Morgan: Mayor Fulop's speedy changes are making waves

By Earl Morgan/For The Jersey Journal
March 05, 2014 at 5:11 AM

Mayor Steve Fulop of Jersey City is in a dickens of a hurry. He has a finite amount of time if he wants to accomplish his remake of the city before launching into full campaign mode in his quest for the governor?s office.

That hurry means that Fulop has no time to worry about ruffling feathers or triggering grudges to accomplish his vision of Jersey City. In pursuit of that goal, he is skirmishing with the city?s school board and the Friends of the Loew?s, not to mention causing a shakeup of the Jersey City Employment and Training Program that?s akin to a blood letting with at least six or seven staffers getting the axe, in some cases to make way for new personnel.

Let?s start with JCETP: It was announced, shortly after Fulop?s election, that former Gov. Jim McGreevey was coming on board to helm the city?s jobs program. To make way for McGreevey, the agency?s sitting Executive Director Keith Davis was downshifted from executive to deputy director with a substantial pay cut. McGreevey joined the payroll at a reportedly $110,000 annual salary. Several months later it was revealed that McGreevey was ?quietly? added to the city payroll for $110,000 a year to run the office of compliance, which monitors the hiring of minorities and women on construction projects as part of a deal to acquire city tax abatements.

Supposedly, McGreevey?s salary was being paid by JCETP. The money was, we were told, transferred by the job agency to the city?s payroll at no cost to the city. But a perusal of JCETP payroll for January finds McGreevey?s name and title with a salary of zero. So where is McGreevey?s salary coming from? McGreevey has to be a man of prodigious talents to be the director of the city compliance office while holding down another full-time job as executive director of JCETP, even at no salary.

Oh, and Davis isn?t the only deputy director at JCETP, Adam Friedman, an associate of McGreevey, also holds that title with a $102,000-a-year salary, substantially more than his colleague and fellow deputy director is pulling down. No wonder staff cuts were needed. Some heads had to roll to pay for these new positions. The mayor is counting on this revamped office to churn out hundreds of jobs. Hopefully, it will succeed.

The mayor and a school board, with trustees that many believed were in his pocket, are split over the issue of new pre-k facilities. He wants them but the board says they can't afford citywide construction.

As for the 84-year-old Loew?s theater, the FOL contends, after decades of negotiations with the city, that bringing the aging movie palace up to code is the job of the city since the Loew?s is a city-owned structure. Fulop, for his part, says he wants a new entity to run the theater, one that can bring marquee attractions to the city. It can?t happen if the 3,100-seat potential performance center is not brought up to code and things, such as new fire escapes, aren?t added.

Stay tuned.

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