Bridgeaplooza: New allegations emerge from Zimmer lawsuit
HOBOKEN — Hoboken Mayor Dawn Zimmer threatened to fire Carmelo Garcia, director of the local housing authority, unless he agreed to hire politically connected contractors, a recently filed lawsuit claims.
Zimmer’s lawyer says the claims are baseless and suggested they are retaliation engineered by Christie allies.
The strong-arm tactics alleged by Garcia, who is also a Democratic assemblyman, come two weeks after Zimmer, also a Democrat, claimed in a nationally televised interview that the Christie administration threatened to withhold Hurricane Sandy recover money for Hoboken unless she agreed to fast-track a development project the governor backed.
In the lawsuit filed last week in Superior Court in Jersey City, Garcia claims Zimmer pressured him to award contracts to her political allies. When he resisted, Zimmer and her husband, Stanley Grossbard, “began to subject Director Garcia to an unlawful pattern of harassment, threats, intimidation and extortion,” the suit claims. (Giambusso/Star-Ledger)
