A former Jersey City building inspector convicted of taking bribes was re-hired by the city as a temporary seasonal worker and earned $159,000 last year.
According to sources, the Randolph Condi cited in a Jersey City Times article last month as one of several highly compensated temporary seasonal workers assigned to the business administrator’s office, is the same man convicted of taking bribes in his previous city job as a building inspector.
In 2009, a federal judge sentenced Condi to 13 months in prison for attempting to extort cash from contractors in Jersey City. Condi admitted to accepting cash payments in exchange for expediting inspections and looking the other way when contractors failed to obtain necessary permits from the Jersey City Building Department.
Condi also worked for the business administrator in 2021 earning $143,000.
According to Santo Della Monica, president of Local 245, which represents workers in the Department of Public Works, the business administrator’s team of temporary seasonal workers worked on city hall, a shooting range, and the construction of interior offices at DPW. Della Monica said his members, who are normally called upon to handle those construction projects not bid out to private firms — and who earn far less than the business administrator’s team — were never asked to do the work.
The hiring of construction workers by the business administrator raised the eyebrows of two experts in municipal governance and finance. “I’ve never seen anything like that,” said one. Another called it “unusual.” They asked that their names not be used due to ongoing work in Hudson County.
In 2021 and 2022, the business administrator’s team cost the city $4 million.
Condi isn’t the first person with legal issues to find work with the city or an affiliated organization.
In 2014, the defunct Jersey City Employment Training Program, headed by former New Jersey governor James McGreevey and with a board controlled by Mayor Fulop, hired Eugene McKnight. In 1992, McKnight went to jail for racketeering and tampering with evidence in connection with his job as director of the city’s Human Resources Department. The scheme, which falsely inflated Jersey City’s welfare rolls by 1,500 participants, netted McKnight and his co-conspirators $4.2 million.
Michael Manzo, a former Jersey City arson investigator and city council candidate who pleaded guilty to taking a bribe in “Operation Bid Rig” and later to assaulting a man who ended up in the hospital with a fractured jaw, was hired by the city as an aide to Public Safety Director James Shea. Manzo’s Operation Bid Rig conviction was set aside on a technicality.
Former Jersey City mayor Gerald McCann, who was sentenced in 1992 to 33 months in prison for defrauding a Florida savings and loan association of $240,000, was hired by the city in 2010.
Attempts to reach Condi were unsuccessful. A spokesperson for Jersey City declined to comment.