The Jersey City Independent "

- As we reported yesterday, some critics of Mayor Healy are upset about his campaign’s rental of a Jersey City Incinerator Authority truck to use in Sunday’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade. “Because he knows people in high places, he gets away with it,” mayoral candidate Lou Manzo tells the Journal. In an editorial, the paper says the Healy campaign’s “explanations are full of half-truths justifying an illegal act,” and that there is no set policy. The JJ also reports that St. Patrick’s Parade officials told other candidates that they could not march with a political banner because they are supposedly banned under parade bylaws.

- Jersey City is hoping that former EPA deputy administrator W. Michael McCabe will be the site administrator for the cleanup of toxic chromium waste near 900 Garfield Ave. The city and state settled last month with PPG Industries on a preliminary site cleanup plan. Other suits against PPG are still moving forward, though, as many community members don’t think the settlement goes far enough. Look for JCI‘s report on the cleanup tomorrow.

- In an op-ed, JCPD Sgt. Ed Carattini argues that the city’s police and firefighters — especially in management positions — do not accurately reflect the diversity of the city.

- Six HudCo residents — including three from Jersey City — have been indicted on charges they operated a credit card fraud and identity theft ring.

- The financial pressure being applied on the Jersey Journal by owner Advance Publications partly has to do with the fact that other, more-profitable arms of the media conglomerate are no longer quite as profitable, and thus aren’t able to prop up a paper that reportedly loses money each year. In the latest woeful news to come out of Advance, Advertising Age reports that more cuts are coming to the company’s Conde Nast Media Group.

- Art critic Dan Bischoff reviews the “Industrial Strength: Precisionism and New Jersey” exhibit that opens at the Jersey City Museum on Thursday night. In an interesting passage, he compares contemporary artists that fetishize Jersey’s industrial ruin with the Precisionists: “Contemporary painters are most often attracted by the spread of industrial rot, with its views of abandoned factories and the rusting machine plants left over from the boom days of World War II, while Precisionists were in awe of America’s productive capacity and tended to fit their industrial silhouettes into simplified, almost Cubist, patterns.”

- The Jersey City Medical Center has unveiled a new mural in its pediatric waiting room, courtesy of Bayonne’s Jamile Borges.

In statewide news:

- Many South Jersey municipalities are deciding against deferring half of their state pension obligations this year, fearful of heavier debts down the road.

- The New Jersey Council on the Arts has released the guidelines for its Staffing Preservation program, which is expected to distribute $336,900 in federal stimulus money to NJ arts organizations to support positions that have been eliminated or targeted for elimination/reduction of hours.

- In a test run, a slurry of microscopic iron particles will be pumped into the ground at an old industrial park in Passaic to neutralize a plume of toxic pollution. If it works, the process could be used to clean up a wide variety of contamination, including solvents, pesticides, PCBs and heavy metals.

- The state Supreme Court has rejected a Republican effort to force Gov. Corzine to release email exchanges with former girlfriend Carla Katz, who was president of the largest state workers’ union.

- The fight over building a strip mall in the Palisades in North Bergen has been officially tabled by the Hudson County Planning Board.

- The state sued Verizon yesterday over its alleged “deceptive and misleading” marketing practices for its FiOS service.

- NJ home prices are dropping by an average of about 1 percent a month, and will likely not stabilize before the fourth quarter, appraiser Jeffrey Otteau says. He predicted a 9 percent decline in prices for 2009 overall.

- The EPA is calling for the immediate closing of three waterfront sites along the Raritan Bay in Old Bridge and Sayreville due to health concerns after finding high levels of lead in the area.

- Will the recession slow the state’s open space purchases?

- The state has extended payment of accidental death benefits to survivors of public employees who die while serving on active duty in the military.

- Doubts are mounting about a 2009 opening date for the beleaguered Xanadu project in the Meadowlands.

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