By Briana Vannozzi
Correspondent
Today’s vote was more of a formality. Speaker Vincent Prieto already had unanimous bipartisan support for his bill to rescue Atlantic City. But the Assembly Judiciary Committee met again to amend it, this time to include school districts in the payments from casinos in lieu of property taxes. And add a planning committee to issue frequent reports on the city’s finances with a “special master” to oversee it.
“It’s not condemning us, it’s not sending the state down to take over our city. It’s a comprehensive plan,” said Atlantic City Mayor Don Guardian.
Yet the elephant in the room was the looming proposal put forward by Senate President Steve Sweeney yesterday.
It gives the cash-strapped city four months to slash the municipal budget in half before the state takes control of the local government instead of an immediate takeover.
“In 130 days we can’t cut $128 million from our budget. If we laid off every single employee of the city we still would be $30 or $40 million from reaching that goal,” Guardian said.
“It’s unrealistic and we don’t have time to deal with unrealistic benchmarks,” said Atlantic City Council President Marty Small Sr.
Union reps noting the mayor has already cut the workforce, the benefits and the pay drastically and that members of the public works department make just $22,000 a year.
“Our pay is so low that I actually have members right now that live in the mission. They get up and come to work at 4 o’clock in the morning, rain, sleet and snow, hurricane or tornado they get up and come to work,” said Atlantic City Blue Collar Workers Union President Ahmid Abdullah.
Guardian argued that numbers circulating over the city’s expenses per capita are misleading and wrong.
“I want to drive home the point that there’s more than 39,000 people in Atlantic City because last year we transported 21,000 people to the hospital. Now you may think Atlantic City is unhealthy, but you can’t believe that half of my city needs to be transported to the hospital every year,” he said. “It’s because the vast numbers of people that come to our city is greatly inflated and that’s the cost of doing business.”
“I’m willing to talk through this process as long as we take into account everything I have said. The civil liberties, the self governance and collective bargaining because as you heard here today all these people, these workers that they’re talking about, they all have skin in the game because they have compromised. They have taken every recommendation that has been asked of them,” Assemblyman Vincent Prieto said.
The governor says he’s still not budging.
“My door continues to be open, but I’m not going to negotiate with folks in public. I wouldn’t take anything on or off the table. I’ve told them I want the Sweeney bill as it was originally passed. If they’ve got something else they want to show me, I’m always willing to listen but I’m certainly not changing my position and I haven’t,” Chris Christie said.
The speaker plans to post this amended bill for a full vote sometime next week, but says he’s still open to compromise and changes with the Senate version as long as it’s recognized that the public workers in Atlantic City didn’t cause the problems, and stripping away their rights won’t fix them.