A vocal critic of the Jersey City mayor is again asking him to fulfill a 14-year-old campaign promise of keeping “double-dippers” — people with multiple taxpayer-funded jobs — out of his administration.
Esther Wintner, president of the local good-government group CivicJC and a former city council candidate, singled out several city officials, including Councilwoman Denise Ridley and Business Administrator John Metro, in a press release critical of both Mayor Steve Fulop and Hudson County Executive Tom DeGise.
As a city councilman in 2008, Fulop crusaded against councilmembers collecting a second public salary and suggesting barring the practice. The now three-term mayor once held a protest outside an ice cream parlor at which protestors held signs of double-scoop ice cream cones.
“What’s changed?” Wintner asks in the press release.
“CivicJC believes the public deserves to hear from Mayor Fulop as to why he would betray them on his promise by continuing an ugly tradition of Hudson County politics and to stand by the principles he peddled,” Wintner said.
The group has been silent for some time, but Wintner told The Jersey Journal Thursday “we need a group in Jersey City that talks and pipes up.”
Along with Ridley and Metro, CivicJC listed Fulop’s top aide John Minella, Cannabis Control Board Chairwoman Brittani Bunney and city council aides for councilmembers Daniel Rivera, Amy DeGise and Mira Prinz-Arey as double-dippers who currently hold jobs with both the city and Hudson County. Ridley, Metro, Minella, Bunney, Rivera, and DeGise could not be reached for comment.
In 2017, CivicJC lobbed the same accusation at the mayor after then-Corporation Counsel Jeremy Farrell accepted a role as the Municipal Utilities Authority executive director.
City spokeswoman Kimberly Wallace-Scalcione said Thursday the mayor does not have the “legal authority” to restrict people from holding multiple public jobs.
“The courts ruled in 2008 that the Faulkner Act could not restrict this or put it on the ballot, and the mayor does not have the legal authority to restrict this,” Wallace-Scalcione said.
She questioned why Councilman James Solomon was not included, since he is a former New Jersey City University and current part-time Hudson County Community College professor. “If you aren’t playing politics, then you should highlight every council person in a fair and balanced way,” Wallace-Scalcione added.
Solomon said he has earned $2,500 as an adjunct professor teaching Environmental Public Policy at (HCCC) this year.
“If the mayor’s spokesperson believes teaching at our local universities is the equivalent to multiple members of the administration and council “earning” tens of thousands of dollars in county jobs, I am happy to add a course in Local Government Ethics to my teaching load next year for her and the entire Fulop administration,” Solomon said.
Ridley earns $85,000 as a council member and $62,000 as a “confidential assistant” at the Hudson County’s Registrar’s Office. According to her 2022 financial disclosure statement, the councilwoman is also a sales representative for Sky Realty International.
Metro, whose annual city salary is $190,000, earns an additional income of $16,233 from the county as an aide for the Board of Commissioners and as a secretary to the insurance fund. Minella, a former executive director of the Hudson County Democratic Organization, earns $175,000 from the city and an additional $29,614 as a member of the county’s board of elections and as an aide to the board of commissioners.
Councilmembers Rivera and DeGise also have full-time positions with the Hudson County Schools of Technology. And both have council aides who earn six-figure salaries between their city and county jobs. Bunney, an aide for Councilman Yousef Saleh, makes $35,000 as an aide and $76,875 as an analyst trainee for the county.
CivicJC saved some criticism for the county executive, who is Amy DeGise’s father.
“County Executive Tom DeGise … continues to perpetuate and enable double-dipping as he has done for years, completely tone deaf to the public’s disdain for these practices,” Wintner said. “There are numerous confidential assistants on the county payroll, positions without description.
“DeGise must be transparent with the public about why he allows this and disclose how these jobs were advertised.”
Jersey City officials are hardly alone as double-dippers in Hudson County. Prior to his retirement from the North Bergen school district, Nicholas Sacco was earning paychecks as a mayor, senator, assistant superintendent and the performance of weddings. Weehawken Mayor Richard Turner is receiving income as mayor, Rep. Albio Sires’ congressional manager and the North Hudson Regional Fire and Rescue.
“Fulop was the anti-double-dipper,” Wintner said. “The point is not to get little people trying to make a living … It was more about Fulop. This was part of his claim to fame when he soared.”
