The Ruins of Trenton

L.A. Parker apparently doesn’t care about the plight of many Trentonians or good race relations, despite his public positions.

This man's sole reason for existence is as a big distraction, meant to lure away attention from the fact that Mayor Palmer is one of the biggest disasters that ever happened to Trenton.

Whatever his stated positions, this man is actually hurting all Trentonians through his constant playing of the race card for purely political purposes, as evidenced by yesterday’s Trentonian column attacking opponents of Mayor Douglas H. Palmer like the Trenton Residents Action Coalition.

In it, the fuming Mr. Parker attacks from many different angles, comparing unnamed bloggers like myself to members of the Ku Klux Klan and even going as far as to accuse a black member of TRAC, James Fouse, of being a “token” black man.

Mr. Parker has also taken the position that TRAC members are racists, which is absolutely ridiculous.

The fact is that TRAC has never done anything out of racial motivations and our members, who are all Trenton residents, are not racists. Although there are probably a few racists living in Trenton, it always seems highly unlikely that a racist would ever choose to live in Trenton, where whites represent less than 20 percent of the 83,000 people living in the city.

He also struggled to paint a picture of hyprocrisy yesterday, and his idiotic arguments demonstrated that he does not think very highly of the intellects of his readership.

Mr. Parker tried to say that a lack of outrage over the residency of the current fire director and police Capt. Fred Reister, who was briefly acting police director, was an indicator of hypocrisy. But all that lack of outrage showed was a superior knowledge of state law, which exempts both men from residency requirements.

Mr. Parker tried to paint Mayor Palmer's opponents as hypocrites for pointing out the man recently named police director is a convicted felon, while staying silent on a restraining order that was put on one TRAC member many years ago.

Sorry L.A., but you already outed that particular TRAC member, and he is not the police director. His past, non-criminal record has little to do with anything.

The disturbing thing about these tirades is that, besides bordering on libel, they are also truly reminiscent of the tactics used by bigots and hate mongers like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity. They even harken back to the politics of fear used so successfully by such antichrists as Adolf Hitler.

Like these evil men, Mr. Parker uses the false pretenses of fear, in this case prejudice and racism, to obfuscate the reality that Mayor Palmer and the people in power are ruining the city and are dragging Trentonians of all races into an economic and social abyss.

No one really knows why Mr. Parker does this.

There are the unsubstantiated rumors that Mayor Palmer has “dirt” on Mr. Parker, perhaps from his younger days, or that maybe Mr. Parker is being compensated for the constant Palmer spin that is applied to nearly every newspaper article written by Mr. Parker.

Whatever the case is, the only thing Mr. Parker is succeeding in doing is impeding progress in Trenton, and that’s because his work helps keep Mayor Palmer in power by helping to keep the mayor’s enemies marginalized, and in a weakened state.

But the recent residency defeat of the mayor over his police director and other defeats of the past year sometimes point to a weakening of the mayor, and even a weakening of Mr. Parker.

Never was that more evident than at a civic meeting last week in the North Ward, where an overwhelmingly black group of residents expressed a strongly negative opinion of Mayor Palmer, The Trentonian, and especially Mr. Parker, calling the paper and the columnist racist, and damaging to the cause of black Americans.

There is hope in Trenton.

Numerous people in Trenton have commented on how much the city has taken on the feeling of an episode of “The Twilight Zone,” following the appointment of Police Director Irving Bradley Jr. this week.

First, the usual hate mongers were playing to the fears of the people in the local media today. They were quickly branding any and all opponents of Mayor Douglas H. Palmer as racists, as those opponents - including me - pursue the ouster of Mr. Bradley, like his predecessor Joseph Santiago, for violating the city’s residency ordinance.

Part of the basis of this racially-charged response is the surveillance tactics used by some residents in observing Mr. Bradley at his family residence in Rahway two weeks ago, but such a response only demonstrates the hypocrisy of Mayor Palmer and those who support him.

These tactics were taken right out of his administration’s playbook. Mayor Palmer’s own officials have spied and investigated employees for maintaining similar living arrangements to those of Mr. Bradley.

The icing on the cake in the lawsuit filed this morning is that one plaintiff, Frederick Constanzo, did exactly what Mr. Bradley is doing and was fired by Mayor Palmer for doing so.

As Councilman Manny Segura told Mayor Palmer this week, what’s good for the goose is good for the gander.

The playing of the race card was expected, since it has become the only worthwhile tactic to the advocates of hypocrisy. But there was other, more unexpected rumors and innuendo flying around the city today.

One rumor holds that some council members were aware that in the event of a legal challenge being mounted against Mr. Bradley’s appointment, the man would move towards the pursuit of some sort of separation, legal or not, designed to foil the challenge and embarrass the residents.

Rumor number two holds that council members were bullied into accepting the man’s residency status, and accepted that the living arrangements of his wife and children were “personal” information and thus went unquestioned during Tuesday’s confirmation hearing.

If count one of the rumor is true, then Trenton’s government is completely broken, because it effectively means that elected officials have decided to keep important information, which has only become more important due to recent events, from the very people they are elected to represent in an effort to marginalize and embarrass said residents.

Count two, if true, means that some of the current city representatives sorely lack the credentials necessary to do their jobs, which include a willingness to uphold city law and enforce it.

Residency is a city law, and living arrangements, however personal, are subject to this law. Dozens of employees have been fired in the past based on these livings arrangements, which were probed, investigated, and spied upon with vigor by the Palmer administration at great cost to the taxpayers.

To suddenly declare such information off-limits is a ridiculous and hypocritical position to take. This is something that Trenton residents have come to expect from their mayor, but not City Council members.

Men and women elected to represent their peers have a responsibility to the voters to keep the public interest in mind at all times, but when they become forgetful of those responsibilities or neglect them in favor of ulterior motives, it becomes the responsibility of the people to take action.

That's what needs to be done in the City of Trenton.

City Council voted to confirm a non-resident police director on Tuesday, under pressure from a selfish mayor and an artificially large crowd that appeared at council because of the distribution of flyers urging people to "show up and support" an unnamed director.

The same council members that fought a months-long, expensive legal battle over the last police director's non-residency somehow managed to shirk their duties Tuesday by not asking the tough questions about residency, which have become an important part of their legislative responsibilities.

No one really knows what went on behind the scenes prior to the vote, but following what happened, several things have become clear.

The imminent residency lawsuit against new Police Director Irving Bradley and the details that will emerge during its expensive course will demonstrate to all just how much the current council failed the city on Tuesday.

When what is contained in that suit comes into the public eye, the only people in this battle who will look like bigger fools than Mayor Douglas H. Palmer are some on council.

Relating to that situation is that City Council appears to have returned to its submissive form, with a majority of members unwilling to go against the mayor and ask the tough questions that are part of their responsibilities.

In fact, they will likely do whatever the mayor says, including amending the city's residency ordinance to allow Mayor Palmer to legally play favorites with residency, instead of in the unlawful manner he is forced to use because of the structure of the ordinance.

But the people can stop this.

A practice petition drive undertaken last year managed to gather 700 signatures in five days.

That effort can be repeated now, in a drive towards getting a residency amendment into the city code that would simultaneously allow for outside hires in emergencies while never allowing Mayor Palmer to play favorites with the law, ever again.

The bottom line is that throughout all of this, including the mayor's lying, grandstanding, reversals on established positions, the council's decisions, and the court battles, the people have been the decisive factor.

If they want to defeat the mayor and the officials who sold them out on Tuesday, then it can be done.

City Council folded under pressure Tuesday night, when Mayor Douglas H. Palmer and a crowd of cronies marched into council chambers and bullied and dealed their way through the confirmation of new police director, convicted felon, and residency violator Irving Bradley Jr.

The council's "Gang of Four" broke into splinters, with former stalwart Gino Melone breaking for the bad guys in voting to confirm Mr. Bradley. Palmer cronies Annette Lartigue, Paul Pintella, and Cordelia Staton also voted to confirm the director.

The confirmation came despite a preponderance of evidence - nearly 12 months' worth - that demonstrated that from the beginning of his employment, Mr. Bradley was in violation of the city's residency ordinance. That city law requires employees to maintain a bona fide, primary residence within Trenton city limits.

First, Mr. Bradley openly admitted that he didn't even have a residence in Trenton, and even when he established a secondary residence in Trenton, he was caught on camera with a city vehicle 40 miles to the north, at his family residence in Rahway.

Again, just over three weeks ago, he was caught at the same residence by Trenton residents. Council members were fully aware of this, yet not a single member from either side of the pro-Palmer and anti-Palmer fault line decided to question the director over where his family lives.

The end result is that Trenton taxpayers will once again be on the hook, when a lawsuit similar to the one that ousted the previous police director is filed in the coming days. With that suit city taxpayers will again be left on the short side of things, because their government cannot follow the simplest of laws.

In retrospect, Tuesday's council meeting took on an almost circus-like atmosphere. Flyers were apparently put out in the West Ward of the city, urging residents to show up to support an unnamed director. They showed up in droves, and made their ignorance known as they cheered for a wasteful, arrogant, and vindictice mayor hellbent on screwing over the residents and the City Council that had recently defeated him.

He succeeded, in mysteriously convincing a formerly strong Councilman Melone to switch to a positive vote, and getting a majority of council to confirm a controversial, residency-breaking, convicted felon to Trenton's highest law enforcement position.

During the entire meeting, Mayor Palmer was his usual self, showing an amazing ability to talk out of both sides of his mouth.

He said he was appointing a director, after only minutes earlier complaining that the city's residency ordinance prevented him from doing so. He attacked residents that had conducted their own residency investigations of public officials, while excusing the same activities, when performed by contractors hired by his own administration.

When asked by Councilman Manny Segura about why the mayor allowed nearly $300,000 in taxpayer funds to be wasted on lawyers in an ultimately futile residency battle, Mayor Palmer blamed council for suing him to enforce the residency law, instead of accepting his own blame in violating the same law.

But while Mayor Palmer proved himself to be Tuesday's greatest actor, the entity that deserves the most blame for this debacle is City Council.

Not a single member asked the appointee about where his family resides, despite the insane and lengthy residency affair that occurred over the course of the prior 10 months, which demonstrated that such information is crucial to any residency determination.

And because of such legislative forgetfulness, Trenton will likely now face another lawsuit, at a time when the city can ill afford such an unnecessary expenditure.

Mayor Douglas H. Palmer appointed Communications Director Irving Bradley Jr. as the city's new police director today, demonstrating a reckless disregard for the City of Trenton, its residents, its laws, and its finances.

Mr. Bradley replaces former Director Joseph Santiago, the man who resigned in disgrace weeks ago after two courts ousted him for violating the city's residency ordinance.

Like Mr. Santiago, Mr. Bradley is also in violation of the residency ordinance, living part-time in a Trenton apartment while maintaining a primary, family residence in Rahway, where he was seen less than three weeks ago. This fact disqualifies Mr. Bradley from holding the directorship, or any office in Trenton, and Mayor Palmer knows this.

Despite that knowledge, Mayor Palmer appointed Mr. Bradley today, knowing full well that such a foolhardy move will immediately open the city to another citizen's lawsuit aimed at ousting a convicted felon who cannot hold office here.

Also on Mr. Bradley's sordid resume is successfully eliciting a lawsuit from city dispatchers alleging racist practices, which also threatens the city's finances. Before that, the new director was found to be unqualified for his old communications position by the state Department of Personnel.

Such reckless disregard on for the city's finances by Mayor Palmer comes at a time when the city is preparing to lay off workers, slash services, and shutter city libraries because of a massive budget deficit.

City Council, which should have an opportunity to vote down such an appointment, must do so, lest the city follow the mayor's path and risk additional, precious city dollars fighting a losing battle to demonstrate the falsehood that the mayor has the ability to decide which employees must follow the law and which do not.

Trenton residents were greeted in the newspapers Tuesday with stories featuring the brushing off of good fiscal arguments and childish taunting by some city officials, over what they saw as a botched attack on one of the Palmer administration's highest positions.

What really went on was that members of the Trenton Residents Action Coalition - including me - engaged in a governmental study last week. The group decided that the city's current municipal vehicle fleet and the chief of staff, among other executive positions, represented unnecessary burdens on the city's taxpayers.

With the city's fiscal woes and the looming library closures in mind, TRAC correctly concluded that these areas were the best places to make cuts in the budget to free up money and help plug holes in the city's budget.

But the group incorrectly determined that the chief of staff position used in the administration under Mayor Douglas H. Palmer was unauthorized by the state law governing Trenton's form of government, and issued a public statement calling on the city to examine the position, based both on its fiscal burden and apparent unlawfulness.

Sadly, it was determined after the statement's release that an obscure provision in state law did provide the option for such a position, however unnecessary it may be for the operation of Trenton's government. TRAC, represented by attorney and member George Dougherty, retracted the statement and apologized for the error.

But despite the group's mistakes and the taunts of the Palmer administration, the city's fiscal situation remains the same, and so does the resolve of TRAC.

Trenton must get its fiscal house in order, and that starts with the cutting of instances of administrative fat, like the municipal car fleet and the unnecessary, however legal chief of staff position.

Trenton can no longer afford these luxuries, especially when they come in the form of taxpayer-funded transportation or optional, generously compensated chiefs of staff. This city is not what it used to be, and the size of the city government needs to come back to realistic proportions.

*Let's not forget how many mistakes the Palmer administration has made, without so much as a peep or an apology to Trenton and the residents who so often find themselves on the hook: Manex, Performa, Champale, Full Spectrum, Santiago, Colicelli, Messina, Bradley, the libraries, the Trenton Water Works deal, the budget, supporting Clinton, residency...feel free to add more in the comments section.

Trenton Mayor Douglas H. Palmer, using former Police Director Joseph Santiago as his arbiter, took a page right out of U.S. President George W. Bush's playbook when he brought in the former director to politicize, marginalize, and harass officers in the Trenton Police Department starting in 2003.

That evaluation rings true when comparing what Mayor Palmer did with Trenton's police department to what President Bush did, through attorney generals John Ashcroft and Alberto Gonzales, to the U.S. Department of Justice.

In a piece written by Andrew Gumbel in The Nation, Mr. Gumbel details how an angry President Bush turned his gaze towards the Justice Department, which had apparently earned the ire of many neoconservatives by working on such "liberal" causes as civil rights cases and protecting the voting rights of minority Americans.

Because of these perceived violations, the Bush administration, ever working towards multiplying the powers of the executive branch beyond the reach of the checks and balances of the other branches, began politicizing the department by installing ideologues and party loyalists in key positions.

From there, they controlled the hiring of attorneys for work in key positions at the department, ensuring that important posts and even the rank-and-file of the department became increasingly filled with conservatives of strong political views but dubious legal skills. Good employees were marginalized through placement in less-important positions.

Then came instances of misbehavior, with favored Department of Justice employees harassing, intimidating, and attacking other employees not of the same political persuasion, up to and including the now infamous firings of various U.S. attorneys by the then-attorney general, Mr. Gonzales.

The end result was that "They have destroyed the internal culture of the Justice Department...," said Bruce Fein, a prominent constitutional lawyer quoted in The Nation piece, entitled "Justice, Bush-Style".

To complete the comparison, hop on the northbound train to Trenton.

There, Mayor Palmer engaged in similar activities regarding the police department.

This came after various officers, during contract negotiations or political campaigns, expressed views contrary to the mayor either by directly attacking him or through their support of other mayoral candidates, like current Mercer County Freeholder Tony Mack.

With these transgressions in mind, the mayor pursued and successfully executed a drastic change in the department's leadership, in the 1999 citizen's referendum that resulted in a civilian, police director-led department rather than a police force led by a sworn, tenure-protected, and less-politically inclined police chief.

After a series of directors who did not sufficiently politicize the department, in came Mr. Santiago, and the mayor had his man. Immediately, officers who had crossed the mayor's path or director's path were relegated to meaningless late-night shifts and desk jobs, while less qualified, but loyal and like-minded officers were placed in positions of leadership.

Instances of official excess emerged, with harassment, intimidation, and unpunished misconduct becoming commonplace. The department lost dozens of valuable officers through retirement and attrition who might have stayed with more even-handed, less-politically motivated management decision making.

Like the Department of Justice, the end result was a politicized organization with limited effectiveness, after skilled employees left and others were relegated to meaningless positions while like-minded peons flourished and were put in positions of importance.

Mr. Santiago is now gone, having resigned after being found in violation of Trenton's residency ordinance, but already Mayor Palmer seeks to bring another politically-charged appointment to rein in the police department, while suppressing dissenters.

Sounds a little like the Justice Department, doesn't it?

An ordinance aimed at reining in costs and eliminating the practice of giving city-owned vehicles to officials as some sort of twisted governmental privilege could receive attention in City Council as early as Tuesday.

Trenton really needs one of these, and nothing made that more evident than when Business Administrator Jane Feigenbaum said recently that the city had no single vehicle policy and that policies dictating the use of city-owned, taxpayer-funded cars was up to the individual directors of the city's 10 municipal departments.

And sometimes it appears that these policies aren't getting the job done.

Pointing to this conclusion are the occasional car crashes involving city vehicles far outside of city limits, the stories about civilian employees like former Police Director Joseph Santiago sending in municipal cars to get tricked out with unnecessary bells and whistles, and rumors about the lending of cars to employees attending sporting events in Philadelphia.

Even without this perception of abuse there is the mere fact that the gasoline going into the gas tanks of these vehicles, free of charge to the drivers, remains at a cost of around $3.25 a gallon, at a time when the city's finances are in tatters.

The municipal fleet, quite simply, represents a sucking wound that consumes hundreds of thousads, if not millions of city dollars at a time when Trenton talks of 10 percent budget cuts, layoffs, and the closure of public library branches.

Part of the ordinance that could end this would require Ms. Feigenbaum to go out and put together an inventory of Trenton's municipal fleet, complete with documentation justifying why certain employees need expensive, gasoline-consuming vehicles to do their jobs.

That part should be really interesting.

City Council and the residents its members represent will finally get a look at what the Douglas H. Palmer administration has been doing as far as assigning and using vehicles.

Also, people living in this city of 83,000 residents will be able to compare the size of its municipal fleet to other cities. Judging by Mayor Palmer's usual taxpayer-funded extravagances - a police officer protection squad, frequent trips around the nation and the world, and $500,000 light-up fire department signs - it probably won't be pretty.

But for comparison's sake, in absence of any hard numbers on Trenton's fleet, it seems that Yonkers, N.Y. has 144 take-home cars for civilian employees, in a city with 196,000 residents and more than twice the land area of Trenton.

Buffalo, N.Y. recently slashed its municipal fleet due to economic pressures and fuel costs and now has 50 total take-home vehicles for civilian employees in a government serving a city nearly four times as large as Trenton, with 292,000 residents.

Another part of the ordinance would require the city to implement some sort of Internal Revenue Service-compatible accounting system, so employees would actually have to pony up a buck or two for having a free commute to work. Apparently Trenton hasn't been doing this, despite the obvious negative implications of such a practice.

Anyway, here's to Tuesday, and to City Council moving forward with this ordinance and making the Palmer administration go the way of the City of Buffalo.

The usual rumor mongers have city Mayor Douglas H. Palmer naming a permanent, civilian police director as early as Tuesday, a little over two weeks after Joseph Santiago resigned the post after two different courts found him in violation of the city's residency law.

This rush to appoint a permanent director stems from Mayor Palmer's fear of letting the Trenton Police Department get back to police work without the political interference that was provided for so long by Mr. Santiago.

Mr. Santiago's activities usually meant good, effective officers being paid large salaries were relegated to midnight shifts, desk jobs, and other positions of relative irrelevance.

Almost immediately after Mr. Santiago's departure, acting director Capt. Fred Reister began making transfers and assignment changes that put some officers back in positions of significance, where their police skills could have actually made a difference on the streets of Trenton.

But Mayor Palmer is apparently fed up with such activities, preferring an appointee who will again rein in the various officers who may have crossed the mayor's path in the past while putting less worthy, but more pliable officers - like Capt. Paul "Sleepy" Messina and the like - in positions of power.

But Mayor Palmer and his administration should understand that such an appointment would publicly demonstrate that the mayor values the ability to politicize his own department higher than having the ability to appoint non-residents to employment positions.

That's because, without having a residency amendment in place at the time of the appointment, Mayor Palmer will surely have to name a city resident to the position. Anyone other than a bona fide city resident would be unlawful in a manner equivalent to Mr. Santiago, and everyone knows what happened with that situation.

But the appointment of a resident as director is also a weakening of the mayor's argument that the city's residency ordinance makes it impossible to appoint the right man for the directorship, and other high-ranking city cabinet positions, because the mayor will have done just that in appointing a city resident qualified for the position.

Sadly, he will also have demonstrated that getting political revenge on the Trenton Police Department is the most important piece of Mayor Palmer's city agenda, at a time when there are other, way more important things that a Trenton mayor should be worried about.

Citizens don't usually react kindly to the news that their government has been stealing from them.

Such news is met with anger, disgust, and a feeling of violation, or any other unwanted feeling that emerges as the result of gaining the knowledge that people trusted with making important decisions and appropriating money for others have broken that trust.

This is what happened Thursday, when it was revealed that state legislators siphoned off millions earmarked for property tax relief for their own pet projects, during testimony given in former state Sen. Wayne Bryant's federal corruption trial.

The same thing is going on in Trenton, in a more indirect and complicated manner. The city government has made it standard policy to pay out hundreds of thousands of dollars to compensate people in positions that should not and cannot be in receipt of public money.


There was former Police Director Joseph Santiago. He was proven unqualified for the very job he filled for over five years because of the way he, with Mayor Douglas H. Palmer's blessing, openly broke the city's residency ordinance and was ousted by two separate courts for doing so.

Communications Director Irving Bradley, a Santiago associate, continues to be paid city dollars despite a multitude of issues that seem to indicate that the city should cease doing so. Mr. Bradley is not a bona fide resident and is thus subject to removal under the city's residency ordinance, like Mr. Santiago.

Mr. Bradley, a provisional appointment, has now exceeded a state Department of Personnel statutory 12-month limit on such appointments, months after the same department determined that Mr. Bradley was unqualified to take the state test for the position he currently occupies.

There are positions like special counsel and chief of staff, which command hundreds of thousands of dollars in salary from the city yet appear to exist in a manner that might be contrary to state law and Trenton's own municipal code.

This is happening at a time when residents are being told that the city is operating in the red, despite multiple tax rate and water rate hikes, and that the result will be reduced services, layoffs, and even the potential closure of valuable resources like the branch libraries open in each ward of Trenton.

The government, including City Council, must move to end these legal inconsistencies to not only restore confidence in municipal government but to save city dollars for use in funding important city services.

In failing to do so, the government risks more of the embarassing litigation that seems to have become the only recourse for residents, when it comes to getting their own municipal government to operate properly.

Once again, Trenton found itself without a leader this week as Mayor Douglas H. Palmer spent his time campaigning in Florida for the man he tried so hard to defeat in the Democratic primary, Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill.

While having no time to develop commonsense solutions for the problems of Trenton, Mayor Palmer did find time, however, to call in to the radio show of favored Trentonian reporter L.A. Parker. The mayor discussed his efforts in bringing green policies, green industry, green jobs, and other environmentally-friendly initiatives to Trenton with Mr. Parker and his listeners.

In doing so, the mayor once again proved just how far away he is from the people of Trenton, when it comes to sensible public policy that might actually make a difference in the economic opportunities afforded to city residents.

The mayor pointed to a recent report commissioned by the U.S. Conference of Mayors, of which Mayor Palmer was the one-time president. The report looked at the current level of green industry in various metropolitan areas of the nation, and then made various projections and predictions on the size of the industry many years in the future.

Mayor Palmer was pleased to point out that the Trenton-Ewing metropolitan area already boasts nearly 9,000 so-called green jobs, and that projections 30 years into the future demonstrated a potential for nearly 70,000 jobs.

“We’re in the top 25 metropolitan areas for green jobs,” said Mayor Palmer, noting that the report found the Trenton-Ewing area was number 14 on the top 25 list of metropolitan areas with significant concentrations of green employment opportunities.

This report may indicate the existence of green jobs in the general area of Trenton, but despite Mayor Palmer's enthusiasm, it really means nothing to the people of Trenton. Most of Trenton’s residents lack the training for such positions, and they do not even have a real opportunity to gain such training, thanks to the economic conditions of parts the city.

It's evident that, despite the mayor’s constant traveling and faraway touting of so-called “green” initiatives, the reality in Trenton is that down-to-earth, realistic economic development that residents can actually take part it would better serve the city.

The presence of green jobs, probably outside of the city’s borders in Ewing or other neighboring towns (except for this), means nothing to the average resident and the next mayor better realize that and act accordingly.

State legislators like disgraced former Sen. Wayne Bryant had their way with millions in taxpayer-supported property relief money, according to testimony in Mr. Bryant’s trial in Trenton today, as reported by The Star-Ledger.

Known as the Property Tax Assistance and Community Development grant program, the fund was doled out with little oversight directly to several state legislators for use on projects they personally deemed important, a state budget officer said today.

Mr. Bryant, formerly one of the state’s most powerful legislators, was given $4 million in funds from the program, according to The Star-Ledger's report.

Mr. Bryant is now on trial for of bribery and mail fraud charges, alleging that he used his office and position as chair of the powerful Senate Budget Committee to steer millions in taxpayer dollars to various entities, in return for no-show jobs and other perks.

Today’s testimony reported by The Star-Ledger contradicts statements from state officials, who have said previously that where the program’s money went was based on applications and a formal process, rather than the will of powerful New Jersey politicos.

Mr. Bryant has connections to Trenton’s political establishment, having been a political ally of former local legislator John Watson, his son William Watson, and Trenton Mayor Douglas H. Palmer.

The city, under Mayor Palmer, even admitted unlawfully steering hundreds of thousands of city dollars to Mr. Bryant’s firm in the early 1990s through a scheme that paid Mr. Bryant money for legal work on city bond activity with out a fee schedule or guidelines.

When good government officials are faced with budget deficits and shortfalls, they make thoughtful deliberations on what services need to be slashed and what positions need to be cut.

In this respect, the administration under Trenton Mayor Douglas H. Palmer has proven itself particularly inept, in choosing to let the axe fall on such important institutions as the city’s library system and the ranks of low-ranking employees rather than itself, a bloated and fattened administration that weighs down the rest of the city‘s finances.

Now, in part because of the unneeded, and perhaps unlawful positions permeating the city administration, all city departments are faced with 10 percent or greater budget cuts and a promise of multiple layoffs of the very employees who populate Trenton with good middle-class wage earners.

City Council, having the power of the purse, needs to demand budget information from the Palmer administration and begin taking steps to prioritize city services and employment positions, preserving necessary services like the Trenton Free Public Library and as many of the helpful, low-ranking employment positions as possible.

Well-compensated and unneeded positions like the assistant business administrator, the chief of staff, and the multitude of executive aides and secretaries that have existed only since the advent of the Palmer administration are what needs to go.

The city has no use for these positions, except as a web of support for a mayor who is frequently outside of the city doing bigger and better things than taking care of his hometown.

The chief of staff is a true abomination, because it never even existed before Mayor Palmer, and for good reason. It appears to have no basis in law, and is certainly a perversion of the city’s municipal code that indicates just how large a sense of entitlement the city’s mayor has developed as the length of his tenure has increased.

But Trenton’s taxpayers can no longer bear the weight of Mayor Palmer’s ego or the extravagant system of support that has been allowed to develop, to the great detriment of the city’s finances.

Faced with this budget crisis, City Council must make the prudent decision to begin cutting away at this administrative fat, to preserve important city services like libraries while preventing the need for future, massive tax cuts that threaten to siphon off any prospects of good economic development.

Trenton can ill afford Mayor Palmer’s high cost, and it is time for residents to push their City Council to bring that cost down.

State legislators better move quickly to pass the ethics reform legislation proposed last week by Gov. Jon S. Corzine.

It appears that residents in New Jersey could soon become sufficiently fed up with the constant presence of corrupting campaign contributions and the endless parade of corruption convictions to organize and oust some complacent legislators in the 2009 elections.

Detractors say Gov. Corzine’s reform push, which came in the form of four executive orders and some legislative proposals, is nothing more than a last-minute political move to deliver on the governor's unfulfilled campaign promises while stealing the corruption-fighting spotlight away from his likely Republican opponent, U.S. Attorney Chris Christie.

But detractors such as these should probably understand that at this point the Garden State’s residents probably care less about the political motivations behind the governor’s initiatives and more about whether they actually get passed by the current state Assembly and Senate.

As the issue has come more and more into the public perception, there has been a constant call for an end or at least a significant reduction in the practices of pay-to-play and wheeling.

These shameful practices involve the delivery of lucrative government contracts to campaign contributors, and the practice of moving campaign cash back and forth between state political organizations in order to circumvent existing campaign finance law.

Evidence of how serious this issue has become can be seen in the constant parade of editorials and the emergence of grassroots campaigns and non-profit organizations, all aligned against these practices.

The issue's seriousness can also be gauged by the nearly constant passage of local pay-to-play restrictions in state municipalities and counties.

But despite the severity of the problem, neither party‘s officials have successfully delivered on any promises to get the corrupting influence of money out of New Jersey politics, whether in power or not.

Each party has instead moved to do little except make lofty, unfulfilled promises while undertaking a series of half-steps and half-measures that allow most of the corrupting influence of money to continue, and New Jersey residents are rightfully getting sick of it.

Legislators, however preoccupied with the current economic crisis, must ensure that real, bona fide ethics reforms are passed into as soon as possible, regardless of the potential political motivations of advocates like Gov. Corzine and others.

Voters are equally responsible for the current situation through their continued support for do-nothing officials of both parties, but they need to stand strong and vote for whichever candidates deliver on ethics reform regardless of party loyalty.

New Jersey is sinking under the weight of corruption, and even crafty politicians like Gov. Corzine are right when they that it’s time to do something about it.

Trenton Mayor Douglas H. Palmer continues to call for amendments to the city's residency ordinance, based on a superficial need to fill employment positions with candidates who do not or will not live in the city.

But he better be careful with such calls, because there are certainly legal, and supportable ways to give him what he is publicly calling for without giving him what he really wants, which is a blank check to exempt favored employees from laws requiring a bona fide residence within Trenton.

Mayor Palmer recently lost his handpicked, non-resident amigo, Police Director Joseph Santiago. The director decision to live outside the city and the mayor's approval of that illegal arrangement resulted in a citizen's lawsuit filed by a group including me.

The lawsuit was concluded when a judge officially declared that Mayor Palmer does not have the power to decide which employees are subject to residency and other city laws and which are not. Also, Mr. Santiago was ousted.

Now, Mayor Palmer is forced to exist as a mayor who can no longer pick and choose which employees follow the residency law based on favoritism and a warped sense of entitlement, and he wants his old powers back very badly.

He wants them so badly that he is feigning that the city cannot find suitable resident candidates for the police directorship, and is now demanding that City Council amend the law to allow him to look outside the city.

That position is obviously false because the city never actually looked for any resident candidates. It and remains a leap of faith to say the city needs residency exemptions.

In fact, petitions and outcry have shown that most city residents firmly believe that the city does not need residency exemptions at all, and that talent needed to fill any position can be found within the city, or at least outside the city in people willing to move in.

But it could be possible to create a law-based exemption system that would satisfy Mayor Palmer's false calls - but not his real desires - while keeping politics out of decisions over which employees must abide by residency and which do not, which is what precipitated the recent crisis of leadership over residency.

That could be accomplished through the city's adoption of provisions of state residency law that lay out a lengthy, politics-free process through which positions are exempted.

City Council could adopt an ordinance amendment that requires a diligent, months-long search for candidates living or willing to live in Trenton.

If that process is completed without finding any suitable candidates, it would be followed by a weighting of outside candidates, based upon concentric proximity to Trenton. Candidates given the highest priority would be those living in adjacent towns, then those in the rest of Mercer County, then those living in counties contiguous with Mercer, and finally candidates living in New Jersey.

In all likelihood, such a thorough and documented search would reveal the opposite of what the Palmer administration has been telling us about a lack of qualified candidates living in Trenton.

And even there were no qualified candidates inside Trenton, the candidates closest to Trenton would be the first to get the job, rather than a preferred candidate like Mr. Santiago, who resides in faraway Morris County.

Providing for such an ordinance amendment would immediately quiet Mayor Palmer and any others clamoring for a residency exemption, while making decisions on which positions get exempted free of the political interference that often characterizes the public policy of the Palmer administration.

In essence, Mayor Palmer would get what he is publicly asking for without getting what he really wants: the ability to decide which employees must abide by residency. That would be reserved for the process laid out by the state and adopted by City Council, which has lately proven itself to be a more worthy instrument of the public interest.

The city would be left with a good residency safety valve in the unlikely event that homegrown talent cannot be found to fill an employment position, with little likelihood of handpicked Palmer appointees of dubious value ever entering into the picture.

Again, the city wins, and political panderers like Mayor Palmer lose.