Jerramiah Healy

Jersey City Council President Mariano Vega, who was arrested on corruption charges last month, said today that he has no plans to relinquish leadership of the council.

“No, I haven’t gotten to that point yet.  I think it’s premature.  I think that the idea was that I wanted to kind of temporarily step aside so Peter Brennan could chair it as president pro-tem,” said Vega in a phone interview.

Although Brennan was voted council president pro-tem, the position didn’t work out the way Vega, Brennan and most of the council hoped.  The legislation, it turned out, only allowed Brennan to take control of the meetings when Vega was absent, instead of giving him control of the body while Vega dealt with the federal case against him.   

Jersey City Council President Mariano Vega, who was arrested last month for allegedly taking $30,000 in bribes from a federal informant, will be in charge of the next council meeting -- if he remains council president.

Mayor Jerramiah Healy has put pressure on Vega to resign from his top post, though nobody expects him to quit his at-large seat altogether.  

City spokeswoman Jennifer Morrill acknowledged that Healy has met with Vega several times since his arrest, but did not disclose details about their conversations.  

“The nature of it is on how to move the city forward governmentally. And that’s really the extent of what we’ll be commenting on,” she said.

Upset at what he saw as a limited executive order signed by Gov. Corzine yesterday, Jersey City Councilman Steve Fulop said that the Governor has not spoken out against corruption in the state’s second largest city.  

The order suspended development projects that need state approval in towns with mayors who have been charged with public corruption.  It was clearly aimed to pressure Ridgefield Mayor Anthony Suarez, a fellow Democrat who was arrested on corruption charges last month, to resign.  It also applies to Carlstadt, where Mayor Will Roseman, a Republican, was charged by the county prosecutor’s office with keeping his ex-wife on the public health care books.

“Maybe it’s politically not expedient for me, but it’s the truth: you’re either tough on corruption or you’re not tough on corruption,” said Fulop, a Democrat who is the city’s only elected official not aligned with Mayor Jerramiah Healy.  “You can’t decide based on the size of the city and what the political ramifications for his own election.”

Jersey City has 23 times the population of Ridgefield and was the epicenter of last month’s corruption busts.  City Council President Mariano Vega, who until last week chaired a closed-door committee that dealt with giving developers tax abatements, was arrested for allegedly taking bribes, but has refused to resign.  Seven other city employees, including Deputy Mayor Leona Beldini, were also arrested in the sting, as well as many other local political consultants and former candidates who were not publicly employed. 

Frank "I Am the Law" Hague ruled Jersey City from 1917 to 1947

When Douglas Salters started as an aide to Jersey City Councilman James McLaughlin in 1993, the first thing his fellow City Hall staffers showed him was a desk. Not just any desk, but the one that belonged to the legendary Frank Hague.

Hague was mayor from 1917 to 1947 and word is he profited richly from it, becoming a millionaire despite never making a salary of more than $8,500 a year.  His iron grip on local politics, though never matched, became the symbol of Jersey City's notorious political culture.  His famous desk, which is still in City Hall, has a special drawer that Hague would push out, allowing guests to surreptitiously and conveniently deposit bribes.

"They said ‘This is Jersey City'... I was one day in office when I was shown that, and I realized that this was a rare kind of place," said Salters, who ran for council earlier this year in Ward B on the reform "One Jersey City" slate.

Yesterday, Salters was part of a group of about 80 who were protesting in front of City Hall, where the city council was about to have its first session since Thursday's corruption bust that took down two of Hudson County's mayors, an Assemblyman, the Jersey City Council president, a Jersey City Deputy Mayor and several city employees and political operatives.  It remains to be seen whether the feds will press on against Mayor Jerramiah Healy, who turns up as "JC Official 4" in one of the criminal complaints.

JERSEY CITY – The city’s political establishment is reeling.  The council president and deputy mayor were arrested, as were several other officials and past candidates.  Mayor Jerramiah Healy himself, identified in the feds’ complaint as “JC Official 4, met with FBI informant Solomon Dwek twice.  A stream of 35 residents took the podium today at the first city council meeting since the scandal broke to admonish their elected officials.

Taking that all into account, Healy sought to ease the concerns of residents of his city and – by the looks of the media turnout – the entire tri-state area. 

“Last week’s arrest of several public officials has been shockin and disturbing to anyone who holds public or elected office in the State of New Jersey, “said Healy. 

Healy reiterated that he suspended all the city employees charged in the sting who he has the authority to suspend.  He addressed his own part in the scandal, reiterating that “I have done nothing wrong and have not been accused of any wrong doing.”

Jersey City Councilman Steve Fulop giving interviews at today's council meeting

JERSEY CITY -- Councilman Steven Fulop today distanced himself from other anti-political establishment activists who have called for Mayor Jerramiah Healy to resign.

Although Fulop, a constant thorn in the side of Healy and his allies, has called on arrested City council President Mariano to resign and will introduce a resolution of no confidence in him within minutes, he stressed that he has not called on Healy to resign.

“I sincerely feel it’s not fair, it’s not reasonable, it’s not just,” said Fulop during today's council meeting.  ‘The fair thing is to respect the authorities who have more information than we have and have chosen not to arrest him.”

Fulop said that nobody had more to gain than him politically for calling on Healy to resign, but concluded his remarks by saying “we shouldn’t’ be painting people with an entirely painted brush about what happens next week.”

Vega, he said, is presumed innocent, but “the reality though is that while the assumption of innocence is the standard in our personal lives, the same standard does not apply to a role that is in the public trust.”

Jersey City Mayor Jerramiah Healy is set to make a statement regarding the corruption busts that shook his city last week.  

Healy’s statement will come after the city council votes on a resolution calling for a no confidence vote on Council President Mariano Vega, who is also attending the meeting.  It will be introduced by Ward E Councilman Steven Fulop – the only member of the body who is not a Healy ally.  

Members of the media have turned out in droves to today’s meeting in the wake of the arrests and the death of last night’s death of Jack Shaw, a political operative who was arrested in last week’s sting.  Shaw was central to the complaints against several other arrested politicians.  

Senate Republican Leader Tom Kean called on Governor Corzine to order an immediate meeting of the state's Local Finance Board. The board should consider exercising emergency control of cities in turmoil because their mayors and other key officials haven't stepped down after their arrests on corruption charges.

In response to a resignation demand from good government activist and former mayoral candidate Dan Levin, and accused of “tacit acceptance” of corruption -- if not worse -- by Councilman Steven Fulop, Jersey City Mayor Jerramiah Healy today once again proclaimed his innocence.  

“As I said previously, I have done nothing wrong and have a duty to serve the people of Jersey City who elected me to this office. I want to reassure the people of this city that I have immediately suspended without pay those city employees who have been charged in this investigation,” he said.  “We have also sought instruction from the U.S. Attorney’s Office on how to best secure the offices and records of those employees. Our focus, however, is on governing the city and doing so with the same mission we have had for the past five years, which is to continue to do what is in the best interest of the people of Jersey City.”

The statement was basically a rehash of the one Healy put out on Friday acknowledging that he is “JC Official 4,” who was not arrested in Thursday’s huge corruption bust but turns up prominently in the federal complaint against Deputy Mayor Leona Beldini; affirmative action officer and Housing Authority member Ed Cheatam and political consultant Jack Shaw.  

City Council President Mariano Vega, who was arrested Thursday and charged with taking $10,000 in bribes, attended today’s caucus meeting.  He said he was innocent and that he would not resign. 

The Star-Ledger is reporting that Vice President Joseph Biden has moved an event scheduled for Tuesday in Pennsauken to Philadelphia, suggesting that the Obama administration was unwilling to visit New Jersey so soon after dozens of public officials were arrested on federal corruption charges.  Biden and U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder were "originally scheduled to hold the event, on community policing grants."

According to a criminal complaint, Hoboken Mayor Peter Cammarano allegedly accepted a bribe on the same day that he attended a Democratic rally in Holmdel featuring President Barack Obama.  Obama also gave a shout out to Jersey City Mayor Jerramiah Healy, who admitted on Friday that he was one of the local officials referred to in several criminal complaints.