Doubt It!

That is an overly optimistic headline on this morning’s Trentonian article by Anthony Campisi. “Mayor Mack’s power slipping away in Trenton.”

I wish! Nearly every single exercise of Mayoral power and authority wielded by Tony F. Mack over the last 24 months has been inept and wrong, showing the worst political instincts of any public official I’ve ever seen combined with an absence of common sense that’s just breathtaking.  In nearly every choice the mayor makes – in policy making or personnel; when he chooses to make comments and when he avoids comments – he makes decisions that cost the city and its taxpayers more money it doesn’t have, creates problems where none were before, or makes existing situations and problems much worse for his involvement. The Mack Touch is a heavy one, indeed, and I can’t think of any person in the last 24 months whose career has been improved by association with him.

Anyway, the Trentonian article this morning describes how administrative changes to be imposed on the City of Trenton by the NJ Department of Community Affairs (DCA)will “significantly reduce the mayor’s control over his own administration.” DCA, in accordance with the terms of the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) the city signed last fall with the state that granted the City $22 Million in Transitional Aid supporting its budget, tightly controls the recruitment and hiring process by which the Mayor is staffing his Administration with Department Heads and other senior officials. According to the article, Mack will only be able to nominate, and City Council confirm, individuals for these positions who have been examined and approved by DCA. And once in office, these directors cannot be fired at will by Mr. Mack.

This process has already resulted in appointments such as Police Director Ralph Rivera and Business Administrator Sam Hutchinson, both of whose appointments have – for now – put an end to the long string of “Acting” appointments of individuals whose short tenures allowed none of the occupants of those offices time to counterbalance the destructiveness of Mr. Mack. Reports so far are pretty positive for Mr. Rivera, although mixed for Hutchinson.

So, why am I unconvinced on the prospects for this process reining in the Mayor? Namely, because it requires something that Mr. Mack isn’t very good at: complying with rules and regulations. Tony Mack has shown time after time that he doesn’t let mere rules or laws stop him from what he wants to do.

Take two recent examples. First, when City Council – perfectly legitimately in my opinion – voted to remove from service three of the Mayor’s “Acting” Directors who had exceeded their 90-day maximum term in office, the Mayor ignored Council and denied that Council had any legitimacy to do what they had just done.

And second, the Mayor on his own authority opened three shuttered neighborhood branches of the Trenton Free Public Library. He had no funds authorized by City Council to do so, and has still refused to provide any accounting for monies spent to date on repairs made to the buildings, or any other expenses laid out to operate them. He has staffed these buildings with an unknown number of paid employees and volunteers of varying and questionable experience and backgrounds. The Mayor has opened these “Learning Center Libraries” in violation of the State Laws governing the usage of city-owned libraries.

These stories are just from the last couple of weeks, but the last 24 months have been just like them. He hasn’t been stopped, or slowed down, by anyone up until now: no Council, no Business Administrator, no City Attorney, noJudge, no Prosecutor, no DCA, no law  has stopped Tony Mack from doing what he wants to do, when he wants to do it.When 8500 voters signed a recall petition, more people than elected Tony Mack as Mayor, that message ran over him like so much water off his back. None of these things has made an appreciable sustained impact on the way Tony Mack runs his mayoralty.

And now, we are supposed to think that DCA’s role in the recruitment of senior personnel is by itself going to “significantly reduce the mayor’s control over his own administration?”

Sadly, I don’t think so.