Through a system of reciprocal favors, HCDO favored professionals get lucrative contracts and in turn provide contributions to HCDO candidate reelections, a system Scarinci and Menendez have honed to perfection over more than fifteen years. But lately the system has begun to show signs of fatigue and failure.

Despite spending more than $2 Million in the recent primary, compared to Cunningham’s slate outlay of about $350,000, Cunningham candidates trounced HCDO candidates including Jersey City Council President L. Harvey Smith and 24-year Assembly veteran Joe Doria, Mayor of Bayonne. Lipski is a key vote on the redevelopment agency and is also an indicator of likely changes on the Jersey City Council where he represents Ward C. Lipski said, “ The people spoke in the primary and their voice was loud and clear and unmistakable. I am only responding to that message, as I was voted in to office to do.”

For the same year and a half the Jersey City government has been locked in a standoff between Mayor Cunningham and Council members, controlled by Menendez. Menendez specifically ordered Council members to resist any initiatives by Cunningham and withhold any cooperation from the administration at an unlawful and controversial meeting called by the Congressman during last year’s holiday season.

Lipski’s change of heart may foreshadow an even bigger on the Jersey City Council, which would break the gridlock stalling much of the city government. Commissioner Ed Santiago, a Cunningham supporter said “ If the primary were D-Day, this vote, leading to the council, would be the Battle of the Bulge,” an historic turning point in the European theater of World War II.

Remaining HCDO loyalists on the board, Rafael Diaz and former Chairman Junior Maldonado argued heatedly against putting the agenda items to a vote demanding to know why the changes should be considered. “We are going from a 2-man firm to a 60-man firm and back to a 2-man firm,” said Maldonado of the change from Scarinci’s law firm employing, according to Donald Scarinci, 46 attorneys, to a small local firm represented by Kealy. Compensation to Kealey’s firm will be capped at $125,000 for the year. Despite a similar cap, Scarinci billed more than twice that.

Scarinci, in an even more surprising move, sent a letter to Suzanne Mack dated June 30th saying that he did not wish to be reappointed for economic reasons. Maldonado said that Scarinci’s firm supplied the services of John Scagnelli, a nationally known environmental law specialist who bills private clients $350 to $400 an hour. Scarinci’s contract with the JCRA was based on a notional hourly rate of $125 per hour. Maldonado said that the agency was fortunate to have enjoyed the services of such highly qualified professionals at relative bargain rates. The emotion was clearly evident in Maldonado’s expression and tone of voice that he was highly agitated over the change of legal counsel, the termination of Mack as executive director, and his own replacement as chairman by Lipski.

Mack also spoke emotionally and her voice could be clearly heard to crack addressing commissioners saying that she had never been terminated from any position in more than 30 years’ experience in public planning. Mack was in the job just five months at a salary of $125,000 with a contract requiring a full year’s salary if terminated before the expiration of the contract. The contract requires 120 days’ notice for termination as well as notification of reasons and a hearing that Mack said she would insist upon.

If Mack is terminated at the end of 120 days as this vote calls for she will receive a full year’s salary for nine months work. Her attorney negotiated her employment contract with the agency with Scarinci representing the JCRA. Scarinci billed the agency well in excess of $5,000 at $125 an hour for work done negotiating Mack’s employment agreement with Mack’s attorney. The agency also footed the bill for Mack’s attorney to represent Mack in those negotiations with the agency. Mack’s tenure with the JCRA will be brief but costly to the agency.

Scarinci is relinquishing a $250,000 annual revenue source without the characteristic fight. It was a legal service contract like this one that started the feud between the Cunningham and Menendez camps. Contracts like these are the lifeblood of the HCDO system of interlocking favors that have come to be known as Organized Crime. It was a contract exactly like this that caused the political demise of former Union City Mayor Rudy Garcia. In Union City, Scarinci has routinely billed $ 1 Million for legal services to the city for years, since the time his high school pal Menendez was Mayor there.

Political analysts are divided over whether Scarinci is no longer interested in such small potatoes and is only interested in bigger prizes or if he is keeping a low profile with federal corruption investigations going on in the background.

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