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And the Walls Come Tumbling Down

In a rundown of the latest news in Worldwide Bribery and Corruption in government and private industry, a blog on the Wall Street Journal’s website  this week mentions the impending federal trial of the Indicted Occupant of Trenton’s Mayor’s Office.

The Trentonian’s daily countdown (It’s T-Day -32, people!) to the scheduled January 6 trial of the IO and his co-defendants is listed third in this week’s rundown. The Indicted One is in some pretty serious company.

Mentioned first is a scandal involving international shenanigans over West African mining rights. According to a Forbes article to which the Journal links, “It’s a plot worthy of a Hollywood thriller: a deceased West African dictator, lucrative mining rights and an elusive Swiss-based billionaire.”

Number Two on the Journal’s list? Italy’s biggest oil and energy company denies claims that it paid bribes and kickbacks to get business in Algeria.

Next up: “The countdown to the bribery trial of Trenton Mayor Tony Mack continues.”

Rounding out this hit parade are links to stories about a former Bear Stearns financial adviser being sentenced to prison by a US Federal judge for his conviction for bribing a Texas judge; and from the India beat, a story from the Times of India about the sentencing of two former officials of the Indian Supreme Court after they were found guilty of soliciting kickbacks from those seeking justice from that Court.

Wow. Pretty heady stuff for a small New Jersey city,  to hang out in the big leagues of global sleaze,  corruption and bribery. For the first time in quite some time, Trenton is Making and the World Is Taking!

At the same time that the world is hearing about the imminent trial next month, we in Trenton are reading all kinds of stories alleging uncounted numbers of other incidents of corruption associated with members of the current Administration. After three and one-half years of hearing news on a weekly basis of new scandals and missteps on the part of the IO and his minions, over the last few weeks the pace of disclosures is rapidly incre4asing. It’s like the walls around the few remaining secrets and scandals yet to be revealed are all coming down.

It ain’t pretty.

We’ve been reading that the IO has been a deadbeat on his city property taxes and his water bill. Federal prosecutors revealed claims of many more instances of bribery and kickbacks discovered during the investigation that led to the charges now pending in Federal Court. This morning, a local t-shirt vendor is defending himself and his company against suggestions made that their success at bidding for a Trenton city contract required paying a kickback to city officials. The vendor’s defense is not helped by reading in Alex Zdan’s Times article today that his company’s bid “was $2,300 higher than the closest competing bid, records show.” That the t-shirt in question at the heart of this particular story read “Celebrating 25 Years: Keeping Trenton Clean” just provides another instance of the kind of extreme irony we’ve seen a lot of in the last 3 years.

You can’t make this up.

“This week’s new allegations against Mack and others are contained, almost as an afterthought, in a motion by the U.S. Attorney’s Office” writes Mr. Zdan in his piece today. He himself broke the news last week that the IO failed for almost five years to receive a bill for water usage in a building he owns on West State Street.

All of these disclosures coming from the Feds and the media must be an embarrassment to the office of Mercer County Joseph Bocchini. Apart from the conviction of the IO’s half-brother Stanley “Muscles” Davis and colleagues for crimes committed while on the job for the City’s Water Works, and the failed prosecution of former union official and city employee David Tallone, the County Prosecutor’s office have been silent bystanders in the midst of so much rampant corruption.

Two years ago I suggested that Mr. Bocchini had “a terminal case of the slows,” when it came to investigating and prosecuting all the nonsense that was going on in City Hall that was known way back then. In fact it’s now been revealed, in another article by Alex Zdan that “Members of a grand jury debated whether Mayor Tony Mack should face indictment in the Trenton Water Works corruption case that led to the conviction of his half brother, but a prosecutor advised them against charging Mack in early 2011 because of ‘insufficient evidence to prosecute the mayor at this point,’ according to transcripts of the grand jury proceeding obtained by The Times.”

Federal investigators didn’t seem to have a problem with collecting sufficient evidence for their case! In fact, as we read this week, they collected evidence of so many crimes they apparently had their pick of the strongest one to pursue.

I can only wonder what kind of reception these revelations are getting in the County Prosecutor’s Office, and that of the NJ Attorney General, and even the Governor’s Office. That there were allegations of corruption made against the mayor of New Jersey’s capital city serious enough to be discussed before a Grand Jury THREE YEARS AGO, dating back almost to the first days of his Administration, and not pursued “for insufficient evidence… at this point” is astonishing.  A lot of people in New Jersey’s criminal justice system were asleep at the switch for three years. If not for the FBI and the Federal Department of Justice, I doubt any action would ever have been brought.

Speaking of “asleep at the switch,” let me just make a passing reference to the members of Trenton’s City Council. I almost hate to: this Council and these members are such easy targets, it’s almost like kicking a cat. But I can’t let one aspect of this morning’s news go by without comment.

David Foster in today’s Trentonian reports that at least two council members were approached by city employees near the beginning of their terms in 2010, and told “the Mack administration was asking them for money to keep a job or to get a job,” as quoted by South Ward rep and current president George Muschal.  According to Mr. Foster, at-larger Council member and former president Phyllis Holly-Ward “corroborated Muschal’s comments.

These statements follow one of the specific claims made by Federal prosecutors “that revealed a scheme by Mayor Tony F. Mack, his brother Ralphiel Mack, close associate Joseph “JoJo” Giorgianni and former city recreation employee Charles Hall III to collect kickbacks from city employees in exchange for keeping their jobs.”

This article doesn’t explain what those two council members did upon receiving those charges from the city employees. It is known that council members have in the past approached prosecutors and law enforcement with information about other incidents. They may have done so on this occasion, too. I don’t know. I will give them the benefit of the doubt that they did so, only to have their information go into the black hole of the County Prosecutor’s or state Attorney General’s office.

What I do know is that Council members have failed for nearly four years to take any effective meaningful action in their capacity as elected public officials on Trenton’s governing body that would have disciplined or removed the officials involved, or to fix the city processes and procedures that made such kickbacks possible. Without compromising the integrity of any investigations then under way, it would have been possible to shine public light on what was going on in our crooked City Hall.

I grant you that effective legislative action would likely have been stymied by the 3-person defensive line for the Administration’s team made up of members McBride, Jackson and Bethea.

But any or all of the other 4 members could have and should have done a much more substantial job of communicating public outrage and providing disciplinary oversight to the Administration than they proved capable of.

All we ended up getting were photo opportunities of them in matching yellow t-shirts and “safe” boxes. Not worth very much, is it?

I re-post a link here to an article from February 2011, with this Council facing many of the same issues and obstructions they face today (including asking the whereabouts of a missing-in-action Sam Hutchinson).

They were frustrated, helpless and unproductive then, and they have made no progress in almost three full years.

As a meager defense, really an epitaph, of their actions and inactions, Ms. Holly-Ward is today quoted by Mr. Foster:

Given the recent developments, Holly-Ward said she is trying to find the next steps in council’s role.

“It’s just a list of things that we have to investigate and follow up on,” she said. “We really are chipping away at it the best we can.”

Ms. Holly-Ward, if that is the best you can offer after nearly four years – “chipping away at it the best we can” – it is not nearly enough.

3 comments to And the Walls Come Tumbling Down

  • ed w

    good to see you back, i cant wait for the trial, i will try to actually attend, should be crowded. it sure was dragged out some, finally the judge grew a pair.

    i have had similar experiences with the county prosecution office, there seems to a unwritten rule that they do no harm, unfortunately the citizens of the city of Trenton are not who they have in mind.

    as far as paying for jobs, that was going on for quite a while, former councilman jim couston complained about it years ago, that job openings would be “unposted” then miraculously filled by someones unqualified relative, that is standard practice, in fact many of the hanger-ons surrounding the council-people are there looking for jobs.

    there is always a chance that mack will make a deal, i suspect jojo will turn states evidence at the last min. he is looking at spend many years in jail.

    still even if/when mack is convicted will he do the decent thing and actually resign.

    time will tell

    peace

  • James E.

    Glad to see you back, Kevin. Just a thought on this one – do you think it is feasible that the county prosecutor was directed by the Feds to sit on their hands? It was a Fed sting that set Tony up – maybe acting on one of these “little” infractions (my god, so telling that making people bribe their ways into their jobs is a “little” infraction) would’ve interfered with the bigger trap?

    I honestly have no reason to defend the county prosecutor. I look back on all the sad things that have happened in this city since that mongoloid took office and feel abandoned by the county. They essentially put up a wall between Trenton & the rest of the area and locked the last remaining decent people inside (while barely taking action against outsiders from coming in for the open air heroin market, of course). Sadly, there was no Snake Plissken to save us.
    There are two sides of every story of course ~ though on this topic, I’m particular bitter. Kicking only myself for thinking I could help improve things by moving here is getting old. There are lot of other people to blame also. I am so looking forward to this trial.

  • Robert Chilson

    Both agencies you mentioned dropped the ball big time even though they had people like us doing most of the investigative work for them. Shameful.