ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. _ Reeling from the state's rejection of their five-year recovery plan, Atlantic City officials said Wednesday they will submit additional information to back up their plan by end of the day Thursday _ the original 150-day deadline given them to avert a state takeover.
Mayor Don Guardian said he is hoping the state will re-evaluate the plan and said the state's 75-page decision contained "100 inaccuracies." He said the city's consultants were going line by line to provide additional detail the state said it needed.
But the state seemed unlikely to yield any ground.
Tammori Petty, spokeswoman for the state's Department of Community Affairs, said late Wednesday the "commissioner, department staff and consultants analyzed the numbers and information provided by the city," as the law required.
"It was a fair examination; the comissioner and his team stand by the decision," she said. "Any items for consideration should have been addressed during the 150 days provided to the city to prepare its plan and then included in the plan as required by the act."
The state's rejection of the plan allows the state to pursue a vast takeover of Atlantic City assets and government. It renewed fears in the city that the state's goal all along was to come in and terminate the city's police and fire unions, seize assets for developers, raise taxes and put the city's valuable water authority into private hands.
At an afternoon news conference, Council President Marty Small said the state's response was "disingenuous, disrespectful, misguided, misinformed and full of politics." He said a state takeover would "wreak havoc" on the city.
He said the state's response seemed to simply reflect a desire by Gov. Chris Christie to take over the city.
"They might have meant well," he said of officials at the Department of Community Affairs, "but at the end of the day, they work for the administration."
In her statement, Petty rejected characterizations that the decision was "disingenuous, inaccurate, misinformed, politically motivated or guided by anything other than the requirements," of the law, she said.
At the news conference, Ed McManimon, a veteran bond counselor hired by the city, was one of three advisers who defended the city's plan and its reliance on two bond issuances, one by the city, the other by its water utility. He too called the state's rebuttal "disingenous" and said it did not reflect an effort to "look at this plan in the context of saving the city.
"It also saves the state," he said. "The effort wasn't to see if (the plan) would work, it was to see what was wrong with it around the edges."
McManimon took issue with the state's conclusions about their debt, and defended the plan's reliance upon a $105 million bond issuance to repay taxes to Borgata and a separate plan to have the city's Municipal Utility Authority issue bonds to buy Bader Field for $110 million.
He said many of the state's questions were answerable with a simple phone call "in three minutes."
He said despite the state's skepticism, he had assurances from underwriters that they would purchase the city's municipal bonds at 4 percent interest _ once the state approved the plan.
"Having a plan in place is a tremendous credit positive," he said. "If there's an approved plan by the state, they will absolutely buy the bonds at the rates we have projected."
Guardian and Small said the city would fight any attempt by the state to move forward with a takeover, beginning with the resubmission and continuing if necessary to state and federal courts.
Democratic state Sen. President Stephen Sweeney, who pushed for a takeover initially, also issued a statement, saying "This is not the outcome anyone ... would have desired."
"We gave city officials ample time to find effective solutions to the serious fiscal problems plaguing the city," he said. "But we knew going in that the hurdles in front of the city were nearly insurmountable. It is now incumbent upon the administration to devise a way forward that protects the residents of Atlantic City from additional financial hardship while devising a roadmap forward."
It was unclear when the state would move for a takeover. The Local Finance Board, which would execute any takeover, next meets Nov. 9.
Guardian predicted any court challenge would have the support of the NAACP, the ACLU, the League of Municipalities and the U.S. Conference of Mayors. He noted that with the state's ruling on their plan, about $80 million in redirected casino funds was now due the city, under the rescue law.
