Jersey City, NJ official's poor driving record before hit-and-run

JERSEY CITY — The reported hit-and-run of an UberEats bicyclist by a city councilwoman came two weeks shy of 19 years since her first documented driving offense, an analysis of public records has found.

The Jersey Journal obtained nearly two decades' worth of driving records for Amy DeGise, who has resisted calls from all corners to step down following her latest collision, at Forrest Street and Martin Luther King Drive, on July 19.

It was on Aug. 2, 2003, when DeGise was 17, the Jersey Journal reported, that she was involved in her first known accident, one of four on her ledger.

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Further information gleaned from the Jersey Journal's Open Public Records Act request shows a slew of license suspensions — 11 in total, either ordered or scheduled for failure to appear, between 2010 and 2020.

The records only go up to March 2020, showing that the most recent suspension available on DeGise's abstract was due to end on March 23 of that year, about a week after statewide driving restrictions went into effect at the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Aside from the four accidents (the others happening in 2008, 2009, and 2018, according to the Journal), DeGise has received around three dozen parking tickets since 2004.

Many of the councilwoman's suspension orders have come from nonpayment of those tickets, the records showed, including 29 tickets in Jersey City alone, two in Union City, and one each in Hoboken, Newark, and North Bergen.

The Jersey Journal reported that DeGise is scheduled to appear in court Monday to answer the two tickets she received for the hit-and-run, but that her case is likely to be moved out of Hudson County.

The bicyclist who was hit sustained only minor injuries.

Patrick Lavery is a reporter and anchor for New Jersey 101.5. You can reach him at patrick.lavery@townsquaremedia.com

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