After five days of testimony from top staffers in Gov. Phil Murphy’s Administration before the select legislative committee investigating the response to sexual assault allegations against a high-level appointee, several central themes emerged, all of which reflect poorly on a staff whose main concern seemed to be deflecting blame while hoping the entire matter would fade away quietly.

Consider:

*All the witnesses disclaimed responsibility for hiring the accused, Albert Alvarez, and pleaded ignorance when asked if they knew who did.

*Alvarez, according to the testimony, magically materialized in the offices of the Schools Development Authority in January of 2018 and began collecting an $11,666 monthly salary as the agency’s chief of staff.

*Despite his status as an at will employee who could have been summarily terminated at any time, he wasn’t fired; rather he was asked to leave government, a request he apparently ignored and continued to receive his $11,666 monthly paycheck for another six months.

*No one on the governor’s staff ever placed a telephone call or sent an e-mail to determine Alvarez’ employment status.

*Despite several staffers being aware of the allegations against Alvarez, the information was withheld from the governor.

The committee members listened with varying degrees of incredulity as witness after witness insisted they were not involved in hiring Alvarez and had no idea how he secured the top staff position at the SDA.

It was anticipated that Chief Counsel Matt Platkin would shed some light on the circumstances surrounding Alvarez’ appointment as well as the actions taken in response to the accusations brought against him by Kate Brennan who said she was assaulted by Alvarez in April 2017 following a campaign staff event.

He didn’t and peppered his testimony with “I don’t know” or “I don’t recall” responses to committee questions.

Brennan, following Murphy’s election, was appointed chief of staff at the Housing Mortgage Finance Agency, a position she still holds.  Alvarez, who has denied the accusation, resigned last October.

She reported the assault to the Jersey City Police Department who turned it over to the Hudson County Prosecutors’ Office which eventually declined to file charges against Alvarez. She further informed a few Murphy staffers and attempted to arrange a personal meeting with the governor.

Her efforts all came to naught and clearly frustrated at the lack of action by what she believed to be an indifferent and unresponsive Administration, chose to take the rather dramatic step of sharing her story with the Wall Street Journal.

While conceding he understood that the steps he took to remove Alvarez and to keep the governor in the dark could be challenged, Platkin maintained he exercised his best judgment given existing regulations concerning confidentiality and the extent of the state’s ability to investigate the incident.

He was, he said, constrained by confidentiality strictures and confined sharing his knowledge to the Administration’s ethics officer and the former Chief of Staff Pete Cammarano.

Once he was advised by the Attorney General’s Office that the state was unable to undertake its own investigation because neither Alvarez nor Brennan were state employees at the time of the assault and the incident did not occur on state property, Platkin said the advice essentially foreclosed any further action.

The state, he said he was informed, had no jurisdiction and hence no authority to investigate, but that an outside entity, such as the Murphy for Governor campaign, could do so.  The odds of that occurring are longer than those of selecting the winning Powerball numbers two weeks running.

There existed a “that’s our story and we’re sticking to it” flavor to the witness testimony, suggesting that once the assault allegations burst onto the front page of the Wall Street Journal last October, panic set in and a scramble ensued to concoct an explanation to insulate the staff and the governor.

It became all the more urgent when, in the wake of the news story, the Legislature created the select committee to investigate the entire incident and the Administration’s response to it.

The story they told was worthy of the Brothers Grimm, placing the staff in an embarrassing light, but one which held less political damage than a continuing failure to act decisively to deal with the allegations.  What they believed was short term embarrassment and criticism was an acceptable price to pay.

Both Platkin and Cammarano conceded that over the ensuing months, they’d periodically re-thought the decision to keep the information from the governor whether out of a concern for the confidentiality of the parties involved or — more likely — to provide plausible deniability to Murphy  should the story become public.

The committee testimony revealed an unwillingness on the part of the staff to deal decisively with the issue and to offer some level of satisfaction — if not justice —- to Brennan.

It stretches credibility beyond the breaking point to accept that the top four or five staff members in the governor’s office had no knowledge of the circumstances surrounding the Alvarez appointment.

One of the committee’s counsels, Michael Critchley, wryly observed that some things will forever remain a mystery —- like who placed the massive rock slabs at Stonehenge — but who hired Alvarez shouldn’t be a similarly enduring unexplained phenomena.

That the matter was handled poorly and piled one bad decision atop another is undeniable.  Blunders committed out of inexperience are blunders, nonetheless.

It evidently never occurred to Platkin or Cammarano, for instance, that the wiser course to follow would have been to place Alvarez on paid leave until an investigation could be completed, issue a statement that recognized that Alvarez was entitled to the presumption of innocence, but that the allegations were so serious and the alleged crime so personally devastating, that it demanded prompt action.

It would also have provided the governor an opportunity to reiterate his commitment to assure a safe workplace environment and to deal with allegations of violations swiftly and decisively.

The Administration would have been in a position to control the narrative, turning it into a one- or two-day story.

There would have been no Wall Street Journal story, no legislative investigating committee, no perception that the Administration was adrift on a sea of inexperience and potentially guilty of a cover-up.

And, more importantly —much more — Kate  Brennan’s expectation that her ordeal was taken seriously at the highest levels of government would have been fulfilled.  She deserved it.

Carl Golden is a senior contributing analyst with the William J. Hughes Center for Public Policy at Stockton University.