[INSPRATIONAL MUSIC STING] - We are honored to have the honorable mayor of Jersey City, James Solomon.

Mayor, great to have you with us.

- Thank you, Steve, for having me.

- You got it.

Mayor, let's jump into this and it will not be the last time we have you on because Jersey City is the second largest.

And I know you may be, you think about being the largest at one point, but Newark is the largest Jersey City second.

This is part of our series, "Urban Matters," whole range of issues I wanna talk about, first is this.

You have a budget crisis in Jersey City.

Is that a fair description mayor?

- Absolutely.

It's $254 million, nearly 30% of our budget, 13 times the size of New York City's crisis, larger than the size of our police and fire department salaries.

- How the heck does that happen all of a sudden?

- Yeah, you know, the former administration, you know, made a choice to cover up a lot of budget ailments and ills.

They use a lot of one-time gimmicks to plug budget holes.

So $33 million in land sales, $27 million out of a rainy day fund.

And then on top of that, they systemically under budgeted our healthcare costs and they left us with $52 million in unpaid health bills from 2024 and 2025, as well as an additional $50 million in healthcare costs.

So when you add that all up, that's how unfortunately, we get to a deficit of this size and magnitude.

- So in addition to you pledging only taking a $1 salary in 2026, which is symbolic but significant and put up the website to find out more information about the budget and budget transparency in Jersey City.

But Mayor, let me ask you this.

Are you ultimately expecting the state of New Jersey who's also facing, we just had the governor, we interviewed her for a half hour check, out that program.

Are you expecting the state to come in and, dare I use the phrase, bailout Jersey City?

- So we are asking for a partnership with the state in the short-term.

And the reason why we think that makes sense is Jersey City's economic growth has been extraordinary benefit to the taxpayers of the whole state.

We've added hundreds of millions of dollars in taxpayer revenue by growing so substantially as we have.

And the last thing that the entire state of New Jersey needs is for Jersey City to reverse course, for property taxes and service cuts to basically stop growth in Jersey City, stop development.

We've really been an economic engine for the whole state.

So what we've said to Governor Cheryl, as well as our partners in the legislature is, you know, one year, one time, we need some assistance.

We need that assistance to prevent the working in middle class families of Jersey City from suffering from the former mayor's mistakes.

And we need that assistance to get back on our feet, but we are not looking for a long-term set of assistance.

We just need it in the short-term.

And the other thing that I think is, you know, really important to emphasize here is that, you know, we can get back to stability, to economic growth very, very quickly.

- All right, let's shift gears dramatically.

A good friend of mine happens to be, and we talked about this before we got on the air, your head of public safety is Anthony Ambrose.

Is he the head of public safety?

- Yes.

Director of public safety.

- Well, he is a great law enforcement professional, not just a friend, but I know that about him.

And check out who Anthony Ambrose is, his former work in the city of Newark.

And here's what I keep thinking.

For your police department, for the county police, when ICE comes in, the feds come in and Jersey City has a large immigrant population.

The videos there, our friends and partners at NJ Spotlight News have documented this.

There are reports on it.

When ICE comes in to deport, who the heck is in charge?

Is it the feds because the feds are in charge?

A and B, are your law enforcement professionals supposed to cooperate with them or can they resist them if they think something's happening that's unconstitutional or illegal?

I know that's a loaded question, but we're trying to figure this out and we'll also have the Attorney General of New Jersey come on and talk about it as well.

Go ahead, mayor.

- Well, it's a phenomenal question to ask and part of our deep concern is that the way ICE is operating actually pits local and federal law enforcement against each other in situations that could be dangerous.

And we are actually teaching our officers and training them to deescalate in those situations 'cause we do not want conflict between federal and local law enforcement.

What we have said to ICE very clearly is if you have a criminal signed warrant, we will cooperate, we will help you.

But if you don't have that, we don't want you operating in Jersey City.

Now, I can't prevent them from doing so, but unfortunately what they're doing is oftentimes, they'll operate without giving us any advanced notice, then we'll get 911 calls, people saying, "Look, "these people in an unmarked vehicle "are taking one of my neighbors and putting them inside," so people don't know that this is an actual law enforcement activity.

And that situation creates danger.

So our core message is really to President Trump, to Homeland Security.

I guess they're having a new director soon, is reform your tactics, reform your work.

You know, what we want here is just go after folks that have, again, those criminal warrants and leave the kind of hardworking immigrants alone.

Don't engage in these tactics that can really put our community at risk.

- Mayor, you believe this is dangerous?

- Absolutely.

You know, I think we saw it in Minnesota, you know, obviously you saw two, you know, protestors killed.

But I think you saw very dangerous interactions between law enforcement and local police where sometimes the local police were in between ICE and the protestors and, you know, we're lucky those situations didn't even get worse than we saw.

So my hope is that the federal government really rethinks its whole approach here.

- Serious crisis and challenge you have in Jersey City, healthcare.

- Yep.

- Heights University Hospital as we speak, we're taping this program on the 17th of March.

Things will evolve, but right now, as of right now, that hospital, one of only two hospitals in Jersey City.

The other is Jersey City University Hospital, right?

- Jersey City Medical Center.

- Jersey City, I apologize, Jersey City Medical Center, part of RWJBarnabas Health.

- Correct.

- To disclose one of our longtime underwriters.

Heights University Hospital is closing.

What does that mean to the people of Jersey City?

A and B, what the heck can you do about it?

Because it's a private organization, they say, "We don't have the money, we're tapping out, we're out."

- Yeah.

What it means, unfortunately, is that the health of my residents is going to suffer.

We should have more than one emergency department in a city of 300,000 people.

Unfortunately, you know, Heights University Hospital, formerly Christ Hospital owned by Hudson Regional Health, you know, that company engaged in truly bad faith actions.

They purchased that hospital out of bankruptcy a year ago.

And at the time, they promised us that they were gonna return wonderful healthcare to the Heights.

And then about, you know, three or four months ago, they shut down the hospital except for the emergency department illegally.

And then just this last week, they shut down the emergency department.

The state has a legal process by which you're allowed to close a hospital.

HRH flouted it.

They, they just said, "The law doesn't matter to us.

"If we want to close this tomorrow, "we're gonna close it tomorrow."

And that type of behavior is I think what gets ordinary residents so angry with corporations where they just see that like, "If I have to follow the law, if I'm held accountable, "why do these corporations think that they can't?"

And we really, you know, wanted the state to file an injunction to keep them open.

The state chose not to.

We tried, the courts did not rule in our favor.

But for me, the next step is twofold.

One is use all of my tools to get healthcare back to the Heights.

One of which could be eminent domain.

The public purpose is healthcare.

We may be looking at that at the Heights University site.

And then the second is to partner with reliable healthcare organizations, healthcare organizations you can trust to bring more healthcare back to the Heights, including an emergency department and additional care facilities in Jersey City.

Because, you know, take Newark, similar city of a similar size has three hospitals.

We have one.

And I think anybody can acknowledge that's not acceptable.

So we need a solution.

And the people of Jersey City have, I promise, we're working every day to create one.

- Mayor of Jersey City is James Solomon.

This will not be the last time we have him as part of our series "Urban Matters."

Mr.

Mayor, thank you so much for joining us, wish you all the best.

- Thank you so much for having me.

- You got it.

Stay with us, we'll be right back.

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