The padded payroll is estimated to have cost taxpayers at least $300,000 over the past two years, according to the employees, documents obtained by The Star-Ledger and state payroll records. The beneficiaries include a number of township residents with other jobs throughout Hudson County.

The allegations come as North Bergen residents absorb the plea deal former DPW boss James Wiley accepted Tuesday in Superior Court. During that appearance, Wiley admitted mobilizing DPW workers to perform political chores in North Bergen and nearby towns. Wiley also admitted using staffers as handymen at his home while they were on the clock and billing the town’s taxpayers for the personal and political work. He could face between five and 10 years in prison when he is sentenced on Oct. 26.

Accusations about the payroll irregularities are not part of the government’s case against Wiley. Instead, they surfaced in a series of interviews the newspaper conducted over the past four weeks with 14 people, including past and present DPW workers, township officials and employees familiar with the handling of the payroll. None of these people would speak on the record, fearful of retribution in the tight-knit township that overlooks Manhattan.

In the interviews, workers detailed a process in which Timothy Grossi, the public works deputy commissioner, approves the biweekly payroll, adding the names of three no-show employees. Grossi sometimes has a subordinate sign off on it before the checks are cut, five town employees said. DPW workers said the payroll includes an official whose family’s business has received hundreds of thousands of dollars in contracts from the town, an inspector who barely ventures from her home to inspect anything, and the son-in-law of Frank Gargiulo, the public works commissioner.

In addition, workers and township officials said, orders to use DPW crews to electioneer went beyond Wiley. Two township officials said that Grossi directed Wiley to send "political hit teams" to campaign for elections in Jersey City, Hoboken, East Newark and Bayonne over several years. They added that Grossi sometimes accompanied them to oversee the work, and the work was billed as overtime.

Last winter, workers and township officials said, Wiley, who retired two weeks ago as superintendent of the department, and Grossi ordered subordinates to compile a catalog of political enemies in advance of local elections in May, a photo album of a kind with pictures of every home and every storefront in North Bergen displaying an opposition sign. Gargiulo, in addition to Wiley, they said, has used DPW workers at his home to clean his garage and snake a toilet.

State officials, who have been probing possible corruption in North Bergen for more than a year, declined to comment on the newspaper’s findings because their investigation is ongoing.

Employees across several departments in North Bergen describe Grossi as one of Mayor Nicholas Sacco’s most powerful surrogates. Grossi is part adviser, part fundraiser, a confidante with strong political connections from Hudson County to Trenton, they said. He has a second paid position as chief aide to Sacco in one of the mayor’s other jobs – state senator. Grossi also has been shown on a YouTube video ordering store owners to remove signs supporting opposition candidates.

"I know who I am, my family knows who I am, and so does everybody who has known me my entire life," Grossi said in a phone interview. "I don’t have to defend myself. I look in the mirror and know who I am. I’ve always been a professional my entire work career, be it in the private sector or public sector. I always maintained the same standard."

INVESTIGATION EXPANDING

Allegations of politically active DPW workers helped spark the current state investigation headed by Attorney General Jeffrey S. Chiesa’s office. Now, however, two law enforcement officials say the probe is widening into possible wrongdoing in Sacco’s administration. Citing the need for confidentiality in an ongoing investigation, these officials requested anonymity.

In all, the law enforcement officials said, about 65 people have been subpoenaed since a raid of department offices in February, including Sacco, who, in addition to serving as mayor and state senator, is assistant superintendent of North Bergen’s schools. Combined, the three jobs pay Sacco, a longtime public servant in the town, $298,725, according to payroll records.

John O'Boyle/The Star-LedgerAllegations of politically active DPW workers helped spark the current state investigation headed by the office of Attorney General Jeffrey S. Chiesa, above

Sacco said in a statement that North Bergen officials did not know of Wiley’s alleged misconduct, although Wiley said in court that he was "ordered" to send employees to work on campaigns in Jersey City and Bayonne.

"No one had any knowledge or any indication of any illegal activities taking place in the Department of Public Works," Sacco said. "To see the public trust violated in this manner, for any reason, is completely unacceptable and cannot be tolerated."

Paul Swibinski, a spokesman for North Bergen, said that five years ago the attorney general, in a separate investigation, explored allegations of five no-shows on the DPW payroll.The workers’ descriptions of current abuses, which they said took place over the past two years, amount to a "rehash" of dated accusations, Swibinski said.

"You can’t go to a single urban community and not find people who are part of the workforce who participate in political activities," he said. "There’s nothing wrong with an employee supporting any candidate and exercising his right to take part in political activities, whether for a candidate in his community or in another community."

Gargiulo, the public works commissioner, denied any existence of a no-show payroll. In an interview at his home, Gargiulo said some of the employees described by the DPW workers as no-shows, including his son-in-law, are purposely placed in low-profile roles so they can observe the work crews as part of a system of quality control. The more obscure, the better able they are to monitor the work habits and performance of other employees, he said.

"They are my eyes and ears," Gargiulo said. "Everyone in this department is accountable."

He added that as a commissioner paid $14,500, his role is part-time and that his main function is to attend board of commissioners meetings once, sometimes twice a month. He leaves the day-to-day management of the department to Grossi, he said.

ALL-PURPOSE UTILITY

North Bergen, a Hudson County town of about 65,000, sits on 5-and-a-half square miles, much of it a chockablock arrangement of tightly rowed houses, apartment buildings and businesses set on a steep hill. The public works department serves the town as an all-purpose utility, cleaning sewers, filling potholes and changing traffic lights. Under Wiley, it developed into a state-of-the-art department, with its own "asphalt cooker" that saves the town thousands of dollars by recycling asphalt, and a truck that surgically drops cameras into sewer lines.

But abuses, current workers say, have seeped into the workaday practices of the department.

Every week over the past 17 years an attendance sheet was signed by Wiley and a supervisor, and delivered to Grossi at town hall, several workers and town officials said. The sheets, they said, helped generate the bi-weekly payroll for the road crews, which now have 43 workers.

The employees said that for at least the past two years Grossi has added the names of no-show workers before turning the payroll over to the Department of Revenue and Finance, where the checks are cut, then signed by that department’s commissioner.

One of the payroll sheets in question • dated May 2011 • was obtained by The Star-Ledger and includes the names of three people who, workers said, did little or no work at DPW.

According to salary records for public employees in Hudson County, one of the people on the no-show payroll, John Stalknecht, receives a salary of $75,636 at DPW as the commissioner’s confidential aide, in addition to $47,007 he receives as an aide to Marie Borace, the superintendent of elections for Hudson County. For more than 20 years he has filled a key role in the local politics.

Sources said Stalknecht will occasionally call DPW to report a pothole or perhaps an old couch someone discarded at a curb. Over the past two years he rarely has been seen, either at the department’s Town Hall offices on Kennedy Boulevard or at the yard on Tonnelle Avenue, they said.

On a recent afternoon, speaking through an intercom at his home in North Bergen, Stalknecht said that earlier in the day he had called in a sighting of a broken branch on the tree directly across the street from his front window.

John Munson/The Star-Ledger"No one had any knowledge or any indication of any illegal activities taking place in the Department of Public Works," North Bergen Mayor Nicholas Sacco says.

"I work for Commissioner Gargiulo and I talk to Tim Grossi every day," he said. "I am available 24 hours a day, seven days a week."

He was asked how many hours he works each week.

"Basically what I do, I drive around town," he said. "There’s no set thing for me to do. I don’t make up work. If I see something, I get it taken care of. I’m in touch with the office. I stop by the garage. Sometimes I see the men working around town and I ask them what is going on. Sometimes I put my name on work orders, sometimes I don’t. I’ve been there 25 years. I guess I’ve earned a little leeway."

Problems in the department, he said, start and end with Wiley.

"I was one of the people who reported Wiley’s activities," he said, referring to the use of DPW employees at Wiley’s house.

Since Stalknecht’s conversation with the newspaper, workers said he has made regular stops at the yard after having been seen only occasionally in the last few years. Then, on Wednesday, in a meeting with all the road crews, Gargiulo said that with Wiley gone Stalknecht would now "oversee operations," workers said.

Stalknecht’s sons, Jamie and John, own 4-CleanUp Inc., an industrial cleaning and construction company, which last year received more than $206,000 from North Bergen to renovate parks, according to records of companies that do business with the town. Three sources said the company recently received a contract worth about $250,000 to redesign a small park on the west side of town.

"These are bid contracts," Stalknecht said. "We don’t give the job because their father works for the town.

Another person on the payroll, Janet Sinisi, has the title of inspector and is paid $47,007. She is supposed to scour North Bergen for everything from broken sidewalks and potholes to smelly sewer catch basins –- and then issue work orders to the road crews, said Gargiulo. A list of local Democratic Party organizers given to The Star-Ledger shows that she has been a "committee person," responsible for bringing supporters to the polls.

The newspaper has received a dozen 2012 work orders issued by Sinisi and was told that through Aug. 27, those were the only orders she filed this year. These records indicate she did not write any work orders before May 18. Eight of her orders were for repairs within a block of her house on Bergenwood Avenue, including a flurry of four on June 1 for potholes on a short dead-end street.

Workers who say they responded to Sinisi’s reports • including one for a loose manhole cover and another for cracks in the blacktop surrounding a manhole • say they found nothing in need of repair when they responded.

On Friday afternoon, Sinisi, sitting on her front porch, said that "only Grossi" could address questions about her work orders.

SON-IN-LAW ON PAYROLL

Gargiulo’s son-in-law, Barbarito Ramos, can also be found on the payroll, but several DPW workers say they have never met him. Ramos is paid $26,208, according to public salary records, to act as a roving satellite, Gargiulo said, and catch DPW workers who may not be accomplishing their tasks.

Gargiulo also works full-time at the Jersey City Board of Education, according to records.

Those same public employment records suggest Gargiulo is one of many in North Bergen with several public jobs.

In addition to the commissioner’s job, the records show, Gargiulo receives $223,802 as superintendent for the Hudson County Schools of Technology. Mark Sinisi, a son of the inspector, receives a salary of $39,172, and also works for the Hudson County Schools of Technology. Another son of Sinisi’s, Matthew, is listed on the town’s payroll as having a job that pays $36,365, while his wife, Elizabeth, earns $67,725 as a North Bergen police officer.