Jersey City residents who formed a committee this year to try to recall several city officials have become aware of legal restrictions on how many officeholders they can target. Thus, they said last week that they have decided to focus for now on unseating Mayor Jerramiah Healy, who is up for re-election in 2013.
But they say new committees have formed to try to recall several members of the City Council.
Three residents – John Lynch, Martha Larkins, and Riaz Wahid – were informed by City Clerk Robert Byrne in a June 15 letter that state law requires that “no recall committee shall sponsor the recall of more than one officeholder.”
The trio had begun spreading the word last month that they want to recall Healy and City Councilmembers-at-Large Peter Brennan and Mariano Vega. They describe their campaign as a protest against the council’s approval of the recent municipal budget, which led to a rise in taxes, and to express dissatisfaction with the way the city is governed.
“It just took a life of its own.” – John Lynch
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After the June 15 letter from Byrne notifying them that only one official can be recalled by their committee, they pulled back and re-submitted a notice of intention to recall Mayor Healy early last month.
Byrne wrote back on July 16 informing the committee that the notice to recall Mayor Healy was reviewed and approved. That notice was published in the local daily newspaper last week.
Healy acknowledged to the city clerk’s office that he had received the notice, and on July 22 – the next step in the recall process – the mayor returned the July 16 letter to the clerk addressed to the committee, bearing his signature.
What’s next?
Lynch, a Jersey City Heights resident, said last week that the committee sent Byrne the paperwork they want to use to collect residents’ signatures on a recall petition.
Lynch also said that Notices of Intention to recall council members are being worked on by new committees that don’t include Lynch, Larkins or Wahid as members.
Now, the council members targeted include at-large representatives Peter Brennan and Mariano Vega, as well council members Michael Sottolano in Ward A and Nidia Lopez in Ward C.
Lynch said the members of the new committees preferred not to comment publicly until their recall effort is formally underway.
Lynch says he is impressed with the progress of the recall effort so far, which includes over 20 people from across the city organizing various committees.
“None of us knew each other really before this,” Lynch said. “It’s not like we got together and got this crazy idea to do this recall. It just took a life of its own.”
Besides the city’s financial problems in the past few years, more than a dozen city officials were arrested last year as part of a statewide FBI sting operation to nab candidates taking bribes while running for re-election.
Enormous undertaking
A recall enables voters to remove an elected official from office through a petition drive which, if successful, forces a new election. For each public official targeted, a separate petition must be signed by 25 percent of voters who registered in the last general election, which was November 2009.
It is not an easy or quick process. In Jersey City, it means a minimum of 30,000 signatures would have to be validated by the clerk to force the recall election of Healy and the councilpersons-at-large mentioned. Those 30,000 signatures would have to be collected citywide within 160 days of the date of the approval of the notice of intention.
For the wards, it would require a minimum of the signatures equaling 25 percent of voters from that ward who registered to vote in the November 2009 general election.
By law, the petition drive cannot begin until one year after the elected official’s term commenced. Healy, Vega, Brennan, and Flood were all re-elected in May 2009 and began their present terms on July 1, 2009.
Shortly afterward, residents began posting comments on the local website JCList proposing a recall of the mayor and several council members.
If the recall of any Jersey City official is successful, it would be the first in the city’s history, according to City Clerk Byrne.
Various political observers have noted that a recall effort could easily fail due to apathy. In the May 2009 municipal election, a little more than 30,000 out of a potential 120,000 registered voters actually voted. Healy amassed more than half of those 30,000 votes.
Ricardo Kaulessar can be reached at rkaulessar@hudsonreporter.com.