By David Cruz
Correspondent
“The egos have to leave the room.”
Gov. Chris Christie tried to make it clear that the time for talk was over and that it was time to start coming up with solutions for a city quite literally on the brink. In the two months since the governor convened his first Atlantic City summit, the city has seen another casino close, another get more wobbly and the airport lose its one major carrier. Time, says the governor, is running out.
“There are opportunities here that we need to take advantage of and there are challenges we need to confront in a much more aggressive way than these things have been confronted in the past,” he said.
After a 90-minute session with elected officials, business, labor, civic and casino industry leaders, the governor emerged to both underline the severity of the problem and to buck up the stakeholders.
“These are hard realities, I know, and I prefer to be the harbinger of good news and an easy way forward, but if we act as strong and decisive leaders we can build on what we’ve accomplished in Atlantic City,” Christie said.
While the initial findings of the committee from Jon Hanson, the governor’s point man on this effort, won’t be released until tomorrow, the governor hinted at some of the recommendations.
“Chief among the recommendations from Jon and his team is the creation of an emergency manager for Atlantic City. That role would be an expansion of the current statutory fiscal oversight we currently have in Atlantic City and other cities in New Jersey,” he said.
Christie said there would likely be the establishment of a non-profit development corporation to spur non-gaming development and that the city will have to prepare for some serious reform, including tax reform, pension reform, school reform and regionalization, which could include a change to public safety organizations. Senate President Steve Sweeney, who unveiled his own rescue plan for Atlantic City this week, said there has been a sea change in the city and its leaders now have to catch up.
“We had a $5.2 billion market because of people ignoring gaming throughout the country. We’re now down to a $2.5 billion market. We have a government that was living off a $5.2 billion market. It’s not too hard. It’s simple math,” Sweeney said.
The governor says he will reconvene this task force in 60 days, adding, without elaboration, that it is likely there will be action — either legislatively or by executive order — before then.
“The first thing you need to do is stop the bleeding. Let’s start there. And then you work on recovery but first you gotta stabilize the patient,” Christie said.
The patient is indeed ill. And while no one here considers its condition terminal, it’s clear that nursing this city back to health is going to take some strong, and bitter, medicine.