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Passaic City Council President/Acting Mayor Gary S. Schaer released a statement today in the aftermath of Mayor Samuel Rivera's departure from office. 

Rivera resigned at 5 p.m. after earlier in the day pleading guilty to extortion in federal court.

"This is a difficult time for Passaic," said Schaer. "I am committed, along with my city council colleagues, to restoring confidence to the residents of Passaic and assuring them that the services provided by our municipal government will continue as normal.

Gannett New Jersey is significantly scaling back its work force by offering voluntary buyouts to employees in order to cope with declining advertising revenues.

According to an article published on Gannett newspaper Web sites, the buyouts will be offered offered to 166 employees over the age of 55 who have worked there for at least 15 years. The company is making the offer at five of the company’s six New Jersey papers: The Asbury Park Press, Courier-Post, Home News Tribune, Courier News and Daily Journal. 

If not enough employees accept the buyout, the company will resort to layoffs, said Asbury Park Press President and Publisher Thomas M. Donovan, who’s vice president of Gannett’s East Newspaper Group.

ORANGE - Newark Mayor Cory Booker todayNewark Mayor Cory Booker lent his public support to the mayoral candidacy of Eldridge Hawkins, Jr.

"I know what it takes to restore hope and a new direction to a city in crisis," Booker wrote in a message to Orange voters that appeared on Hawkins campaign mailers throughout the Essex County city on the eve of the last weekend before Election Day.

"Eldridge Hawkins has the competence, good ideas and determination to create a bright future for Orange," Booker wrote of the 28-year old West Orange police officer.

Nutley Commissioner Peter Scarpelli and his son, Joseph Scarpelli, a candidate for the Nutley Board of Commissioners. 

NUTLEY - At a party in his son’s campaign headquarters Thursday night, retiring Commissioner Peter Scarpelli sent the man he hopes will succeed him, Dr. Joseph Scarpelli, into the final five-day fray of the Nutley commissioners’ race.

"I can’t say more about this young guy," said the elder Scarpelli, 70, a former mayor, who serves as his son’s campaign manager. "I’ve known him all my life. He’s probably the best candidate we’ve put forward in the Scarpelli family."

Ward Two Councilman Steve Rovell 

BELLEVILLE - Less than a week before Election Day, both sides open up with everything they’ve got, and the resulting facial expressions and body language indicate that some of the shots have landed.

A glossy mail piece hits the tightknit blue collar neighborhoods off Franklin Avenue that run up against the Parkway on the other side. The man whose face appears in unflattering photos on those mailers storms to the microphone at a rally for him and his running mates.

"It’s pure and utter B.S.," cries Ward Two Councilman Steve Rovell, referring to challenger Mario Drozdz’s charges that Rovell was part of a team that increased taxes $10 million in thee years, indulged in political favoritism and hired nearly a million dollar’s worth of town employees who don’t live in Belleville.

The Star-Ledger is reporting that Passaic Mayor Samuel Rivera today in federal court pleaded guilty to corruption charges and faces up to 18-24 months in prison.

Caught in an FBI sting last year, Rivera, 61, pleaded guilty to one count of extortion after being accused of accepting $5,000 in cash from a dummy insurance brokerage firm.

Rivera resigned as mayor of Passaic, effective at 5 p.m. today, according to the Star-Ledger.

PATERSON - As recently as last month, Mayor Jose "Joey" Torres wasMayor Jose "Joey" Torres coy about whether he would publicly get into the Elizabeth Rosadorace against his adversary, Ward Two Councilman Aslon Goow.

"I don't know if a mayor should endorse," the mayor mused, later threatening to get into the contest  if Goow continued his public assault against his record as mayor. 

Today, Torres officially got in the game, lending his voice in a robocall to the cause of Goow challenger Elizabeth Rosado, wife of longtime Torres ally, former Councilman Jerry Luis Rosado. 

Goow, a two-term incumbent, is trying to fend off challenges from both Rosado and mason contractor John Larko. 

State Sen. Loretta Weinberg (D-Teaneck) thinks that a Teaneck councilwoman’s “gas chamber” comment was not intended to offend her Jewish colleagues, but that Monica Honis erred by not saying she’s sorry.

“I think it was a slip of the tongue, and I think that she should have immediately apologized,” said Weinberg, who’s not endorsing anyone in her home town’s council race. “And if she didn’t immediately do it, she should have at the subsequent council meeting.”

At a block association meeting on Monday, Honis, who’s up for re-election, said that picking her and not her two running mates would be like sending her “to the gas chamber.” Honis’s Jewish counterparts on the council took offense to that statement, saying that it was an insensitive reference to the holocaust.

ORANGE - On the last full week of the mayor's race here, At LargeAt Large Councilman Donald Page Councilman Donald Page and West Orange Patrolman Eldridge Hawkins lead the pack in overall financial contributions and have opened up on each other in a mail war.

According to the state Election Law Enforcement Commission (ELEC), Hawkins has raised $67,395, including $25,273 in the last period, leaving him with $19,146 in the bank.

Page has raised $41,148, including $11,210 in this period. He has aEldridge Hawkins, Jr. closing balance of $5,416, according to ELEC.

The Hawkins campaign did a lit. drop early this week that charges the councilman with racking up $21,000 of travel expenses over the years he has been in office, while the Page campaign blasted away at Hawkins’s short time as an Orange resident, noting that he voted in his first election here in June of last year.

 Ward 4 challenger Kisha Manning. 

PATERSON - Shrugged off by the incumbent as too aloof to feel the pain of the 4th Ward, Kisha Manning smiles and shakes her head.

She was born here and grew up here.

"I even get my hair done and my nails done here," she says with a laugh.

Her school record at William Paterson University and subsequent success as a revenue officer with the Internal Revenue Service don’t diminish the roots, or the lifelong street cred Councilwoman Vera Ames-Garnes claims Manning lacks to maneuver in a city that has been under state-control for 18 years.