LOL, LOL, LOL
Atlantic City’s Latest Problem: Mayor Is Missing
ATLANTIC CITY, Oct. 5 — This long-suffering city is no stranger to scandal. After all, in the past 40 years, five mayors have either pleaded guilty or been convicted of one bit of criminal malfeasance or another. But few episodes, even by the three-ring standards here, could match the latest act of political theater.
A week ago, the mayor of this carnival-like town, Robert W. Levy, 64, abruptly stopped showing up at City Hall, and his aides issued a cryptic one-sentence news release saying he was temporarily stepping aside to deal with medical matters. He has not been seen in public since, and in that vacuum all sorts of explanations have flourished.
Whatever made him disappear and hand the reins of government to the city’s business administrator, he has a lot more to deal with.
For one thing, there have been reports that the United States attorney for New Jersey is investigating whether Mayor Levy falsified his military record to improperly increase his military pension. Some City Council members are clamoring for the council president to run the city, leading Gov. Jon S. Corzine to say he would ask the state attorney general to look into the question of succession.
“It’s another really pathetic example of the problems of leadership at the top in Atlantic City,” said David P. Rebovich, director of the Institute for New Jersey Politics at Rider University.
Speculation and innuendo have been rampant over why the mayor simply dropped from sight. Mr. Levy’s lawyer, Edwin J. Jacobs, told the city last week that he had checked into a hospital, but he refused to say where or for how long.
Not surprisingly, the mayor’s absence has set off a scrum among elected officials here.
One councilman has filed suit in State Superior Court asking that the mayor’s seat be declared vacant, a move that would allow the Council to appoint a successor. “Other efforts under way to determine the legally sufficient transfer of authority have yet to resolve the ongoing dilemma,” Councilman G. Bruce Ward said on Friday.
As Mr. Ward put it, “The mysterious disappearance of Mayor Levy is now a national news story causing significant embarrassment and exposing the city to unwarranted risk.”
Later in the day, about two dozen demonstrators gathered at City Hall to protest Mr. Levy’s absence, saying it has paralyzed this city of 40,000.
To veteran observers of politics in this city where drug-infested neighborhoods are still waiting for the full benefits of the $16 million-a-day casino industry, the episode seems sadly familiar.
“This isn’t the way it’s supposed to be,” said Louvinia Nixon, a retired hostess at Caesars Casino who was casting a fishing line into the tea-colored surf off the Pacific Avenue jetty on Wednesday afternoon.
Mr. Levy, a longtime chief of the beach patrol here, is a Democrat and first-term mayor whose political problems apparently began last fall when several articles appeared in The Press of Atlantic City questioning his service record in Vietnam. Although he said for years that he had been a member of the Army Special Forces, the newspaper reported that he never had.
Last fall, the mayor acknowledged the misrepresentation and apologized. “I’m sorry for having this happen at all,” Mr. Levy told The Associated Press. “It’s something I should have corrected 40 years ago. It is what it is, and I apologize for the embarrassment I’ve created for myself and my family.”
In recent weeks, it was reported that the United States attorney for New Jersey, Christopher J. Christie, was investigating whether Mr. Levy has improperly collected pension payments by claiming that he served in the Special Forces. According to the news accounts, the designation would entitle him to an additional $25,000 in military benefits.
A spokesman for Mr. Christie, Michael Drewniak, declined to comment on reports of the investigation.
Then, last week, Mr. Levy simply dropped from sight, and aides issued the 36-word statement saying that the mayor was taking an indefinite medical leave.
“His attorney shared with us that he’s in the hospital,” said Nicholas J. Morici, a spokesman for the mayor. “Which hospital? Where? We weren’t privy to that information.”
In Mr. Levy’s absence, the city’s business administrator, Dominic Cappella, has served as mayor. But Councilman Ward said he asked the court to rule the office vacant because the city’s order-of-succession rules are vague and Mr. Cappella has no authority to hold the office.
“There is a difference between an absence and a vacancy,” he said in a telephone interview on Friday. “There has been no formal designation by the mayor.”
Mr. Corzine seemed to agree. At a boardwalk news conference here on Friday, he said, “It’s seems to me the situation can’t go on,” and added, “You can’t just create a vacuum.”
For much of the past week, Assemblyman James Whelan, a former three-term mayor here and close friend of Mr. Levy, has called for him to speak out and put an end to the speculation over his whereabouts and even resign if he has committed a crime. “You can’t go months on end with a situation where you don’t know where the mayor is,” Mr. Whelan said at the news conference with the governor.
Residents are equally exasperated.
“He’s in the hospital?” said Ms. Nixon, the hostess. “For what? O.K., maybe some things are personal. But you owe it to the people who put you in office to say what’s going on.”
Ms. Nixon, 66, talked about the many politicians who have been brought low by scandal and how this city has fallen so far short of the prosperity promised by the opening of casinos three decades ago.
“I’m disgusted,” she said. “Like most of us, I’m disgusted. I can’t remember when Atlantic City was an easygoing town.”
(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)
The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.
No comments:
Post a Comment