Incensed that Jersey City Councilman Steven Fulop said that his hiring as an Incinerator Authority inspector was politically motivated, former mayor Gerry McCann promised to sue Fulop so aggressively that it will put an end to his higher office aspirations.

“I’m totally going to sue him. I’m going to make sure that every single nickel that he gets to run a campaign against anybody will be my nickel,” said McCann.  “…I’ll have him in court for years. And since he’s doing it as a political candidate, I will sue his campaign fund.”

McCann has held the job for only three weeks, but he served in a similar position at the authority six years ago before getting the axe for, he said, political reasons (McCann had aided the campaign of Healy rival Lou Manzo, and Healy accused him of distributing the infamous picture of him passed out naked on his porch). 

“Healy’s people fired me.  But the point of it is that my sole objective there is to help straighten out some of the problems that are costing us so much money," he said. 

McCann, who in 1992 had to resign during his second non-consecutive term as mayor after a federal bank fraud conviction, has remained active in Jersey City politics and currently serves on the city’s school board.   He is a close ally and family friend of Sean Connors, a police detective and fellow school board member who, like Fulop, is considered a mayoral hopeful in 2013 (or earlier if Healy – involved but not charged in the federal corruption cases against several Jersey City politicos – leaves office early).

Fulop contends that Healy gave McCann the job to secure Connors’ endorsement in last year’s mayoral contest – a charge McCann vehemently denies and says amounts to defamation.

McCann said that he more than justify his $50,000 employment through the revenue he’ll generate for the city through fining businesses and residents, and from stopping the incinerator authority from hauling trash from institutions that should be paying a private hauler.

“If I don’t save the Incinerator Authority $1 million in my first year, I’ll quit.  I’ll quit!  He doesn’t have to fire me,” he said.  “…I’ve already issued a number of tickets that already justify whatever compensation they may give me”

Fulop responded by pointing out the irony that McCann, who upon his fraud conviction joked that he would get then-U.S. Attorney Michael Chertoff a job driving a sanitation truck, was now at the Incinerator Authority himself.

"McCann is going to sue to defend the Sean Connors deal?  The reality with Gerry McCann is that it is the same individual who threatened Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff that he would get him a job in the Incinerator Authority. We don’t have tax payer dollars to waste on this stuff,” he said. “I want to be clear "We don’t need Gerry McCann. The city needs to be saving money, not hiring felons as part of a political deal for a Connors endorsement. This is a much talked about open secret in Jersey City.”