Healy says Matsikoudis would make a good Regional EPA Administrator

Jersey City Mayor Jerramiah Healy, who backed Barack Obama for president when most other New Jersey politicos were supporting Hillary Clinton, thinks that his corporation counsel, Bill Matsikoudis, would make a good Regional EPA Administrator. 

“I don’t know if the Obama Administration is interested in anybody for that position or for Billy, but he’s got a good background in environmentalism,” said Healy.  He’s filed some suits on the city’s behalf against corporate polluters. He’s very knowledgeable, diligent and is a hard working. I certainly think he can fill that or anything else.” 

Multiple sources say that Matsikoudis is interested in that position, although it remains to be seen if Healy has the Obama administration’s ear.

What’s clear to Healy, however, is that the new administration will be much more attuned to his city’s needs than the previous one.  Tomorrow, he’ll go to Newark to meet with Mayor Cory Booker and other New Jersey urban mayors to discuss how they should approach the incoming administration.

“We’ve gotten the collective back of Washington, DC’s hand for the last eight years under the current administration,” said Healy, referencing cuts in low-income housing funds, cuts in police hiring programs and gun policy. 

“We think this administration is attuned to those concerns, and is ready to take focus away from where it has been for certainly the last five and a half years, funneling billions and billions of dollars into this outrageous misadventure in Iraq, not to mention the terrible casualties that our young men and women have sustained,” he said.