By Craig Wolff/The Star-Ledger

NORTH BERGEN — Three months ago, a top official of North Bergen’s Department of Public Works, acknowledged in open court to using workers on town time as political reinforcements for campaign duties around Hudson County.

The Star-LedgerH BERGEN — Three months ago, a top official of North Bergen’s Department of Public Works, acknowledged in open court to using workers on town time as political reinforcements for campaign duties around Hudson County.His confession included a cryptic line: "I was ordered to do this."

Today, in another step in the state attorney general’s growing investigation into corruption in North Bergen, Timothy Grossi, the troubled agency’s deputy commissioner, was indicted on charges he was the one who issued orders from on high.

According to the indictment, Grossi directed the official, James Wiley, to carry out the political work and to pass on assignments to subordinates, coercing them to electioneer for Democratic candidates in at least three elections in Jersey City and Bayonne. Grossi, who oversees the agency’s operations and its payroll, also falsified documents to make it appear the workers were out performing their regular duties when they were instead knocking on doors and soliciting votes, the indictment says.

He faces charges with, by now, familiar echoes. Like Wiley, the former DPW superintendent, Grossi was also charged with summoning workers to his home for a range of renovations, including installing air conditioners and windows, and for sprucing up his garden, and then billing North Bergen.

Grossi, 72, faces eight counts, including conspiracy, official misconduct and tampering with records. If convicted on the most serious charges, he would face a minimum 10-year prison sentence without parole.

The case against Grossi, a close ally of North Bergen Mayor Nicholas Sacco, was moved from Essex to Hudson County.

A spokesman for the attorney general said the switch was made "in order to avoid any conflict of interest or perceived conflict of interest related to the fact that Grossi is active politically in Hudson County."

Reached by phone last night, Grossi declined to comment, and repeated efforts to speak with his lawyer were unavailing.

Wiley, who agreed to a plea agreement in September, has not yet been sentenced. Two lower-level agency supervisors have also been indicted.

The charges against Grossi follow a Star-Ledger investigation in September which included accounts by 14 unidentified public works employees and North Bergen officials describing how Grossi organized "political hit teams," some times in squadrons of 30, dispatching them for campaign duties. The workers and officials, fearful of reprisals, refused to lend their names to the accusations.

The indictment states Grossi ordered the work for a mayoral campaign in Bayonne in 2008, for a Jersey City mayor’s race the following year, and a sheriff’s election in Jersey City in 2010.

A number of the workers also told the newspaper that Grossi ordered workers to destroy political literature opposed to Sacco and the local Democratic party. They described having to create a kind of enemies photo album with pictures of every home and storefront with an opposition sign.

Grossi, himself, can be seen in a YouTube video, directing a store owner to remove a sign from her window. And today’s indictment charges that Grossi ordered workers to take "photographs of political signs."

In all, at least 65 people have been subpoenaed in an investigation that was highlighted by a raid of the public works offices in February and has widened to beyond its earlier scope to include officials in Sacco’s administration, according to two officials with knowledge of the attorney general’s work. Citing the need for confidentiality in an ongoing investigation, these officials requested anonymity.

The case has consumed a department serving a town of about 60,000 that to the east holds majestic views along the Hudson River. It is otherwise mostly congested with homes tightly packed on steep hills. A street workforce of 43 does everything from fixing potholes to repairing sewers and paving roads. They work out of a yard on Tonnelle Avenue, where investigators first descended earlier this year.