The Jersey City Independent "

Jersey City business administrator Jack Kelly is facing criticism for working outside Jersey City from Ward E councilman Steven Fulop, who is asking Mayor Healy to remove Kelly from his position.

“It has been brought to my attention that [Kelly] has remained as an employee at the City of Orange Township in addition to serving as business administrator to Jersey City,” Fulop writes in an email to the mayor and the other City Council members. “The fact that he is still part of the administration in Orange and being compensated is reprehensible and inappropriate.”

In the email, Fulop says the only solution is for Kelly to leave City Hall.

“Anything less than removing him from his role in Jersey City is not acceptable,” Fulop writes. “We should be cutting ties early when issues of public trust exist.”

But Kelly, who came on board in Jersey City in May after working for 21 years as Orange’s Chief Financial Officer (CFO), says his position there is temporary.

“Unbeknownst to me when I came here,” Kelly says, “there were four other people in the [Orange] Finance Department who all decided to retire on June 30.” He says he was asked to come back to Orange to consult with John Ditinyak, the city’s new CFO-in-training, since the brain drain in Orange’s Finance Department — which went from a staff of 11 to six after Kelly’s departure and the four retirements — has left him with little support. Kelly says he works for Orange only on Saturday mornings.

“What I do on Saturday morning shouldn’t be Mr. Fulop’s concern, considering I work here [in Jersey City] more than 50 hours a week,” Kelly says. “Is he going to be asking me about my religion next?”

Fulop notes in his email that Orange’s website continues to list Kelly as the city’s CFO, a fact Kelly doesn’t dispute. He says he continues to hold the title; his replacement Ditinyak, who is currently Orange’s deputy director of Finance, will officially assume the position of CFO upon completion of training classes and “when the mayor has enough confidence in him.”

Fulop also points out that Kelly continues to work as the joint tax assessor for the Boroughs of Caldwell and Essex Fells, a fact Kelly acknowledged when he was hired by Jersey City. Reiterating what he told us in May, Kelly says he works just three hours a week in that position on Tuesday evenings.

But Fulop says his doubts aren’t assuaged by Kelly’s explanations.

“It has been four months since he was hired by Jersey City,” Fulop tells JCI. “There is nothing temporary about it other than he got caught.”

Calling Kelly’s Orange job “pure and simple pension-padding,” Fulop says Kelly “needs to go.”

Mayor Healy, meanwhile, continues to support Kelly, while dismissing Fulop’s concerns.

“Considering the fiscal crisis that this city and all others around the nation are in, it is a privilege to have [Kelly] here,” Healy says in a statement. “The position in Orange is part-time and temporary in nature and consists of transitioning a new CFO there as needed.”

Kelly denies charges of pension-padding, saying instead that he is “being responsible and assisting [his] former employer.”

“I didn’t put a gun to anybody’s head in Orange,” he says. “They thought it was prudent and I thought it was prudent as well.”

Photo: Steve Gold

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