Harassment Claim Rejected : Inquiry: State agency declines to act on charge by ex-aide of Councilman Nate Holden. Officials give no reason, but said earlier that statute of limitations might have expired.

A state agency has declined to file a sexual harassment accusation against Los Angeles City Councilman Nate Holden that stemmed from complaints by a former aide that lewd comments and unwanted advances by Holden created a sexually charged atmosphere in his office.

The action by the state Department of Fair Employment and Housing means that onetime Holden aide Connie Collins cannot receive damages through an administrative hearing, but she is still free to file a lawsuit against her former boss.

Officials at the state agency declined to say Monday why they did not sustain Collins’ complaint.

Previously, the agency said Collins’ complaint was problematic because it might have been filed after the expiration of a one-year statute of limitations. Agency officials would not say Monday if the time limit was a factor in their decision.

Holden’s attorney, Tim Agajanian, called the decision “a great moral and legal victory for Councilman Holden.”

Holden, in a statement, said he believes that sexual harassment lawsuits by two other former employees also will be dismissed. “There was never an ounce of truth to what Ms. Collins or my former employees alleged,” said Holden, who has maintained that the allegations were trumped up to deflate his 1993 campaign for mayor.

Collins could not be reached for comment. But Melanie Lomax, who once represented Collins, called the state’s action “hardly a vindication of Nate Holden.”

Lomax said that before she left the case last year, the agency “had already raised serious questions about whether the events took place outside the statute of limitations.”

Agajanian said the state agency’s study of the facts in the case showed that Collins “could not have prevailed.”

Collins was the second of three former Holden aides to complain in late 1992 and early 1993 that Holden had ogled or inappropriately touched them while they were his employees at City Hall.

Holden vehemently denied the accusations. He contended that Lomax had influenced two of the women to file the claims in an effort to block his bid for mayor. The councilman said Lomax held a grudge against him because he did not vote for her when the City Council rejected her appointment to a city commission.

Lawsuits by former employees Carla Cavalier and Marlee Beyda are pending, as is Holden’s countersuit against Cavalier and Lomax for defamation.