The Jersey JournalDenis Jaslow, 48, was sentenced Tuesday to 2 years probation for bribery.Journal file photo
A former investigator for the Hudson County Board of Elections avoided prison time when he was sentenced for bribery in the Operation Bid Rid III, the large-scale federal corruption sting in July 2009.
Denis Jaslow, 48, who ran for state Senate in 2003, was sentenced Tuesday to two years probation and he was fined $5,000 by Judge Jose Linares in federal court in Newark Tuesday. As part of his sentence, Jaslow must also undergo mental health treatment for the term of the probation.
Denis Jaslow, of North Bergen, pleaded guilty on June 7, 2011 to provide a $10,000 bribe to Dennis Elwell, then the mayor of Secaucus, on behalf of a man trying to buy influence on development matters. That man, Solomon Dwek, turned out to be an undercover government informant.
He previously pleaded guilty to extortion conspiracy, but the plea was thrown out after a successful legal challenge to some aspects of the wider case.
Jaslow could have been sentenced for up to 10 years in prison and fined $250,000, but it is believed that his cooperation in the feds' investigation of other people charged in the corruption probe led to a more lenient sentence.
In all, 46 people, including mayors, state legislators, failed candidates and rabbis, were charged in the sting into political corruption and money laundering.
Among those convicted or who pleaded guilty are former Hoboken Mayor Peter Cammarano, former Jersey City Deputy Mayor Leona Beldini and former Jersey City Council President Mariano Vega.
Admitted bribe-taker says North Bergen Mayor Sacco approved his 'low-show' job, news report says
On the heels of that development came a report by The Star-Ledger of three no- or low-show jobs at the DPW, which Frank Gargiulo, the commissioner in charge of the department denies.
Two law enforcement officials also told The Ledger that there is an ongoing probe into possible wrongdoing in Sacco's administration. In all, about 65 people have been subpoenaed, including Sacco, since a raid of department offices in February, the officials said.
Sacco, who is also a state senator and assistant superintendent of schools in North Bergen, also continues to get strafed in ads and in Trenton by his political power rival Brian Stack, the Union City mayor and state senator.
Then today, in The Auditor column in The Ledger, it is revealed that Denis Jaslow, who admitted taking bribes as part of 2009's Operation Bid Rig III sting, told the FBI in August 2009 that Sacco approved his "low-show" job at the Hudson County Board of Elections.
James Wiley pleaded guilty today to conspiring to have Department of Public Works employees perform chores at his home and work on election campaigns while being payed by the township.
Jaslow, who ran against Sacco in North Bergen in 2003 and then opposed him for state Senate, told the FBI he gained Sacco's approval through Tim Grossi, North Bergen's deputy commissioner of public works.
Grossi declined to comment to The Auditor.
"Jaslow knows Sacco had to approve him getting the job, but he never spoke to Sacco about it," the FBI report says. "Jaslow stated he has no relationship with Sacco."
Sacco spokesman Paul Swibinski told The Auditor that Jawlow's claims are rubbish.
"The statements he made are not true," Swibinski told The Auditor. "He is obviously not a credible person and no one should believe him."
North Bergen payroll padding allegedly cost taxpayers $300K
NORTH BERGEN — The town of North Bergen — thrust into unflattering headlines this week when its former head of the Department of Public Works confessed to using city workers as election muscle throughout Hudson County — also maintains a no-show payroll at the agency, according to current and former township employees.
The padded payroll is estimated to have cost taxpayers at least $300,000 over the past two years, according to the employees, documents obtained by The Star-Ledger and state payroll records. The beneficiaries include a number of township residents with other jobs throughout Hudson County.
The allegations come as North Bergen residents absorb the plea deal former DPW boss James Wiley accepted Tuesday in Superior Court. During that appearance, Wiley admitted mobilizing DPW workers to perform political chores in North Bergen and nearby towns. Wiley also admitted using staffers as handymen at his home while they were on the clock and billing the town’s taxpayers for the personal and political work. He could face between five and 10 years in prison when he is sentenced on Oct. 26.
Accusations about the payroll irregularities are not part of the government’s case against Wiley. Instead, they surfaced in a series of interviews the newspaper conducted over the past four weeks with 14 people, including past and present DPW workers, township officials and employees familiar with the handling of the payroll. None of these people would speak on the record, fearful of retribution in the tight-knit township that overlooks Manhattan.
In the interviews, workers detailed a process in which Timothy Grossi, the public works deputy commissioner, approves the biweekly payroll, adding the names of three no-show employees. Grossi sometimes has a subordinate sign off on it before the checks are cut, five town employees said. DPW workers said the payroll includes an official whose family’s business has received hundreds of thousands of dollars in contracts from the town, an inspector who barely ventures from her home to inspect anything, and the son-in-law of Frank Gargiulo, the public works commissioner.
In addition, workers and township officials said, orders to use DPW crews to electioneer went beyond Wiley. Two township officials said that Grossi directed Wiley to send "political hit teams" to campaign for elections in Jersey City, Hoboken, East Newark and Bayonne over several years. They added that Grossi sometimes accompanied them to oversee the work, and the work was billed as overtime.
Last winter, workers and township officials said, Wiley, who retired two weeks ago as superintendent of the department, and Grossi ordered subordinates to compile a catalog of political enemies in advance of local elections in May, a photo album of a kind with pictures of every home and every storefront in North Bergen displaying an opposition sign. Gargiulo, in addition to Wiley, they said, has used DPW workers at his home to clean his garage and snake a toilet.
State officials, who have been probing possible corruption in North Bergen for more than a year, declined to comment on the newspaper’s findings because their investigation is ongoing.
Employees across several departments in North Bergen describe Grossi as one of Mayor Nicholas Sacco’s most powerful surrogates. Grossi is part adviser, part fundraiser, a confidante with strong political connections from Hudson County to Trenton, they said. He has a second paid position as chief aide to Sacco in one of the mayor’s other jobs – state senator. Grossi also has been shown on a YouTube video ordering store owners to remove signs supporting opposition candidates.
"I know who I am, my family knows who I am, and so does everybody who has known me my entire life," Grossi said in a phone interview. "I don’t have to defend myself. I look in the mirror and know who I am. I’ve always been a professional my entire work career, be it in the private sector or public sector. I always maintained the same standard."
INVESTIGATION EXPANDING
Allegations of politically active DPW workers helped spark the current state investigation headed by Attorney General Jeffrey S. Chiesa’s office. Now, however, two law enforcement officials say the probe is widening into possible wrongdoing in Sacco’s administration. Citing the need for confidentiality in an ongoing investigation, these officials requested anonymity.
In all, the law enforcement officials said, about 65 people have been subpoenaed since a raid of department offices in February, including Sacco, who, in addition to serving as mayor and state senator, is assistant superintendent of North Bergen’s schools. Combined, the three jobs pay Sacco, a longtime public servant in the town, $298,725, according to payroll records.
John O'Boyle/The Star-LedgerAllegations of politically active DPW workers helped spark the current state investigation headed by the office of Attorney General Jeffrey S. Chiesa, above.
Sacco said in a statement that North Bergen officials did not know of Wiley’s alleged misconduct, although Wiley said in court that he was "ordered" to send employees to work on campaigns in Jersey City and Bayonne.
"No one had any knowledge or any indication of any illegal activities taking place in the Department of Public Works," Sacco said. "To see the public trust violated in this manner, for any reason, is completely unacceptable and cannot be tolerated."
Paul Swibinski, a spokesman for North Bergen, said that five years ago the attorney general, in a separate investigation, explored allegations of five no-shows on the DPW payroll.The workers’ descriptions of current abuses, which they said took place over the past two years, amount to a "rehash" of dated accusations, Swibinski said.
"You can’t go to a single urban community and not find people who are part of the workforce who participate in political activities," he said. "There’s nothing wrong with an employee supporting any candidate and exercising his right to take part in political activities, whether for a candidate in his community or in another community."
Gargiulo, the public works commissioner, denied any existence of a no-show payroll. In an interview at his home, Gargiulo said some of the employees described by the DPW workers as no-shows, including his son-in-law, are purposely placed in low-profile roles so they can observe the work crews as part of a system of quality control. The more obscure, the better able they are to monitor the work habits and performance of other employees, he said.
"They are my eyes and ears," Gargiulo said. "Everyone in this department is accountable."
He added that as a commissioner paid $14,500, his role is part-time and that his main function is to attend board of commissioners meetings once, sometimes twice a month. He leaves the day-to-day management of the department to Grossi, he said.
ALL-PURPOSE UTILITY
North Bergen, a Hudson County town of about 65,000, sits on 5-and-a-half square miles, much of it a chockablock arrangement of tightly rowed houses, apartment buildings and businesses set on a steep hill. The public works department serves the town as an all-purpose utility, cleaning sewers, filling potholes and changing traffic lights. Under Wiley, it developed into a state-of-the-art department, with its own "asphalt cooker" that saves the town thousands of dollars by recycling asphalt, and a truck that surgically drops cameras into sewer lines.
But abuses, current workers say, have seeped into the workaday practices of the department.
Every week over the past 17 years an attendance sheet was signed by Wiley and a supervisor, and delivered to Grossi at town hall, several workers and town officials said. The sheets, they said, helped generate the bi-weekly payroll for the road crews, which now have 43 workers.
The employees said that for at least the past two years Grossi has added the names of no-show workers before turning the payroll over to the Department of Revenue and Finance, where the checks are cut, then signed by that department’s commissioner.
One of the payroll sheets in question • dated May 2011 • was obtained by The Star-Ledger and includes the names of three people who, workers said, did little or no work at DPW.
According to salary records for public employees in Hudson County, one of the people on the no-show payroll, John Stalknecht, receives a salary of $75,636 at DPW as the commissioner’s confidential aide, in addition to $47,007 he receives as an aide to Marie Borace, the superintendent of elections for Hudson County. For more than 20 years he has filled a key role in the local politics.
Sources said Stalknecht will occasionally call DPW to report a pothole or perhaps an old couch someone discarded at a curb. Over the past two years he rarely has been seen, either at the department’s Town Hall offices on Kennedy Boulevard or at the yard on Tonnelle Avenue, they said.
On a recent afternoon, speaking through an intercom at his home in North Bergen, Stalknecht said that earlier in the day he had called in a sighting of a broken branch on the tree directly across the street from his front window.
John Munson/The Star-Ledger"No one had any knowledge or any indication of any illegal activities taking place in the Department of Public Works," North Bergen Mayor Nicholas Sacco says.
"I work for Commissioner Gargiulo and I talk to Tim Grossi every day," he said. "I am available 24 hours a day, seven days a week."
He was asked how many hours he works each week.
"Basically what I do, I drive around town," he said. "There’s no set thing for me to do. I don’t make up work. If I see something, I get it taken care of. I’m in touch with the office. I stop by the garage. Sometimes I see the men working around town and I ask them what is going on. Sometimes I put my name on work orders, sometimes I don’t. I’ve been there 25 years. I guess I’ve earned a little leeway."
Problems in the department, he said, start and end with Wiley.
"I was one of the people who reported Wiley’s activities," he said, referring to the use of DPW employees at Wiley’s house.
Since Stalknecht’s conversation with the newspaper, workers said he has made regular stops at the yard after having been seen only occasionally in the last few years. Then, on Wednesday, in a meeting with all the road crews, Gargiulo said that with Wiley gone Stalknecht would now "oversee operations," workers said.
Stalknecht’s sons, Jamie and John, own 4-CleanUp Inc., an industrial cleaning and construction company, which last year received more than $206,000 from North Bergen to renovate parks, according to records of companies that do business with the town. Three sources said the company recently received a contract worth about $250,000 to redesign a small park on the west side of town.
"These are bid contracts," Stalknecht said. "We don’t give the job because their father works for the town."
Another person on the payroll, Janet Sinisi, has the title of inspector and is paid $47,007. She is supposed to scour North Bergen for everything from broken sidewalks and potholes to smelly sewer catch basins –- and then issue work orders to the road crews, said Gargiulo. A list of local Democratic Party organizers given to The Star-Ledger shows that she has been a "committee person," responsible for bringing supporters to the polls.
The newspaper has received a dozen 2012 work orders issued by Sinisi and was told that through Aug. 27, those were the only orders she filed this year. These records indicate she did not write any work orders before May 18. Eight of her orders were for repairs within a block of her house on Bergenwood Avenue, including a flurry of four on June 1 for potholes on a short dead-end street.
Workers who say they responded to Sinisi’s reports • including one for a loose manhole cover and another for cracks in the blacktop surrounding a manhole • say they found nothing in need of repair when they responded.
On Friday afternoon, Sinisi, sitting on her front porch, said that "only Grossi" could address questions about her work orders.
SON-IN-LAW ON PAYROLL
Gargiulo’s son-in-law, Barbarito Ramos, can also be found on the payroll, but several DPW workers say they have never met him. Ramos is paid $26,208, according to public salary records, to act as a roving satellite, Gargiulo said, and catch DPW workers who may not be accomplishing their tasks.
Gargiulo also works full-time at the Jersey City Board of Education, according to records.
Those same public employment records suggest Gargiulo is one of many in North Bergen with several public jobs.
In addition to the commissioner’s job, the records show, Gargiulo receives $223,802 as superintendent for the Hudson County Schools of Technology. Mark Sinisi, a son of the inspector, receives a salary of $39,172, and also works for the Hudson County Schools of Technology. Another son of Sinisi’s, Matthew, is listed on the town’s payroll as having a job that pays $36,365, while his wife, Elizabeth, earns $67,725 as a North Bergen police officer.
Gargiulo said that last year he also hired Grossi’s wife, Katalin, at the Hudson County schools, at a $77,757 salary.
The Jersey Journal
North Bergen recycling plant worker loses six fingers in conveyor belt mishap
By Anthony J. Machcinski/The Jersey JournalThe Jersey Journal
An employee at the Eagle Recycling plant on Dell Avenue in North Bergen lost six fingers in an industrial accident on Wednesday, police said.
The 22-year-old Union City resident was attempting to grab a piece of cardboard that was jammed on a conveyer belt around 6:20 p.m. when his hands got stuck inside the feeder, according to police reports.
Police said the man was bleeding profusely and was taken to Jersey City Medical Center by West New York EMS.
JCMC spokesman Mark Rabson said the man was in stable condition yesterday after undergoing several hours of surgery.
Four fingers on the man’s right hand and two digits on his left hand were severed, police said.
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration began its investigation into the incident Wednesday night, OSHA spokeswoman Lenore Fortson said yesterday.
OSHA discovered 28 violations at the facility, ranging from fire safety inadequacies to a lack of protective equipment for employees, during four inspections at the plant since 2009, Fortson said.
In October, the facility was closed after a two-alarm fire. According to a township spokesman, the plant was issued a $100,000 fine and assessed several safety violations.
In April 2011, the company’s owners pleaded guilty in federal court to dumping 8,100 tons of debris, including asbestos, in New York and then attempting to destroy documents to conceal the action.
North Bergen Housing Authority supervisor pleads guilty to extorting workers
A high-ranking North Bergen Housing Authority official pleaded guilty to extortion charges yesterday in Newark federal court.
John T. Kennell, 49, of North Bergen, was arrested in August and charged with extortion under color of official right and by fear of economic harm.
Yesterday, he pleaded guilty to those charges before U.S. District Judge Jose L. Linares and faces up to 20 years in prison and a maximum fine of $250,000 when he is sentenced on March 25.
Kennell was paid $79,600 a year to supervise the repair and maintenance of the roughly 1,000 apartments the housing authority manages.
According to court documents in the case, Kennell, who supervised the employees of a grounds maintenance company employed by the Housing Authority, accepted cash to secure unauthorized paid vacation days for workers.
Kennell falsely reported to the company that the employees were working at the North Bergen Housing Authority. Kennel was paid from $100 to $400 by the employees to secure the vacation.
In total, the company compensated employees for about 80 days of unauthorized vacation worth well over $12,000. As a result of his actions, Kennell pocketed between $2,000 and $2,500, court records say.
Kennell admitted he threatened to get workers fired if they didn’t pay him off.
North Bergen Housing Authority spokesman Paul Swibinski said yesterday that Kennell was suspended without pay after his arrest and would be terminated today.
The Rutherford-based maintenance company continues to work for the township’s housing authority, he said.
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