The Jersey City Council held a budget hearing for the $4,059,803 allocated to the Law Department in the preliminary $886.5 million spending plan that comes with a 15.5 percent tax hike on Tuesday afternoon.
Corporation Counsel Sarah Levine began by noting that the Law Department has 15 attorneys, which she indicated forces them to consistently make more with less through six teams: Litigation, governance, tax, labor, transactional, and investigative.
“Suffice it to say, the Law Department in my view, is profoundly understaffed for a city of our size with the magnitude of challenges we have. Also, we are trying to do the most with the least. It is my impression, that in years past, before I was in this role, every time an attorney resigned from the Law Department, they were not replaced,” she declared.
“I understand from my predecessor that there were efforts to find replacements, and for whatever reason, the Law Department was not permitted to even maintain it’s former level, much less expand consistent with the expanding legal demands of this city.”…