Mayor Tony Mack filed for personal bankruptcy protection earlier this year with half a million dollars of debt, public court records show.
TRENTON — In another chapter of a decade-long struggle with his own financial affairs, Mayor Tony Mack filed for personal bankruptcy protection earlier this year with half a million dollars of debt, public court records show.
Mack, who oversees a $200 million budget as mayor of the capital city, did not see the process through to the end. A federal judge dismissed the bankruptcy case in June, after Mack and his attorney missed deadlines and skipped a court hearing.
The Chapter 13 application, made for debtors with a regular income who seek to pay their creditors back in installments, was filed in February. Although Mack has a $126,000 yearly salary as mayor, his creditors included the banks carrying multiple mortgages on his house and three rental properties. Also listed as debtors are the IRS and state Division of Taxation.
Despite owning a four-bedroom Berkeley Square home that was televised nationwide when it was raided by FBI agents in July 2012, Mack listed a rental property at the corner of Calhoun and West State streets as his residence. That address, 302 W. State St., houses a first-floor commercial space where James Rolle, Mack’s nephew and recent school board appointee, has a law office, along with apartments on the second and third floor.
“I think at that time he planned to move to that address,” said Edward C. Logan, Mack’s attorney during the bankruptcy proceedings.
The larger home on Berkeley Avenue is listed as a “former residence” on the bankruptcy documents, and Mack claims he moved out earlier this year. The 302 W. State St. property is described as an “apartment building with commercial space and debtor’s residence.” Despite its status as Mack’s declared residence, on multiple nights over the last few weeks the lights have been off and no one apparently home at that address.
In documents where he is asked to list his properties, Mack did not declare an acre of land he owns in Louisville, Ga., which is valued at around $9,000, according to records. There is a three-bedroom, two bathroom, pre-built home on the property, which he does not own. He obtained the land in 2003 for “$0 consideration,” according to Jefferson County public land records.
“I have no knowledge of a property in Georgia,” Logan said yesterday. “He never told me about it. You must include all your assets and liabilities when you file for bankruptcy, under federal law.”
If Mack did not disclose a property he owned, it “was contrary to his obligation under the bankruptcy code,” Logan said.
A spokesman for Mack did not reply to a request for comment yesterday.
In Trenton, Mack owns the building on West State Street and the home on Berkeley Avenue. He rents out his boyhood home on the 200 block of Tioga Street. Another home on Hampton Avenue was being rented until it was gutted by fire in 2004. Mack has never had it repaired, and it sits boarded up and abandoned.
When the Chapter 13 bankruptcy paperwork was filed on Feb. 11, 2013, it was just two months after he was indicted on six federal corruption charges in connection with an FBI sting operation.
He pleaded not guilty in that case, and his trial is set for January.
According to the bankruptcy documents, Mack and his wife owed more than $1,000 to Capital One, $200 to Lane Bryant, and $2,500 to Sears, all on credit cards. He listed $1,900 of private school tuition for his niece as a “gift” granted in September 2012, and a $1,000 loss for damage to the roof of the Tioga Street rental property due to Hurricane Sandy. Mack had $500 on his person at the time of the filing, and another $500 in a checking account, according to the documents.
Mack offered to pay $1,378 per month for 60 months and surrender the house on Berkeley Avenue as part of the bankruptcy plan.
The bankruptcy bid began to unravel on April 9, when Logan skipped a court hearing. An attorney for TD Bank filed a motion the next day demanding compensation. On June 13, Kaplan dismissed the case due to “lack of prosecution” on the part of Mack and his attorney.
Mack’s financial troubles have landed him in the headlines before.
Weeks after he was inaugurated as mayor in 2010, it was discovered that the home on Berkeley Avenue was in foreclosure and scheduled for a sheriff’s sale. Mack entered into a mitigation program and was able to keep the house.
Mack has long maintained that his financial troubles began with his layoff as Trenton’s recycling coordinator in 2004. He was hired in early 1991, less than two years out of college, to the $80,000-a-year post by then-Mayor Douglas Palmer. In 1996, with the aid of the Palmer camp, Mack was elected as Mercer County freeholder, adding $25,000 to his yearly pay.
Mack lost his city job when the recycling division was dissolved, after Mack announced he was challenging Palmer in the 2006 Trenton mayoral race. Mack, once thought of as Palmer’s successor, was defeated in the election. Mack lost the freeholder’s seat in a bitter 2008 primary race.
Even before he lost the 2006 mayoral election, Mack was in financial trouble. In March 2005, Mack took out a second, $270,000 mortgage, refinancing the Berkeley Avenue house for what the deed said was “a non-purchase money mortgage.” In November 2005, Mack borrowed nearly $115,000 against a home he and his wife owned on Sweets Avenue in the city.
Between his loss in 2006 and his successful campaign for mayor in 2010, Mack worked as a business administrator for a South Jersey school district and an investigator for the state Department of Education. In the interim, his financial problems mounted.
The second mortgage on the Berkeley Avenue fell into foreclosure in September 2006, but a sheriff’s sale scheduled for July 2007 was averted. Mack and his wife lost the Sweets Avenue home to the bank in 2007. The bank foreclosed on the Berkley Avenue property in March 2008.
In March 2012, the bank foreclosed on Mack’s boyhood home on Tioga Street, where Mack had taken out multiple mortgages which far exceeded the value of the house. Two days before Mack’s home was searched by the FBI in July 2012, he received a foreclosure notice for 302 W. State St. Citing unpaid bills, PSE&G shut off the power to the house in August 2012. And the IRS came calling with a nearly $56,000 lien for unpaid taxes.
The final judgment in the foreclosure case on 302 W. State St. filed in October 2012 slapped a $106,934 lien on the property. That building was used as Mack’s campaign headquarters in 2010, and his campaign paid him $4,250 for five months’ rent and utilities, according to his election finance report.
Mack’s home on Berkeley Avenue was listed for short sale in August 2012, but taken off the market a year later.
Contact Alex Zdan at azdan@njtimes.com or (609) 989-5705.
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