Republicans move to close scalping loophole

Following the brouhaha over Sen. Frank Lautenberg’s plan to resell Bruce Springsteen tickets at sky-high prices for a campaign fundraiser, a Republican state senator has announced that he plans on introducing legislation to put an end to the practice.

The legislation by Sen. Anthony Bucco, R-25, would close a loophole in event ticketing laws that gives political organizations enough legal leeway to sell event tickets at prices many times the original event price for political fundraisers.

Other individuals and entities are normally prohibited from doing so by ticket scalping laws.

“As part of our effort to eliminate the potential for corruption in the political process, we must remove the exemptions that have been carved out in our laws to the sole benefit of politicians,” said Sen. Bucco, in a statement. “Candidates for public office should not be able to purchase tickets to popular concerts and events at face value and mark them up for sale to donors. If members of the public cannot resell their tickets for substantial profit, elected officials and candidates for office should not be allowed to do so either.”

Earlier this month longtime New Jersey politician and Sen. Lautenberg nearly purchased 40 tickets to a Bruce Springsteen concert to be held at Giants Stadium for $108 a piece, with his campaign planning to resell them at $1500 each to raise funds for the senator’s campaign against Republic Dick Zimmer.

Sen. Lautenberg’s campaign eventually rescinded the purchase and asked the New Jersey Sports and Exposition Authority to reexamine the way it doled out tickets, to make the process more fair and tickets more available to everyone and not just important public figures.

Palmer to Africa, while Trenton burns

Mayor Douglas H. Palmer is taking it back to Africa on a trip with Bill Clinton this week, while his hometown continues to experience a surge in the violent crime that has become so prevalent under its longtime mayor.

Wednesday’s newspaper pages, splattered with various stories about violent crime in some city neighborhoods, also carried stories about Mayor Palmer’s decision to travel to Africa with many accentuated with pictures of Trenton’s missing mayor, in fashionable suits and designer glasses.

One conclusion that can be reached from a review of this bizarre situation is that Mayor Palmer has long outgrown his office here in Trenton. He talks about tackling environmental issues, creating so-called green jobs, and improving the conditions in the nation’s larger cities when Trenton’s streets are unsafe, the schools are ineffective, and there are not even enough people with regular jobs to support a healthy local economy.

It really looks like Trenton needs someone to take over the leadership of this city who is more local and more home-oriented. The city needs a leader that will spend their time here, rather than traipsing around the world talking about non-existent programs that offer no hope for improving the conditions of this city.

To take it one step further, the people living in the surrounding townships and the rest of the state need to also consider pushing for new leadership here in Trenton, and in many of the state’s other downtrodden urban areas.

The Trenton Water Works debacle, in which the city is preparing to sell outside water infrastructure that it never built for $100 million to a company that will jack up water rates to make township residents foot the bill, is a perfect example of the direct cost that Trenton represents to outsiders, whether nearby or far away.

Also, this faulty and ineffective leadership is not only relieving the state of around $400 million for school and municipal budget dollars annually, but it also causes greater potential for the surrounding areas to suffer.

The crime problems that fester under Mayor Palmer and former Police Director Joseph Santiago threaten to consume more of the viable areas of the city, and eventually push over the borders into the surrounding areas.

Let it be realized, that a healthy Trenton makes for a healthy Mercer County, and it starts with the people working at 319 E. State Street.

Santiago and Bradley’s boy gets 27 months

Former Newark Mayor Sharpe James, whose legacy is intertwined with some of his former police officers who are now working for the City of Trenton, was sentenced today to 27 months in federal prison and ordered to pay $100,000 in fines after being convicted of using his office to steer cheap land in city-endorsed deals to his mistress.

Federal prosecutors reportedly asked for 15 to 20 years in prison for the former mayor, but Judge William J. Martini responded with a much lighter sentence and reprimanded prosecutors and those asking for the maximum sentence because of a perceived discrepancy between what they were asking for and the crimes Mr. James committed.

“It disappoints me and it shocks me that government would seek 10-20 year sentencing,” said Judge Martini, in reports. “I know in the zeal of prosecution, things sometimes get distorted.”

Trenton’s outgoing Police Director Joseph Santiago and Communications Director Irving Bradley both worked under Mr. James during long tenure as Newark’s mayor, along with Barry Colicelli, Trenton’s now-ousted gang czar.

Mr. Santiago appears to be on his way out of the Trenton scene as well, after losing his court case against plaintiffs including me. We sued over Mr. Santiago’s non-residency in Trenton, and Mr. Bradley appears to be guilty of the same violations, along with being deemed “unqualified” by the state Department of Personnel.

In comparison with other corruption-disgraced New Jersey mayors, Mr. James made off pretty well, although his case was different in that he did not get involved in bribery or extortion or other crimes prevalent with New Jersey political corruption cases.

Terrance D. Weldon, former Ocean Township mayor, received 58 months in prison in 2007 for taking more than $60,000 in bribes from developers. Former Marlboro Township Mayor Matthew V. Scannapieco received 21 months in prison in June of this year for taking $245,000 in bribes from developers and committing tax evasion.

Former Hazlet Mayor Paul Coughlin was sentenced to 24 months in prison in 2006 for taking a single $3,000 bribe from a cooperating witness.

But Mr. James never took any money from anyone, but steered cheap land to his mistress Tamika Riley that netted the Jersey City woman around $700,000 in profits, paid for by developers.

Santiago too busy for Trenton

More mind-numbing violence shattered the peace in some of Trenton’s worst neighborhoods this weekend, once again.

But former Police Director Joseph Santiago was apparently too busy to meet with his command staff on Sunday to implement some emergency measures to address the situation, law enforcement sources said.

Numerous violent episodes plagued the city, but perhaps the most horrific was the shooting of a 16-year-old city resident who happened to be tooling his way down Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard at around 3 a.m. Sunday morning.

The Trentonian reported that attackers dragged the boy off of his bicycle and unloaded two slugs into his head, making permanent brain damage and the loss of sight of at least one of the child’s eyes highly likely, despite the best efforts of the valiant medical staff if Capital Health System-Fuld Campus.

Mr. Santiago’s leadership in the police department seems to be deteriorating even more rapidly than has become usual for the summer, as the unaccountable director has cut manpower in many of the city’s worst areas while doing nothing to stop the endless summer violence filling the pages of newspapers with each successive day.

Rumors have it that Mr. Santiago plans on announcing a separation from his wife, followed by taking up another kind of pseudo-residency hotel or apartment arrangements that he took up in the beginning of his tenure in Trenton.

Residents need to write to their mayor and City Council and demand the removal of this monster, who like others in the city administration, fail to put real effort into creating viable solutions for a smallish city that probably could be turned around fairly rapidly.

New leadership in both the police department and the city is needed, ASAP.

Time for a full-time mayor, police director

A barrage of violent crime continued to plague some of Trenton’s more crime-ridden neighborhoods this weekend, with a variety of shootings, stabbings, robberies, and assaults occurring intermittently while Mayor Douglas H. Palmer and former Police Director Joseph Santiago presumably spent their time outside the city, in Hunterdon and Morris counties.

Considering the crime problem and the variety of other afflictions that plague this great city, it really begs the question: when are the residents of Trenton going to move to get people into positions of power that actually care about the city enough to live here and spend their time here, even on the weekends?

The omnipresent crime plaguing the city’s worst neighborhoods has not improved under Mr. Santiago. In fact, the argument should be made that the further slipping of once-viable neighborhoods and the cut in manpower on the streets under the director mean he has been worse for Trenton than many of his predecessors.

With regards to Mayor Palmer, the mere fact that he is unwilling to spend more of his time in his hometown and the city he now leads immediately makes him an inferior leader. A leader that spent more time here, assessing the everyday problems and spending more time solving them would be more appropriate to lead Trenton.

These days Mayor Palmer appears to be living the life of a state worker, spending Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., working for the city, then having his city-funded police escort whisk him away on weekend days and at many other times.

Just like many state workers, it appears that Mayor Palmer has refused any thought of leading a life as a full-time Trenton resident, instead choosing to treat the city like so many others: as a place of work, and not a place of life.

It’s high time that the city get a new leader who will actually take part in living here, rather than treating it simply as a workweek-long place of employment.

A leader needs to understand what life here is like, and the problems that face the city 24 hours a day, seven days a week, just like the 85,000 others who actually make this place a full-time place of residence.

Interfere in traffic stops, face consequences

A Newark councilwoman who intervened in a traffic stop involving her nephew back in 2006 could be removed from office for her participation in the incident.

Essex County Prosecutor Paula Dow last week filed a court motion and wrote a letter citing state statutes that call for public officials to be removed from office, following serious convictions.

A municipal court found Councilwoman Dana Rone guilty of obstruction of justice for her involvement in the incident, in which she verbally attacked a Newark police officer and told him that she “was a councilwoman,” in what appeared to be an attempt to use her office to help out her nephew.

Ms. Rone appealed the decision to a state Superior Court, but the higher court upheld the conviction.

Following the Superior Court decision the Essex County prosecutor cited the removal statute, and has asked for the councilwoman to step down effective on June 27, 2008, the date of the final court decision.

Earlier this month, Trenton Councilwoman Annette Lartigue reportedly told an officer, over a cell phone, to “stand down”, after the officer pulled over Ms. Lartigue’s daughter for several motor vehicle violations.

During the traffic stop the daughter allegedly told the officers that her mother was a councilwoman and that she “was related to” Mayor Douglas H. Palmer and then managed to get the councilwoman on the phone.

The daughter eventually received several motor vehicle summonses, and Ms. Lartigue got some unneeded media attention because of her involvement in the stop. But luckily, justice was served because the officer rightly went ahead and issued tickets, despite statements about public office and power from some of those involved.

Doug Palmer: playing shell games with your money since 1990

The City of Trenton received state backing today when Department of Community Affairs officials told the Times of Trenton that the city was within its legal rights to transfer $9 million from the Trenton Water Works’ revenue into various areas of the city’s general budget, in what amounts to taxing people living outside of Trenton to pay for city services.

The flap, which has emerged several times over the past several years, comes as Trenton is attempting to sell all of its outside water infrastructure to New Jersey American Water for a reported $100 million. Township officials and residents from Ewing, Hopewell, Lawrence, and Hamilton are screaming bloody murder as they face a 36 percent rate hike with the sale, and the prospect of having their water bill money used to help the private water company pay for the cost of Trenton’s outside infrastructure.

A DCA spokesman backed up the city’s position that in equalizing pay rates in 2006, the city became exempt from Board of Public Utilities oversight, allowing it to raise rates at will and transfer water revenue as city officials saw fit.

Mayor Douglas Palmer, of course, took some jabs at officials from the outside townships, telling the Times of Trenton that he was “offended” by the accusations leveled by the outside townships of impropriety on the part of the city, in transferring the $9 million.

Despite today’s reports, the City of Trenton should not be viewed as being exonerated quite yet. Remember that the city only equalized rates in 2006, meaning the numerous questionable transfers prior to that event could be illegal, under state law governing water utilities.

Also, water works employees this week said that the city did not actually equalize the rates, pointing to discounts and other measures that effectively make the rate paid by some city residents lower than those paid by residents living outside the city. These matters certainly needs to be looked into.

Water deal draws ire of many

The $100 million sale of Trenton Water Works infrastructure in Ewing, Hopewell, Lawrence, and Hamilton townships to New Jersey American Water was assaulted by a united front of public officials and residents on Wednesday at Hamilton Township’s Municipal Building.

A major sticking point for the criticism was how the City of Trenton has sapped millions of dollars in what was erroneously called “surplus” out of the Trenton Water Works budget and used it to fill budget gaps in other non-water related areas of the city’s services.

“This constituted a fraudulent act, and a misappropriation of funds,” said Lawrence Planning Board official Falk Engel.

That money should have been used to maintain the water utility’s infrastructure, Mr. Engel said, which would have offset the emergence of a need to sell off the outside infrastructure to generate a one-time infusion of funds to maintain and upgrade pipes and equipment within the city.

Instead, the city took more than the 5 percent of the utility’s revenue allowed by law and used it repeatedly, to the tune of $9 million, to plug budget holes.

Other municipal officials like Ewing Mayor Jack Ball also attacked the deal, calling it double-jeopardy for suburban residents faced with being forced to pay for the water utility sale and then pay for New Jersey American Water’s alleged need in upgrading infrastructure, after illegally shelling out so much to shore up the city’s finances.

“All four mayors are vehemently opposed to the sale,” Mayor Ball said.

A lone lawyer represented the City of Trenton at the meeting, and both he and a lawyer for New Jersey American Water threatened the suburban townships with 40 percent rate hikes, should the deal not go through, compared with a 36 percent increase should the deal go through, as proposed.

Both lawyers also said the deal would shore up Trenton’s finances and result in increased “revitalization” and residential and commercial development.

Trenton City officials were conspicuously absent, and only one Trenton resident, Patricia Stewart, spoke at the meeting.

She said she was totally against the deal and had visions of a future of bake sales at City Hall, should the city sell off one of its last remaining revenue-generating assets.

The City of Trenton was attacked as an organization repeatedly at the meeting, as municipal officials complained of denied Open Public Records Act requests and being kept totally in the dark about the entire process.

One official said Mayor Douglas H. Palmer and City Attorney Denise Lyles avoided communication about the deal, and that an acting City Clerk denied a public records request regarding public bids for the infrastructure.

“I have never heard of a public bid not being available for public review,” said the official.

Water Works to get discussion time tonight

A meeting tonight at Hamilton Township’s municipal building could really get ugly when people from the surrounding areas get together to discuss the impending sale of the Trenton Water Works’ outside infrastructure to New Jersey American Water, a company that plans on leveling large-scale rate hikes on its new suburban customers.

That’s because of recent media reports that finally detailed for all to see the fiscal mismanagement going on in the City of Trenton, which has been using the city water works as a massive cash-generating facility to plug gaps in the rest of the city’s municipal budget.

Normally that would not be so bad, considering the city actually owns the utility, but such practices are actually unlawful because the Trenton Water Works serves thousands of customers outside of the city. With their rate money being used to pay for other areas of municipal services, it’s as if Trenton is taxing people living outside of its borders to fill budget gaps.

Business Administrator Jane Feigenbaum deflected criticism by saying that the city’s move, in 2006, to equalize the rates paid by city residents and those living outside of Trenton removed the utility from Board of Public Utilities oversight and allowed the city to use the works for general city revenue.

But the only problem with that, according to Trenton Water Works employees contacted today, is that the nefarious practice of robbing revenue from the water utility has been going for years, untouched and unpunished by anyone, as the city continually removed more than the 5 percent of the works’ revenues allowable by law and plugged it into the city budget.

The Department of Public Works, the Fire Department, and other departments that do little to no work related to the Trenton Water Works have received hundreds of thousands of dollars from the water utilities budget and the wallets of suburban taxpayers.

For a more personal example level, city communications employee and Mayor Palmer’s publicist, Kent Ashworth, has had his entire salary show up on the suburbia-supported Trenton Water Works budget.

It appears that now, with suburban residents facing higher rates that will exacerbate their cost of living issues, have more serious complaints been raised, and a Times of Trenton article written on the issue, which only partially revealed the way the Trenton Water Works has been abused by the Douglas H. Palmer administration.

Suburban residents and officials fed up with getting the short end of the stick from Trenton’s administration and city residents fed up with the same administration’s unlawful behavior should really consider taking drastic action before the sale goes through, which will both hurt Trenton’s long-term fiscal viability while dooming suburban residents to skyrocketing water costs.

Gee, sometimes the interests of suburban residents and those living in Trenton actually do converge.

Bad deal for Hamilton, New Jersey

The announcement of the New Jersey Supreme Court’s decision this week not the hear the Klockner Woods is a calamitous one, not only for what it does to the wallets of Hamilton Township taxpayers, but what it means for taxpayers and the legislative powers vested in governing bodies throughout the state.

In this case, former Mayor Glen D. Gilmore negotiated a horrible price for some acres of woodland near Route 295 in Hamilton – $4.5 million – without ever getting Township Council members to effectively appropriate the money, as they are statutorily empowered to do.

Normally the legislative body of the township, through refusing to allow township funds to be used on the land, should have had the ability to negate what amounted to a horrible deal for the township. But the developer successfully argued in court that the mayor’s actions put Hamilton Township on the hook for the money, and the Appellate Division upheld that decision.

The only hope was for the New Jersey Supreme Court to step in and overturn the decision, but with the decision not to hear the case mayor and administrators everywhere have been empowered to negotiate deals with little oversight from municipal legislators.

Now, through the missteps of a now-ousted mayor, Hamilton’s taxpayers are going to be on the hook for what the township administrator estimated to be as much as $550,000 in annual debt, in a municipality that has already experienced fiscal shock after fiscal shock.

“I don’t know where to take the fight from here,” said Hamilton Mayor John Bencivengo, in the Times of Trenton. “It’s terribly upsetting for me and I’m sure it’s going to be terribly upsetting to the residents that they are going to be stuck paying for this.”