Steve Fulop

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. 

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.”

Jersey City Councilman Steve Fulop says he will abstain on the council’s vote to reappoint Carl Czaplicki as the director of the Department of Housing, Economic Development and Commerce.  

Czaplicki, who was Mayor Jerramiah Healy’s chief of staff before taking on his current position, appears in the federal corruption complaint against political consultant Joseph Cardwell as “JC Official 3.”  

“I don’t think I can vote yes at this time until the situation is cleared,” said Fulop, who thinks that Czaplicki should be left on in an acting capacity.  “There is a cloud looming here, so I think the mayor/council should leave him as is until the situation is cleared further. There is no reason for the mayor to endorse or reject him today in light of the recent events until there is more info.”

Czaplicki has not been charged, but was a close political ally of Cardwell’s and figures prominently in the corruption complaint against him.  In it, Cardwell claims to be the middleman between Czaplicki and the FBI's cooperating witness, Solomon Dwek.

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. 

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.

Fulop on the steps of Jersey City Hall

JERSEY CITY -- In a city where public corruption is considered commonplace, an estimated 250 residents turned out to say it should not be.

Protestors gathered in front of City Hall tonight to put a new spin on the National Night Out, focusing on political crime as opposed to street crime in a city where eight public officials and several other political insiders were arrested in last month’s massive corruption bust.  All of the arrests involved taking bribes from an FBI informant posing as a developer interested in doing business in the city.  
    
It was the second protest in the nearly two weeks since the sting.  At last week’s protest, which was organized by One Jersey City – the political arm of the reform group CivicJC – about 80 protestors called for the resignations of City Council President Mariano Vega, who was among the arrested officials;  Mayor Jerramiah Healy, who was not arrested but met with the FBI informant and shows up in a criminal complaint as “JC Official 4”; and Councilwoman Nidia Lopez, who is facing a separate controversy over her residency status.  Tonight, the protestors only called on Vega to resign, though they did not spare Healy from criticism. 

Brooms were distributed to chants about sweeping out corrupt officials.  Some protestors wore shirts that read "Get drunk, get naked, get elected" -- a reference to a photograph of a nude, passed out Healy that surfaced during his 2004 run for mayor.  Many residents held small signs made up of an image of a January, 2007 front page of the Jersey Journal picturing the event’s organizer, Ward E Councilman Steven Fulop, behind the headline “City not for sale.”  

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. 

Jersey City Councilman Peter Brennan was elected president pro-tem of the council on Wednesday, but Council President Mariano Vega – who was arrested last week for allegedly taking bribes – will preside over the next meeting. 

Brennan was diagnosed with prostate cancer about two months ago, and he heads to the hospital for surgery on August 6.  Brennan’s prognosis is good, but he plans to take two or three weeks off to recover from the procedure, meaning that he will miss the council’s August 12 meeting -- the only one scheduled for that month. 

Vega will then be back in his usual role running the meeting.

But there is some confusion about the role of the president pro-tem, a position that was just created on Wednesday, and which was written before last week’s corruption busts rocked Jersey City. 

As long as Vega still attends the meetings, he is still in charge.  When Vega is absent – as he may often while deals with his corruption case – the law makes Brennan the acting council president.

JERSEY CITY --  The City Council just voted at-large Councilman Peter Brennan the body's president pro-tem when Council President Mariano Vega fights corruption charges.

The council created the position of "President Pro-Tem" today, which has been under consideration since their first reorganization on July 1.  

Seven council members voted aye on Bernnan, but Ward E Councilman Steve Fulop abstained.  His objection was that the council wavedthe normal 20 day wait period between the passage of the legislation and the mayor signing it.  Fulop said that it was hypocritical for the council to act like there's no sense of urgency on other matters relating to the corruption bust, but that there is for this one.  

Vega has proclaimed his innocence and vowed not to resign.  The council rejected Fulop's resolution of no confidence in Vega just before voting to elevate Brennan president pro-tem.

Brennan challenged Vega for the council presidency earlier this month, but could not muster enough support to take it over.

The Jersey City Council just rejected Councilman Steve Fulop’s resolution of no-confidence on City Council President Mariano Vega, who was arrested on corruption charges last week.

Fulop was the only aye vote.  The other seven members present, including Vega himself, voted no.  One councilwoman, Viola Richardson, did not attend because she is on vacation.

"I just want to say that, while I'm not surprised, I don't think it's in the interest of the city to pretend that this didn't happen last week," said Fulop.  "The standards of innocence until proven guilty doesn’t apply to public life that is based on the public trust.”  

Before voting, Councilman Peter Brennan said t he thinks Vega and the mayor "have to sit down and talk this thing out" regarding "the best interest of the people of Jersey City."

A member of the audience yelled "Don't we know what's best?" 

Brennan then indicated that he was originally going to vote yes, but that the activists persuaded him to vote no.