'A BIT OF A CHARACTER'
Healy touts hotel tax and anti-crime effort

Monday, May 04, 2009
By AMY SARA CLARK
JOURNAL STAFF WRITER

When Jersey City Mayor Jerramiah T. Healy's youngest son thinks of dad, he doesn't picture him hammering out the city's budget or cutting ribbons for new businesses.

Patrick Healy, 25, thinks about the man who attended his track meets, coached his brother's basketball team, and traveled to games with his children even after he ruptured his Achilles' tendon and was in a cast from hip to toe.

"I know it sounds corny, but I'm proud of him for the way he's treated and loved my mother and us four kids," he said.

Born in 1950, the son of Irish immigrants who owned a bar, Healy was raised in North Bergen and Union City. He graduated from Villanova University in 1972 with a degree in English and from Seton Hall School of Law in 1977.

Along the way, Healy learned to play several musical instruments and worked as an iron worker, truck loader and bartender. He met his wife, Maureen, a registered nurse, at a Belmar Dairy Queen while still in college, married her in 1976 and moved to Jersey City in 1978.

In 1977, Healy became an assistant prosecutor for the Hudson County Prosecutor's Office. He opened a private law practice in 1981 and also served as a part-time attorney for the city from 1981-86.

Healy was appointed chief judge of the Jersey City Municipal Court in 1991 but resigned in 1996 to challenge Bret Schundler for mayor.

He lost that election but ran successfully for council-at-large in 2001 ironically on the ticket of current mayoral rival Louis Manzo. Healy was elected mayor in the special election of 2004 after the untimely death of Mayor Glenn Cunningham, and was reelected in 2005.

In 2006, he was arrested after a scuffle with cops in Bradley Beach outside a tavern his sister and brother-in-law owned at the time. Healy was found guilty of resisting arrest and obstruction of administrative law.

"If you're looking for perfection you'll never find it in anyone," said his friend, County Executive Thomas DeGise. "He's a bit of a character but Jersey City has a long line of characters."

Asked about his triumphs as mayor, Healy spoke mostly about his crime-fighting efforts, including hiring 125 cops, instituting COMPSTAT (a computerized system for tracking crime) and an anti-gang task force and putting up more security cameras. His one-gun-a-month law, struck down by lower courts, has received a hearing before the state Supreme Court. A bill to make it state law passed the Assembly, but got bogged down in the State Senate.

Healy is also proud of creating the 6 percent hotel tax in the city, which required a change in state law. He said he is also eager to begin more development off the waterfront, pointing to a $500 million two-tower development slated for Journal Square.

Mayor Dogged by Rivals and Fiscal Downturn

The New York Times
By STEVE STRUNSKY
Published: May 1, 2009

WHEN Jerramiah T. Healy was elected as mayor here, this former railroad town had been transformed into an extension of Lower Manhattan?s financial district, with skyscrapers along the waterfront housing major financial firms that employed tens of thousands in white-collar jobs.

In November 2004, Mr. Healy, a former city councilman and municipal court judge, handily won a special election to fill the unfinished term of Mayor Glenn D. Cunningham, who had died after a heart attack. Mr. Healy just as easily won a full term the following May, with 75 percent of the vote.

But now, Wall Street?s woes have come to roost in Jersey City. The city?s unemployment rate rose to 9.5 percent in February, according to the Federal Bureau of Labor Statistics, up from 5.5 percent in April 2008. Many of the job losses were in the lucrative financial sector that had created a demand for new housing and supported a lively dining and entertainment industry in the city?s downtown.

It is in this context that the mayor is seeking a second four-year term in the city?s elections on May 12.

Mr. Healy is facing a large field of opponents for the job, among them Louis M. Manzo, a former state assemblyman making his fifth bid for mayor, and Assemblyman L. Harvey Smith. Others include Dan Levin, a civic activist, and Phil Webb, a former city police detective. The city?s steep job losses have made Mr. Healy, 58, a better target for his rivals, but he is not acting like he?s worried about winning re-election.

?We?re not expecting to get those kinds of numbers this time around,? Mr. Healy said about his winning margin with 75 percent of the vote last time around. ?Hopefully, the voters and the citizens will think we?ve done a good enough job to merit another four years.?

With much more name recognition than the other candidates and his campaign signs outnumbering theirs several times over, Mr. Healy did not even bother to show up for two debates last month attended by the other four candidates, where taxes and crime were topics of discussion.

Mr. Healy has the support of Gov. Jon S. Corzine and Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg of New York, among others, and he is attracting financial support from the city?s development community. Mr. Healy was one of the state?s first elected officials to endorse President Obama?s campaign back in May 2007, and his supporters say that relationship could help the city win stimulus funds or other aid for projects like a proposed westward extension of the Hudson-Bergen Light Rail Line.

?It can never hurt to have a friend in the president of the United States,? said Senator Robert Menendez, a fellow Democrat.

Mr. Bloomberg was recently a host for an event for Mr. Healy that raised $200,000. The two mayors are longtime allies on gun control and other issues, and Mr. Healy said he viewed New York as a ?big brother? to Jersey City, not a rival. Mr. Healy said he has kept taxes level for the past two years, increased the police force and persuaded developers to hire local residents.

But some of Mr. Healy?s recent behavior has drawn criticism from his opponents and others. In 2007, he was convicted of obstructing justice and resisting arrest in Bradley Beach, after trying to intervene in a scuffle outside a bar.

Mr. Manzo has publicly called the mayor ?an embarrassment.?

Mr. Manzo also said that the mayor ? like some of his predecessors ? has not paid enough attention to neighborhoods away from the waterfront.

?Despite our blossoming waterfront, we have double-digit unemployment in our minority areas,? Mr. Manzo said.

All of his opponents have criticized Mr. Healy for granting tax abatements to waterfront developers including Donald Trump, even during peak boom years.

Mr. Healy shrugged off the criticism in a recent interview.

?I happen to think that investment and development in Jersey City is a very good thing,? he said.