Peter Cammarano

Mayor David Roberts

HOBOKEN – Talk to the street players and they tell you Mayor David Roberts will run again next year, but talk to the man and he won’t reveal his intentions in what looms as a big battle, within a crucible of financial unrest.

“I have not been entertaining conversations about the upcoming mayor’s race,” Roberts told PolitickerNJ.com. “I’ve got other issues: the movie theater, the clock tower.”

But he concedes those are props in this unfolding drama, where the massive issue remains the fact that a state monitor assumed responsibility for the city’s finances. Taxes in Hoboken have ballooned in a government effort to collect $12 million in reserve accounts or to make up for money that otherwise couldn’t be accounted for in city coffers.

Roberts acknowledges the issue with pain in his voice.

Timothy Dacey, who served as Chief of Staff to James E. McGreevey when the future Governor was the Mayor of Woodbridge, lost his bid for re-election to the Metuchen Borough Council on Tuesday.  Republican Justin Manley defeated him by 25 votes, 3,642 to 3,617, to become the first successful GOP candidate in Metuchen in many years.  Dacey's running mate, Peter Cammarano, who served as Chief of Staff to Gov. Richard Codey, won his race for Metuchen Councilman.  He was the top vote-getter with 4,161 votes.  Cammarano was appointed to fill an unexpired term last January.

HOBOKEN - Councilwoman Beth Mason tabled her proposed salary Assemblyman/Councilman Ruben Ramos: Politicker file photoand benefits ordinances at tonight’s council meeting, a move that likely did nothing to diminish the prolonged stare-down from now until next year’s mayoral election between Mason and her opponents.

Broken into two reform pieces, the freshman councilwoman’s proposed ordinances would scrap benefits and limit to $1 the council salaries of council people who hold more than one public job.

She sent them to committee tonight, but not before rousing her opposition.

Mason’s antagonists see the prospective mayoral candidate’s measures (backed up by Councilman Peter Cunningham) as an attempt to bait At-Large Councilman Peter Cammarano and humiliate Assemblyman/At-Large Councilman Ruben Ramos, the governing body’s lone dual elected office holder.

Cammarano was out of town. Ramos fought back.

HOBOKEN - Councilwoman Beth Mason will introduce an ordinance on2nd Ward Councilwoman Beth Mason: Politicker file photo Wednesday night that would limit public salaries of city council representatives who already hold public jobs to $1 apiece.

The Mason ordinance would also prevent council members from receiving healthcare benefits.

A Hoboken elected official who receives health benefits from employment outside the city would be given financial compensation in lieu of the city’s health benefits to a maximum of $2,500 per year, according to a release issued by Mason.

At-Large Councilman Peter Cammarano: Politicker photo 

HOBOKEN - Even members of his inner circle swear that they don’t yet know whether Mayor Dave Roberts plans to run for a third term in 2009.

Whatever his intentions, other Hoboken diehards are surfacing. No one’s announced yet, but fierce political battles now will undoubtedly have political consequences next year in this city stung by the embarrassment of a state takeover of its finances.

There are all of the usual speculations surrounding possible candidates. A sighting of former Councilwoman Carol Marsh at a municipal meeting provokes the conclusion in come corners that she’s definitely running. A recent inundation of photos of Mayor Roberts on the Hoboken website prompts someone else to opine that Roberts is running - bet on it.

Businessman and neighborhood kid made good Frank "Pupie" Raia?

Of course, he’s running, say Hoboken insiders. He always runs, and no doubt he will perpetuate his longstanding animus this year with Councilman Michael Russo, who clubbed him last year in their 3rd ward showdown.

Hoboken’s 2nd Ward Councilwoman Beth Mason is trying to carve out  a reputation for filing lawsuits in the pursuit of “open government” –  to date filing at least eleven such suits over access to public records.

But yesterday, the New Jersey Supreme Court unanimously smacked down  Mason – who has filed 125 separate requests for public records from the  City of Hoboken, saying those who seek records must do so in timely  manner. In the Court’s unanimous ruling, Chief Justice Stuart Rabner wrote of Mason’s 17 requests for city records – including every single  financial transaction by the City of Hoboken in 2003 and 2004: "Citizens  are entitled to swift access to public records, and both the public and  governmental bodies are logically entitled to have any disputes brought  and addressed in the same, rapid manner."

At-Large Councilmen Peter Cammarano, left, and Ruben Ramos: Politicker photo 

At-Large Councilman Ruben Ramos today responded to Second Ward Councilwoman Beth Mason in a letter in which he addressed the self-styled government watchdog as "Boss Mason."

"As a lifelong member of the Hoboken community, I am appalled that Ms. Mason thinks she can mask her intention to be a political boss, by having the audacity to call herself a reformer," Ramos said of the likely mayoral candidate.

Hoboken Councilwoman Beth Mason: Politicker photo 

HOBOKEN - Taking a nod from Jersey City Councilman Steve Fulop, freshman Hoboken Councilwoman Beth Mason intends to introduce an amendment that would ban city elected officials from receiving more than one public salary or pension.

"I am sure that Councilman Fulop recognizes, as do I, how difficult it is to create a more responsive and responsible government when the primary interest of many elected officials lies in perpetuating a cumbersome, costly bureaucracy that rewards the few, at the expense of the many," Mason said.

Elected last year to fill a vacant seat in the city’s second ward, Mason - like Fulop in Jersey City - is a likely 2009 mayoral candidate.

I am amazed that the chairman of the public safety committee has not acted to demand a further investigation into the chief’s conduct before agreeing to let him ride off into the sunset with millions of dollars of taxpayer money,” said Mason.  

U.S. Sen. Frank Lautenberg flew up from Washington last night to attend a fundraiser for Hoboken Councilman Peter Cammarano, a good friend – but blew off an invitation to attend another fundraising event the same evening for Newark Mayor Cory Booker.