Jackson Mayor Jennifer Kuhn has spent months publicly presenting herself as the face of a crackdown on landlords who allegedly refuse to follow the Township’s rental laws.
There is, however, an extraordinary problem with that carefully cultivated storyline.
According to a lawsuit now proceeding in Ocean County Superior Court, Kuhn herself was cited for rental-property code violations by longtime Jackson Code Enforcement Officer David Visconi — and Visconi alleges that she later used the power of municipal government to retaliate against him for having the audacity to enforce those laws against her.
This week, Kuhn and Jackson Township tried to get Visconi's lawsuit thrown out.
Judge Robert E. Brenner refused to dismiss its central whistleblower-retaliation count.
The ruling sets up an extraordinary collision between two radically different accounts of what has been happening inside Jackson Town Hall: the official version, in which Kuhn is cleaning up a broken rental-enforcement system — and Visconi's version, in which the Mayor allegedly developed a vendetta against the code officer who had previously enforced that very system against her.
Kuhn's public message could hardly be clearer.
Jackson Township's own website still prominently carries a press release headlined “Mayor Kuhn Touts Successful Day One Crackdown on Illegal Rentals.”
The campaign did not begin there. While serving as Council President in June 2025, Kuhn publicly discussed strengthening the landlord-registration ordinance to better combat illegal rentals. The following month, she explained a proposal creating a new Bureau of Rental Housing Inspections separate from the existing Code Enforcement operation, complete with dedicated personnel and funding from landlord fees.
By January, Township officials announced that the new Rental Housing Safety Bureau was operational.
And the publicity machine has kept rolling. In July, Kuhn released numbers touting more than 250 inspections, 1,594 registered rental properties, 75 code violations and nearly $200,000 generated through registrations and fines.
It is a compelling official narrative:
Jennifer Kuhn, landlord watchdog.
Then came David Visconi v. Township of Jackson, et al.
And suddenly the story got considerably more complicated.
Visconi isn't an outside political activist claiming that Jackson doesn't enforce its ordinances.
He was one of the people actually enforcing them.
His court papers describe him as a 69-year-old retired police officer and Air National Guard member with 42 years of service. He began working for Jackson's Code Enforcement Department in 2016 after approximately 25 years as a Manalapan police officer. Visconi contends that he performed his duties professionally but would not make exceptions for politically powerful people — including the mayor and council members.
And according to Visconi, one of the landlords who came across his desk was Jennifer Kuhn.
Visconi's opposition papers say Kuhn owned rental property at 196 Willow Drive and allege that she was an unregistered landlord who had failed to obtain a Rental CCO.
Visconi says he issued Kuhn two notices of violation. When she allegedly failed to comply with Jackson's registration ordinance, he issued two summonses.
And here is perhaps the most remarkable detail of all: According to Visconi's filing, Kuhn pleaded guilty and paid court-imposed fines on June 23, 2022.
So while today's Mayor is publicly championing landlord registration, rental inspections and aggressive enforcement against property owners who violate Jackson's rules, the lawsuit alleges that she herself had previously been hauled into municipal court under those rules.
The confrontation allegedly did not end in 2022.
Visconi's papers say that on February 18, 2025, while Kuhn was serving on the Township Council, he discovered another violation involving the same property.
So he did what Kuhn now publicly insists Jackson inspectors should do to landlords who violate the rules: He issued another summons.
What allegedly happened afterward forms the heart of the scandal now moving forward in court.
Visconi alleges that Kuhn's hostility toward him eventually took a startling turn.
His opposition papers say that on March 5, 2025, Kuhn claimed Visconi had parked his Township work vehicle across from her residence and that she was being stalked. Kuhn allegedly reported the matter to Jackson Police and filed a police report against him.
But according to Visconi, an investigation subsequently determined that he was not parked where Kuhn claimed he was, and the allegation was not substantiated.
Nevertheless, Visconi says he was placed on administrative leave.
His court filing describes what followed as an escalating course of alleged retaliatory conduct, including further harassment and threats of progressively more severe discipline, up to suspension or termination.
Visconi's theory is straightforward: he enforced Jackson's laws against Kuhn, and Kuhn allegedly made him pay for it.
Some of the most fascinating language in this entire saga comes not from Visconi - but from Kuhn's own defense team.
In seeking dismissal, defendants acknowledged that Visconi's lawsuit repeatedly alleges retaliation because he enforced municipal ordinances against Kuhn. Their reply says Visconi discovered code violations at Kuhn's properties, issued notices and summonses, first cited her while she was a private property owner in 2022, and cited her again in 2025.
Their legal argument was essentially that even accepting the alleged sequence for purposes of the dismissal motion, issuing code violations was not itself whistleblowing protected by CEPA.
And then came this remarkable passage in the defendants' own brief:
> “If, as Plaintiff alleges, Kuhn subsequently used her public office to retaliate against him because she resented having been cited,”
the defense argued, that would not transform Visconi's original code-enforcement activity into CEPA-protected whistleblowing.
To be clear, the defendants were not admitting that Kuhn retaliated. They were making a legal argument based on Visconi's allegations. But their position put the central factual accusation into unusually stark focus: even assuming Kuhn later retaliated because she resented being cited, they argued, Visconi still had not pleaded the right kind of protected whistleblowing.
They asked Judge Brenner to dismiss Count One.
He didn't.
On September 16, Judge Brenner issued his ruling.
The Township, Kuhn and former Mayor Michael Reina had sought dismissal of Visconi's complaint under Rule 4:6-2(e) for failure to state a claim.
The judge's written order states unequivocally:
“THE MOTION IS DENIED REGARDING COUNT 1.”
Counts Two through Seven were dismissed without prejudice, meaning the dismissal was not on the merits, and Judge Brenner expressly gave Visconi 30 days to move to amend his complaint as to those claims.
And the distinction matters: Judge Brenner has not ruled that Kuhn retaliated against Visconi, nor has he ruled that Visconi's factual allegations are true.
But defendants sought to end his case at the pleading stage, and the central Count One claim survived.
That leaves Jackson with an almost surreal split-screen.
On one side is the Mayor's official publicity campaign.
Illegal landlords must be held accountable.
Rental properties must be registered.
Inspectors must find violations.
The Township is finally getting tough.
Kuhn previously publicly criticized Jackson Code Enforcement itself, complaining that residents and council members were finding violations instead of inspectors and saying Code Enforcement employees were supposed to be “out doing their jobs and looking for violations and addressing those violations.”
On the other side is Visconi.
His allegation, in essence, is:
I did exactly that.
I found violations.
I addressed them.
The landlord happened to be Jennifer Kuhn.
And look what happened to me.
That is the contradiction now sitting at the center of Visconi v. Township of Jackson.
The Mayor who has publicly made aggressive rental enforcement a signature issue is being sued by a veteran municipal code officer who alleges that when those same laws were enforced against Kuhn's own rental property, she ultimately retaliated against the officer responsible.
Whether Visconi can prove that allegation remains for the litigation ahead.
But Kuhn and the Township just tried to prevent his central retaliation claim from getting there.
Judge Brenner said no.
And now, Jackson's highly publicized war on “bad landlords” may have to share the spotlight with a very different story - the one David Visconi is telling in court.
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