Mariano Vega

A week and a half ago, David Donnelly, then an aide to Jersey City Mayor Jerramiah Healy, did not know there was going to be a vacancy on the Jersey City council.  

Last night, he was sworn in to fill it.  

“I certainly didn’t want to come to it this way,” said Donnelly.

Donnelly, 39, was recommended by Mayor Jerramiah Healy for the city’s Ward B council seat and approved by the council with seven yes votes and one abstention (Ward F Councilwoman Viola Richardson last night said she abstained because she felt the process was rushed).  

The seat opened up after Councilman Phil Kenny – on the job just six months – made a surprise guilty plea last Tuesday to accepting $5,000 in bribes from a federal informant posing as a crooked developer.  He resigned the next day.    

Kenny was another casualty of the July corruption sting that stung Jersey City particularly hard, taking out two of the top three finishers in the May mayoral campaign, the city council president, a deputy mayor and a number of other officials and political players.  Even Mayor Jerramiah Healy, never charged but named in a corruption complaint as “JC Official 4” and apparently under scrutiny by the FBI, did not escape the whiff of scandal. But Kenny was never arrested, and nobody knew that he was also caught up in the sweep.

Now Donnelly finds himself representing the city’s ethnically diverse west side, sometimes known as “the forgotten ward.”  If he wants to hold on to the seat for more than a year, he will have to win a special election next November. 

There is speculation that David Donnelly, a special assistant to Jersey City Mayor Jerramiah Healy, has quickly emerged as the leading candidate to replace Ward B Councilman Phil Kenny.  Kenny resigned this afternoon, one day after pleading guilty to taking bribes and slightly more than three months after taking office.  Donnelly worked as an aide to Edison Mayor Jun Choi before taking a job on Healy's staff two years ago.  His mother, Mary Donnelly, held the Ward B Council seat until her retirement in 2005.

Jersey City Councilman Steve Fulop wants two legally troubled council members to abstain from voting on the replacement for former Ward B Councilman Phil Kenny, who resigned today after pleading guilty to corruption charges yesterday.

Council President Mariano Vega (soon to be at-large councilman, since he announced he’s stepping down as council president yesterday) was arrested in July for allegedly taking $30,000 in bribes.  Councilwoman Nidia Lopez is having the validity of her election challenged because she claimed a tax exemption on her Florida home that was meant only for permanent residents of that state (she’s since agreed to pay over $30,000 in back taxes and fines to Florida).

“While I recognize that the remaining council will be responsible for filling the vacant seat with a temporary representative for the citizens in Ward ‘B,’ I think that both Councilman Vega and Councilwoman Lopez should refrain from voting for the replacement until their individual legal situations are resolved,” said Fulop.  “To think that temporary council people will select a temporary representative, who will vote on important decisions, for the citizens of Ward “B” is not fair to the residents of the city.  I would hope they both take the proper and fair steps in this matter and abstain from voting.”

Today’s guilty plea by Jersey City Councilman Phil Kenny caught local politicos off guard, but the story was all too familiar.    

An almost identical one has been replayed several times in the corruption complaints that came out of the massive federal corruption bust in July, which ensnared Kenny’s colleague, Council President Mariano Vega, among many other Jersey City officials and political candidates.  

Vega today resigned his council presidency “temporarily” – a move he had hoped to avoid earlier by supporting Councilman Peter Brennan as president pro tem.  He did not resign his seat altogether.

“For the betterment of the City of Jersey City, the Municipal Council and under the current circumstances, I am temporarily stepping down, effective Friday, October 9, 2009 as of 4:00p.m., as City Council President until such time as I am completely exonerated,” wrote Vega, who is accused of taking $30,000 in bribes.  

Twice in March, Kenny, who was appointed to fill an unexpired term in the council in April and elected to his first full term in May, met at a Jersey City restaurant with Solomon Dwek, an FBI informant posing as a crooked developer.  They were introduced by an unnamed Jersey City official.

Jersey City Ward E Councilman Steven Fulop has never made his mayoral aspirations a secret, but with Mayor Jerramiah Healy being visited by the FBI, he acknowledges the possibility that he may have to run sooner than he expected to.

“I think whether Healy stays or goes is out of my control. We are preparing for the case that he does step down,” said Fulop, who is holding a $20 per head fundraiser at the Zeppelin Hall Beer Garden in downtown Jersey City tonight.  

Fulop is also preparing for two possible future City Council vacancies: the at-large seat of Council President Mariano Vega, who was arrested for allegedly taking bribes in July; and the Ward C seat of Nidia Lopez, who is facing a lawsuit that claims she’s technically a resident of Orlando, Fla.  

Although Fulop does not have an interest in running for Vega’s at-large seat if it opens up, he wants to be able to help another candidate. 

Two Jersey City officials arrested in the July 23 corruption sweep pleaded guilty today to accepting bribes in exchange for real estate development approvals.

Maher Khalil, the city's former Assistant Director of Health and Human Services, admitted he accepted more than $72,000 from a federal cooperating witness, believed to be Solomon Dwek.  Guy Catrillo, a city planning department official who unsuccessfully challenged City Councilman Steven Fulop last spring, said he took $15,000 in bribes from the same cooperating witness.

Khalil admitted to arranging meetings between the cooperating witness and several local officials who would, in exchange for bribes, exercise influence over development projects.  He specifically identified Jersey City Council President Mariano Vega and Edward Cheatam, and said he converted cash payments into illegal campaign contributions from straw donors to Vega's re-election campaign.

"We are pleased with the progress we witnessed today and with the investigation as a whole," said Acting U.S. Attorney Ralph Marra. "There's still plenty to do and we will press on accordingly."

Maher Khalil, one of the Jersey City officials arrested on July 23, implicated City Council President Mariano Vega and Jersey City Housing Authority Commissioner Edward Cheatam after pleading guilty to federal corruption charges today.  Khalil, who had been suspended without pay from his post with the Jersey City Department of Health and Human Services, also named two others by title. 

Another Jersey City official arrested last month, Guy Catrillo, is also expected to plead guilty today.

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.