Quote:
ok, so his brake lines are cut, but the brakes work fine and he's able to drive around with no effect until he happens to get around to getting his oil changed, at which point the mechanic can't help but notice it because either a) he saw the cut while dealing the brake lines, because that's such an integral part of the oil-changing process - or b) the fluid is visibly pouring out, even though his honor didn't notice anything wrong with the brakes driving around on the way there - anybody actually believe that?

The article didn't even get around to lil' Floodster getting hired TWICE after being busted for selling pot from mom's Benz and defrauding the County on disability - or for that the car turns out to have been registered not to the Floods but to a corrupt convicted NYC real estate developer. Or that 60% of the city's Municipal judges had to resign earlier this year for ticket-fixing. And that's not even getting into the issues with developers, that's where the grown-up money is.


I think this all would make a colorful '60 Minutes' segment...

Jersey City is not alone, sadly

Posted by Thurman Hart
May 07, 2008 4:30PM
http://blog.nj.com/njv_thurman_hart/2 ... y_is_not_alone_sadly.html

Campaigns and Elections, a magazine that caters to campaign professionals, has finally discovered our dirty little secret. That is, mainly, that our dirt is neither secret nor little. Consider that the entire article deals with Mayors Frank Hague, Jerry McCann, and Jerry Healy - with five short paragraphs out to paint Brett Schundler as an overlooked angel and some well-placed shots at Robert Janiszewski (with Tom Whelan getting a dishonorable mention). I don't mention this to condemn the article, but it could have easily been ten times the length and barely touched on the ongoing problems in Jersey City, much less give an accurate picture of the background.

The editor is asking for nominations to show that New Jersey isn't alone in its "ongoing history of officials who have run afoul of the law and embarrassed the community". How many nominations can Hudson County have? Would there be enough left over for the rest of the state?

It's so funny I can't seem to laugh. Sure, there are plenty of people willing to say that Javier Inclan should have been fired now that he has resigned (effective next week), but where were those voices during the whole month of April? More to the point, where are the voices now? I can't believe that anyone believes that Javier Inclan was exception in any way except that he managed to hang himself in open court.

Consider that only one person in Somerset County has faced the jury over his actions in conjunction with what is openly acknowledged as system-wide price-fixing, patronage, and general abuse of employment practices. Seeing as how Lucas "disclosed bidding information to ensure specific contractors were awarded specific jobs" it is kind of difficult for me to see how he acted alone - although, to be fair, a "Hillsborough contractor" pled guilty to "theft by deception". Although the contractor was arrested for bribing Lucas, the convictions would hold that these two men were not connected in any way - so there must be at least one person stuck between them.

The Commission was noted by Wolff and Samson to be using both county vehicles and county property (houses) as a means for providing additional compensation to personnel who were not justified in receiving those compensations. Reimbursement protocol was not followed, allowing county employees to bilk taxpayers for non-business related expenses. Complete Electric admitted to overbilling the county and was awarded unwritten "contracts" for work - not just "no-bid" contracts, but "non-written" contracts. W&S found "there were remarkably few resolutions and otherwise little other evidence of public bidding, competitive quotations or even written contracts given the number of vendors that were billing the Commission for goods or services in excess of the applicable thresholds" (Page 20 of the report in pdf). While the County Freeholders and Parks Commission have taken some steps to make sure such things are more difficult to do in the future, only Joseph Lucas has been held responsible for it actually happening. Apparently, no one else held any legal responsibility whatsoever. Given the non-outcry, the people of Somerset are perfectly happy to let the rest of the crooks get away unpunished.

Or, if you prefer, wander down to Burlington County and take a hard look at the Bridges Commission. Robert Stears is facing jail-time for overbilling the Commission - but apparently he did that by himself. Collateral actors need not be concerned. Because we've found someone who is so outside the party organization that he has only worked for State Senator and an Assemblyman, belongs to the Young Republicans, and represents "several local school boards". Stears, meanwhile, claimed he "got sucked into a group of corrupt people" - but apparently they aren't corrupt enough to be indicted or anything (can anyone explain why a bridges commission needs a spokesperson anyway? I mean - bridges. Not much breaking news there).

Yesterday, Stears outlined the scheme in court. He said the company he formed in 1997, The Strategy Group, would bill the commission a monthly fee of about $20,000 and additional consulting fees. He estimated up to half of the monthly fee was fraudulent.

Some $3,000 to $4,000 a month would then be made in political contributions, Stears said. He said most of that money was spent in Burlington County and some of it was spent elsewhere in the state. Stears founded the Trenton-based Strategy Group with Tom Wilson, the current chairman of the New Jersey Republican Party.

Yet Stears insisted that the scheme continued unabated. I'm shocked. Yeah - right. Oh, and (former) State Senator Martha Bark was a part-time employee in much the same manner that Wayne Bryant was a part-time employee of the UMDNJ. No outrage. Big yawn. Move along. Nothing to see.

Then we have the twins on the public teat - Glenn Paulson for the Republican Party and Paul Sarlo for the Democrats. It isn't that Paulsen and Sarlo are, to my knowledge, any worse than their cohorts. That's exactly the problem - they are simply "business as usual".

And unless someone think I'm unfairly targeting Republicans and taking it light on Democrats, let me just openly call for an open investigation of every governmental entity in Hudson County. Every one. Let the US Department of Justice open a brach office in Hudson and fund it through restitution payments of everyone they convict. The excess can be used to balance the federal budget.

Sometimes New Jerseyans seem to take a perverse type of pleasure in seeing our state as the most politically corrupt in the country. Personally, I don't see where that's something to be anything but ashamed of. It's easy to call for someone's head after they've already offered it. It's time for New Jersey's public - and press - to take their oversight role seriously. It's time we put New Jersey's politicians on notice that we simply aren't going to stand for anything less than ethical excellence.

Welcome to Jersey City Politics: It's Been Rough, Corrupt and Downright Weird For Over a Century

By Doug Daniels
www.campaignsandelections.com
04/29/08

??People always ask me how I spent my time in prison, and I say, ?I just read a lot,'" Jerry tells me as we trundle along the Jersey City streets in his Volvo. "They would get you any book you asked for, so I ended up reading every title on the New York Times bestseller list," he explains with the tone of satisfaction one might detect in somebody who feels they've gotten a really good deal.

It's an overcast afternoon in northern New Jersey, just across the Hudson River from lower Manhattan, and we're driving towards the prep school where Jerry now coaches boys track.

We pull up to the curb and he suggests we get out and chat on the sidewalk. Parked illegally, he proclaims "I don't get parking tickets" in his north Jersey accent before springing from the driver's seat.

And there's a reason. Jerry McCann, now in his late 50's, was mayor of Jersey City twice, serving from 1981 to 1985, and then again from 1989 to 1992, when his tenure in City Hall met with an abrupt demise. McCann, who still vehemently maintains his innocence, was convicted on charges of fraud relating to a loan scam, and was hauled off to federal prison in Pennsylvania where he served more than two years behind bars. The central figures responsible for sending him up the river were two rising New Jersey Republicans named Michael Chertoff and Samuel Alito, both of whom McCann still assails as vicious, politically motivated witch-hunters. "We're going to send Mr. Chertoff back to preparing wills," McCann was quoted as saying at the time.

"Maybe I can find him a job driving a garbage truck in Jersey City." McCann, who still appears to wield some political influence in the city, now sits on the Jersey City School Board, although his election to the post last year was challenged in court. In dispute were some votes McCann received from local nursing homes in which many of the residents were infirm, unfit or otherwise incapacitated. One resident in particular-the father of the current mayor's chief of staff-generated controversy when he claimed to have been tricked into voting for McCann. The situation quickly devolved into personal acrimony, with McCann leveling counter-accusations at the mayor's chief of staff for being a "bad son" guilty of parental abandonment. According to McCann, the elderly gentleman's testimony crumbled under questioning, and along with it, the case against him.

After only a few minutes with McCann, it's easy to see how he could find success in the gritty realm of Jersey City politics. He possesses a certain level of unconscious authenticity and humor that the average guy on the street would find appealing. Yet, sprinkled among the endless tales of bar fights, power struggles and campaign jackassery, there are also frequent glimmers of a sophisticated and almost encyclopedic knowledge of New Jersey politics. McCann also makes no effort to conceal his affection for the way the game is played in his hometown. "Politics is a big deal in Jersey City," he says. "Everywhere else the national pastime might be baseball, but in Jersey City the pastime is politics."

It's a pastime that, for more than a century, has often involved brutal tactics and its own set of rules. While cities like Chicago, New Orleans, Philadelphia and Providence are legendary for their corruption and shady political figures, Jersey City, which serves as the seat of Hudson County, has its own long history of sordid politics-one that often exceeds any standard measure of absurdity. Take, for instance, this New York Times headline:

JERSEY CITY CORRUPTION

HOW ITS PRESS AND PUBLIC MEN HAVE BETRAYED IT

The story describes a hopeless cesspool in which corrupt judges, law enforcement officials, politicians and the press all interact to operate with equal disregard for law, ethics or the public good. But the Times story cataloguing such effronteries to the citizens of Jersey City wasn't written in recent years, or even in the 20th century. It ran on Oct. 14, 1889, and laments, even then, a legacy of corruption.

From that period into the early part of the 20th century, Jersey City thrived as a manufacturing center fueled predominantly by immigrants. But corruption and incompetence quickly led to an environment of urban decay, some of which remains today.

The politics of Jersey City truly achieved infamy during Frank Hague's years as mayor from 1917 to 1947. Hague was legendary for his opulent lifestyle, and despite an annual salary of about $8,000, he was reportedly worth $10 million by the time he died on New Year's Day, 1956.

One of the more visible displays of Hague's corruption involved his "partners desk" in the mayor's office that was used specifically to elicit bribes. Seated at his desk, Hague would slide the massive center drawer forward, causing it to emerge from the front, allowing visitors to deposit envelopes of cash before it was drawn back in, as if the mayor were a drive-through bank teller. Today, the infamous piece of furniture is on display in City Hall as a relic of the city's heritage.

"I actually used to use the desk, but it eventually became more of a curiosity than a true, functioning desk, so I gave it up," says City Clerk Robert Byrne. "Leave it to a politician to find a sinister use for a seemingly benign partners desk." (Here's another layer of Jersey City history: Byrne's father was a ward leader during the Hague era, and that his late brother Paul, a Jersey City resident and powerful insider in Hudson County politics, had been involved in a government bribery scandal. In 2005, as Paul Byrne's sentencing loomed, the 59-year-old diabetic passed away.)

In the decades since the Hague era, the system of bossism and political machinery that Hague installed continued to prove resilient. And Jersey City has maintained its standing as a place where the rules don't apply.

As former New Jersey Gov. Brendan Byrne, who served from 1974-1982, joked, "I'd like to be buried in Jersey City so I can remain active in Democratic politics," a clear reference to a tradition of deceased voters participating in elections from beyond the grave.

Not that there weren't reform efforts from time to time, but they were typically pursued by a handful of do-gooders and community activists whose agendas were in stark contrast to those of the politicians who would run on promises of honest government, only to slip back into the old, dubious traditions of Boss Hague.

Consider another New York Times story from 1971, about the conviction of Jersey City Mayor Thomas J. Whelan and his accomplices in a county-wide extortion conspiracy:

WHELAN AND 2 GET 15 YEARS IN PRISON

Judge Assails Jersey City Corruption

Federal Judge Robert Shaw, who handed down the sentences, denounced the defendants and the Hudson County Democratic organization as a "rotten system whose sole function was to enrich itself."

To be sure, not all of the characters at the helm of city government have won renown for sleazy politics. Some are notable for their weird personal indiscretions.

Jerramiah T. Healy, the city's current mayor, has endured stinging ridicule for embarrassing behavior that still draws snickers from just about anybody you ask outside the mayor's office.

In 2004, during a special mayoral election that Healy ultimately won, photos depicting the future mayor nude and drunkenly slumped on his front stoop were widely publicized after a neighbor with a camera phone captured several shots of him in full, unattired glory. According to Healy, he ambled outside fully clothed after consuming half a dozen beers to investigate a suspicious noise, then passed out as a result of suffering from diabetes. Healy blasted his political enemies-including McCann, who was advising another candidate at the time-for exploiting the photos for political gain. McCann denies any involvement.

"The only person involved with Healy's nude photos was Healy," McCann says. "He was nude. Nobody made him nude, he took his clothes off!"

Oddly enough, this wasn't Healy's first foray into the drunken nudist lifestyle. In 1999, he pleaded guilty to a disorderly persons charge after reportedly getting into a naked scuffle with police, this time on the front porch of his vacation home on the Jersey shore.

That 2004 special election, prompted when Mayor Glenn Cunningham suffered a fatal heart attack, produced a crowded circus atmosphere and an interesting assortment of candidates, including one who lived in his campaign van up until Election Day, driving each night to a different locale to avoid being strafed with eggs.

Healy, who was later elected to a full term in a record landslide, declined to talk with me about the naked incidents, or about being found guilty last summer of charges stemming from an altercation he had in 2006 with a police officer outside a bar. But he did point, fairly, to a host of positive developments the city is experiencing.

New York City's growth is tumbling over into areas of Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx, and Jersey City is similarly benefiting from businesses that want more affordable office space, and from those who seek less expensive housing. "People can get to downtown or midtown Manhattan in a matter of minutes by very reasonably priced public transportation," Healy says. "So we're the gateway to the cultural, commercial and financial center of the world."

A snapshot of Jersey City today offers mixed visuals-some bleak neighborhoods that haven't yet caught up with the sections that boast charm and prosperity along the river and near City Hall. The area surrounding the Grove Street Port Authority station, just up the street from City Hall, has transformed dramatically over the past 10 or 20 years, with new highrises, restaurants and bars that create a bustling pedestrian community.

In fact, Jersey City is poised to overtake Newark as the state's largest city. The close proximity to Manhattan has caused the city to become, in many ways, another borough of New York, with a steady influx of young professionals-particularly Wall Street types who can get to work in minutes-and prime commercial and residential real estate perched directly on the Hudson that has attracted big-shot developers like Donald Trump.

There's also no evidence that the city's reputation has hindered its development. "Jersey City might be a joke, but it's become an endearing joke," says John Weingart, associate director of the Eagleton Institute of Politics at Rutgers University. "There's an affection for the strange characters and personalities, mainly because there's a sense that the people's business is actually getting done."

Still, Mayor Healy is quick to acknowledge the city's reputation for rough politics. "They play hardball here in Jersey City, and throughout Hudson County," Healy says, leaning back in his desk chair. "In 1997, when I was running for mayor, somebody actually cut the brake line and the fuel line on my car." Healy says a catastrophe was averted when the sabotage was brought to his attention by the guy who changed his oil.

"I mean, this could have just been a horrible confluence of events, because you're out drivin' your car, and your brakes don't work, and you're leaking fuel," Healy says, nodding his head in disbelief. "And I had young kids at the time that I was constantly driving around to track meets and basketball games and everywhere else. But that's the type of thing that happens here."

Healy is clear that he believes his opponent-then-Mayor Bret Schundler, who served from 1992 to 2001-had nothing to do with the incident. Schundler, a conservative Republican who managed to get elected mayor despite the daunting 6 percent Republican registration in Jersey City, says he doesn't remember ever hearing about Healy's brake line story.

"That kind of stuff had been part of Jersey City's political culture, but I think it got tampered down very dramatically with me being mayor," Schundler says. "And I'm not sure it's really come back as bad as it used to be."

Schundler, who has expressed potential interest in challenging Healy next year and returning to City Hall, is an interesting exception to the rule in Jersey City politics. He was once viewed as an up-and-coming GOP figure on the national stage, despite having been a Democrat most of his life. The late William F. Buckley Jr. once commented that Schundler would even be a strong presidential candidate in 2008.

At the time of McCann's conviction, says Schundler, "the Democratic machine broke into factions, and that gave me an opportunity to move in and offer voters a fresh direction." Schundler's two unsuccessful runs for governor have dampened any talk of his rapid ascension up the political food chain, but he's still clearly proud of his time as mayor.

"Normally a Republican would never get elected here, so I wouldn't have been able to win unless people had finally reached a breaking point, and were willing to say, ?I don't care if he's a Republican, I just want somebody who will clean up the mess.'"

Jersey City is certainly not an anomaly within Hudson County when it comes to twisted political behavior. The bribery scandal that involved Paul Byrne, the city clerk's brother, had actually centered around Hudson County Executive Robert Janiszewski. Janiszewski, who had served as county executive for 13 years, abruptly resigned and disappeared in 2001, his whereabouts a huge mystery.

Rumors abounded that Janiszewski had entered into the witness protection program, when, in February 2002, a reporter from the Jersey Journal discovered Janiszewski working at a ski shop in upstate New York.

It turns out Janiszewski had been cooperating with the FBI in a government corruption investigation, after being caught accepting bribes. As a result, Janiszewski agreed to wear a wire and set up some of his closest friends in what was ultimately exposed as an intricate and sordid web of sex, corruption, betrayal and bribery, involving cash and an assortment of prescription drugs, including Viagra.

While Healy, McCann and Schundler are all interested in discussing Jersey City's progress, and the roles they've played in it, McCann, more than the others, still seems to revel in the raw, smash-mouth realities of the city's politics, and never opts to shy away from a battle.

As McCann stands on the sidewalk and offers an animated re-creation of a fight he got into on the subway his first weekend home from prison, a fire truck goes screaming by, momentarily disrupting his rhythm. "They're just goin' to lunch," he jokes, immediately transitioning into a story about another more recent conflict that demonstrates his enduring presence in city government.

"In a newspaper article recently, the chief of the fire department attacked me, so I responded and I completely cut him up. He retired three days later, after I was finished with him," McCann says triumphantly, explaining that he had ignited tremendous anger within the fire department after criticizing the system of promoting firefighters to captain-a system he suggests is connected to donations made to Healy.

Realizing I'm late meeting the mayor a few blocks away at City Hall, McCann calmly motions to his car. "Don't worry, I'll drive ya over there," he says as we climb back in and roar away. We cruise past City Hall, however, and McCann pulls around the block. "You don't want to be seen getting out of here. They know this car," he says.

Then, a moment before I slam the door shut and we part ways, McCann shifts thoughts, as if remembering to tell me something he'd neglected earlier. "I've been blessed with three amazing daughters and a great life," he says. "I don't have any regrets." Then he wheels off into the Jersey City skyline.

Doug Daniels is a staff writer at Politics magazine.

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