Resorts Casino Hotel owner Morris Bailey has contributed more than $126,000 to Atlantic City Residents for Good Government, a political action committee that wants to change Atlantic City’s form of government from the current mayor-council format to a council-manager style.
Besides Bailey’s significant contributions to the PAC, unions with ties to Atlantic City and South Jersey have also donated. The bricklayers and allied crafts, plumbers and pipefitters, painters, roofers, electrical workers, elevator construction, casino workers and building trades unions have all donated, based on filings with the New Jersey Election Law Enforcement Commission.
Iron Workers Local 399, where New Jersey Senate President Steve Sweeney serves as general vice president, donated $5,000 shortly after the petition was announced in June.
The unions that donated also have ties to the Casino Reinvestment Development Authority (CRDA) executive board. Representatives, members or officers of the bricklayers and allied crafts (Richard Tolson), electrical workers (Edward Gant) and building trades (William Mullen) all sit on the CRDA board, as does Resorts President Mark Giannantonio.
The PAC hoped to gather enough signatures on a petition to force a ballot referendum in which city residents would decide whether the municipal government should change. If it did, the number of council members would shrink from nine to five and a directly elected mayor would be eliminated. Instead, a mayor would be selected annually from among the five at-large council members and a city manager would serve as the chief executive.
Under the 2016 legislation that gave the state direct oversight of the city’s finances, the Department of Community Affairs can treat successful referendum efforts in Atlantic City as advisory, and the state agency can reject a ballot decision regardless of the electorate’s choice.
Former state Senator Ray Lesniak, Unite Here Local 54 President Bob McDevitt, Bailey and Giannantonio have all worked in some capacity to support the petition, believing the current style of representation has allowed too many elected officials to further their own self-interests at the expense of the city and its residents.
The city’s mayors have a long history of bad deeds and illegally lining their own pockets. Last fall, former mayor Frank Gilliam pleaded guilty to committing wire fraud after stealing some $87,000 from a youth basketball team he co-founded in 2011. In addition to paying back the money, Gilliam faces up to 20 years in prison and a fine of “$250,000 or twice the gross gain or loss from the offense.”
Others in the mayoral hall of shame include Michael J. Matthews, arrested by the FBI in 1983 for accepting a $10,000 bribe from an undercover federal agent and for accepting money from Philadelphia mob boss Nicodemo “Little Nicky” Scarfo; James L. Usry, arrested in 1989 for taking a $6,500 bribe from a state police informant as part of an alleged influence-selling conspiracy; and Bob Levy, a former lifeguard and Vietnam veteran, who embellished his military service to collect more benefits.
Gilliam, who will be sentenced on January 7, was replaced by council member Marty Small, whose own questionable past includes charges of drug distribution in 1993 and arson in 2005. Small was never convicted, but the charges were loudly proclaimed during the 2017 mayoral race in a Gilliam campaign mailer that read, “Marty Small’s checkered past is bad for Atlantic City’s future.”
Opponents of the PAC proposal see the petition as a coup attempt by powerful outsiders who want to exert their influence over one of the state’s largest economic engines. Union leader McDevitt said the group has obtained enough valid signatures and will submit the petition in the coming weeks.
In response to the criticism facing the petition effort, McDevitt said opponents have a “vested interest in maintaining the status quo.
