meanwhile there's a nasty battle playing out between other Hudson County officials who are alleging a quid proquo four Hoboken council members are calling for the State Attorney General and the FBI to investigate allegations against Hoboken mayor Ravi Bhalla accusing him of engaging in back room deals that personally benefited him the allegations though come just weeks before the Congressional Primary in which Bala is running by a group of officials who are backing his main opponent the son of the embattled senator Rob Menendez senior political correspondent David Cruz reports it probably wasn't coined in Hoboken although some locals would insist they have proof that it did but the term silly season is often used here to describe that time of year when politics becomes especially frantic often prone to press conferences and lawsuits and press conferences about lawsuits you'd have to forgive an observer for saying here we go again this seems to come up more often than not of these election Cycles John hinness runs Hudson County view an online news site that's been covering Hoboken in Hudson County for a decade now however uh if you read this complaint and you look at some of the subsequent commentary around the lawsuit I think that it's worth looking into I mean at least some of it this all started with a lawsuit filed last week by former city director Leo Pelini who resigned without explanation last year in the suit Pelini alleges that among other things hobok and mayor Ravi Bala engaged in a quidd proquo with Jersey city mayor Steve FIP in exchange for bala's help Expediting a dispensary trying to open in a building co-owned by Philip's wife bala's legal firm got a contract with the Jersey City Redevelopment agency this week a quartet of council members has held a press conference calling for the Attorney General to open a criminal investigation into all this it raises the question how how is it exposed and and how do you move forward to have something investigated right because it's not especially in our environment now um investigations really require someone to file a complaint and raise a red flag we'll pause here for some context Ravi Bala is running for congress against incumbent Rob Menendez the cartet of council members are supporters of bendeez but don't read anything into that they say Ruben Ramos is a former council president in his nearly two decades of politics Ramos has seen his share of election time lawsuits and pressors it's a long-standing Hoboken tradition is it not unfortunately it seems to be but I don't think this is a a campaign issue whatsoever I think it's just more of a timing issue in which the allegations were alleged by the former director that that that called upon us to really look at look at what's actually going on B's campaign called this a political stunt his administration has even hinted at some unspecified wrongdoing on the part of Pelini that's been referred to law enforcement that would be news to pelini's lawyer who says his client hasn't been contacted by any law enforcement as for the council members calling for an inquiry into his client's allegations I have never met uh these individuals uh these Council persons I don't know who they are never communicated with them quite frankly I probably wouldn't even know who they are if I bumped into them in the street Philip meanwhile laughed at the allegations and said that he would support an inquiry from the attorney general the AG had no comment on whether it's conducting any investigation into any of this but with less than a month to go before the primary that's almost beside the point because as one old Hoboken hand predicted today nobody's going to even be talking about this in a month I'm David Cruz NJ Spotlight News