision to step down this week less than nine months after the governor had appointed him to his high-profile post.

No mention of the woman’s allegations appeared in a news release Wednesday announcing Vereb’s departure. Instead, it lauded his “decades serving our Commonwealth” and highlighted his achievements while working with Shapiro first in the Attorney General’s Office and later in his administration as governor.

The release did not include a direct statement from Shapiro, who has served alongside Vereb in various public offices since the mid-2000s. Instead, it featured remarks from the governor’s chief of staff, Dana Fritz, who described Vereb as a “key member of our team.”

The relationship between Vereb, a Republican, and Shapiro, a Democrat, both of whom hail from Montgomery County, dates back decades. They served together in the state House from 2007 to 2012, with Vereb representing a West Norriton Township-based district and Shapiro representing Abington.

When Shapiro was elected attorney general in 2016, he named Vereb as director of government affairs for his office — one of the first appointments in the job. In the statement Wednesday, Fritz credited Vereb with securing funding for law enforcement and enhancing school safety in that role.

During his stint in the governor’s cabinet, she said, he helped secure passage of laws to expand breast cancer screenings and the state property tax and rent rebate programs as well as helping to build bipartisan support for Shapiro’s first budget.

But until his resignation Wednesday, the complaint against him did not appear to affect Vereb’s prominence within the administration.

Flight records indicate he flew to Indiana, Pa., with Shapiro in mid-August to meet with Senate Majority Leader Joe Pittman in an effort to end a standoff in negotiations over the governor’s budget proposal, after budget negotiations fell apart between Shapiro and Senate GOP leaders.

And earlier this month, Vereb, a former police officer, was a constant fixture at Pennsylvania State Police command posts and news conferences during the two-week manhunt for escaped fugitive Danilo Cavalcante in Chester County, serving as a liaison between the governor’s office and authorities.

Sen. Lindsey Williams (D., Allegheny) was one of few state lawmakers to voice concern about the allegations Thursday.

“I believe victims,” Williams said. “I am appalled by the accusations and I have a lot of questions about the retaliation she faced after speaking up.”

Staff writers Andrew Seidman, Vinny Vella and Sean Collins Walsh contributed to this article.