Atlantic City officials spurn proposed takeover by state

By Patrick Mcgeehan, New York Times News Service

Tuesday, Feb. 23, 2016 | 12:09 a.m.

ATLANTIC CITY — Elected officials of this struggling gambling resort lashed out at Gov. Chris Christie and other New Jersey officials on Monday, calling their plan to take more control of the city fascist and hypocritical.

The tone of the remarks at a news conference in front of City Hall left no doubt that any hope of a partnership between city and state officials had disappeared faster than chips on a craps table. Mayor Donald Guardian gave a fiery speech urging lawmakers to reject the legislation introduced last week in the state Senate, saying the legislation would hand too much power to the state.

“We cannot stand here today and accept any bill with the broad, overreaching powers as the one presented to us last week contained,” Guardian, a Republican, said. “It is unacceptable. The civil rights of our citizens are being trampled on.”

The legislation, introduced by Stephen M. Sweeney, the Democratic president of the Senate, would give the state nearly complete control of Atlantic City’s finances and the power to renegotiate contracts with the police and fire departments. A similar bill was introduced in the Assembly on Monday.

Guardian said city officials had drawn up different legislation that they hoped would be introduced soon though he declined to say who might sponsor it. A key difference in this bill, he said, would be a provision for redirecting more of the taxes collected from casinos to the city.

Without an infusion of cash, the city could run out of money within two months and would have no alternative but to ask the state’s Local Finance Board to let it file for bankruptcy protection, Guardian said. Christie, a Republican, and other state officials oppose allowing Atlantic City to make what would be the state’s first municipal bankruptcy filing since the Great Depression.

While the mayor hesitated to invoke racism as a factor in the dispute, other speakers did not. Betty Lewis, president of the local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, said the organization would file a civil-rights lawsuit against the state if the takeover proceeded. About 70 percent of Atlantic City residents are black or Hispanic.

“This seems to be about racism and greed,” she said.

Lewis referred to the disastrous situation with the drinking water in Flint, Michigan, as a reason to protest any attempt by state officials to take control of the provider of water in the city, the Municipal Utilities Authority. The authority is one of the few assets the city has to sell to pay off some of its debts, but residents fear that their water bills will rise and that the quality of the water could decline under private ownership.

“We cannot afford to be Flint, Michigan,” Lewis said.

Marty Small, the president of the City Council, said the takeover plan was “hypocrisy at its highest level.” He said state officials had been involved in running the city since 2010, and he called those efforts an “epic failure.”

Alluding to past pronouncements about transforming Atlantic City into a diverse tourist destination in the mold of New Orleans, Small, a Democrat, said: “Where is Bourbon Street on Pacific Avenue? I think I heard that in 2010.”

Instead, the boardwalk has become drearier as out-of-state competitors have drawn away customers. Four of the city’s 12 casinos closed in 2014, and the industry’s revenue has been cut in half in a decade. The most successful of the casinos, the Borgata, has stopped paying its property taxes because the city has not paid a $160 million tax rebate due to the casino.

“This is truly disheartening,” Guardian said. “So much time has been lost. And because so much time has been lost, the city of Atlantic City has now been put in a position of running out of money within the next two months.”

The city officials received no sympathy in Trenton on Monday.

“Today was nothing more than political posturing,” Brian Murray, a spokesman for Christie, said. “One thing is for certain: The taxpayers of all of New Jersey can no longer be asked to bail out Atlantic City, especially when they continue to tax and spend so irresponsibly.”

Richard McGrath, a spokesman for the Democratic leadership of the Senate, said, “No one has been a better partner or a better advocate for Atlantic City than Senate President Sweeney, but the city has had more than two years to make the types of cutbacks and reforms needed to bring finances into line but has failed to do the job.”