A timeline of Mayor Tony Mack's time in office.
Tony Mack, right hand raised, is sworn-in as mayor of Trenton, New Jersey during his inauguration ceremony on the steps of city hall Thursday afternoon, July 1. 2010. July 2010
• Tony Mack takes office as mayor. His campaign donors include convicted child molester Joseph “Jo-Jo” Giorgianni.
• The independent library board announces plans to close the city’s four branch libraries.
August 2010
• Mack nominates friend Carleton Badger as housing director. Badger drops out after his past indictments for forgery and theft are reported.
• Mack administration calls in police and sheriff’s officers to oust deputy clerk Cordelia Staton from City Hall.
• Mack’s Berkeley Square home falls into foreclosure for at least the second time.
September 2010
• Municipal courthouse developer sues after Mack cancels the project, demanding $7 million in rent, plus damages.
• Records show Mack received a $20,000 mortgage loan from a Burlington County woman in April 2010 and deposited the same amount in his campaign account. The sum exceeds contribution limits; loans disguised as campaign contributions are illegal.
October 2010
• Mack is criticized over delayed notifications after a Trenton Water Works water contamination scare.
November 2010
• About 72 city workers are laid off in response to the city’s budget deficit.
• Municipal Judge Renee Sumners, a Mack friend and appointee, resigns over bounced checks and unpaid debts.
• Acting business administrator Andrew McCrosson, a Mack appointee, quits and pleads guilty to stealing from a congressional campaign.
Trenton Mayor Tony Mack, left, interrupts a press conference to welcome his new chief of staff Paul Sigmund into the atrium at City Hall. The two served together on the Mercer County Freeholder Board. January 2011
• Mack administration proposes selling city properties for $1 to a developer whose parent company contributed $6,000 to Mack’s campaign.
• The Department of Community Affairs rejects two of Mack’s director nominees as unqualified.
• Mack half-brother Stanley Davis and two other water utility employees are indicted for doing side jobs with city equipment on city time. Guhl says Mack ordered an overtime policy change that benefited his brother. Davis eventually pleads guilty.
• Acting police director Ernie Williams quits after learning from the press that Mack intends to replace him.
• Mack arrives mid-way through a council meeting in his sweat pants, berating council members for “conniving” against him and accusing Council President George Muschal of spying on his staff.
• Campaign finance reports show that Cooper Levenson, a politically connected law firm Mack hired, donated $7,200 to Mack’s campaign through the Partners for Progress PAC, violating the city’s pay-to-play law, acting law director Marc McKithen said.
• Cooper Levenson agrees to terminate its city contract.
February 2011
• A laid-off park ranger supervisor sues, saying civil service rules were violated when he was replaced by a Mack political ally.
• Partners for Progress’ treasurer says the FBI is interviewing the PAC’s officers.
March 2011
• Under DCA pressure to improve his staff, Mack hires former county freeholder Paul Sigmund as chief of staff.
• Superior Court Judge Linda Feinberg calls Mack aide Anthony Roberts “completely unqualified” to evaluate contract bids, rejecting the city’s effort to cancel an information technology contract.
• Paul Sigmund is charged with speeding and driving without a valid license.
May 2011
• Sigmund is found wandering in a neighborhood near City Hall with heroin in his pocket and assaults an officer, police say. Police Director Joseph Juniak demands Sigmund be fired. Sigmund resigns.
• Records show park rangers hired under Mack, including political ally Robert Mendez, accumulated significant overtime. The DCA says it is “extraordinarily concerned with what appear to be doctored time sheets.”
Acting Trenton Police Director Chris Doyle and Trenton Mayor Tony Mack at a City Hall press conference after 105 police officers were laid off on Friday, September 16, 2011. June 2011
• The Committee to Recall Tony Mack begins collecting signatures.
• Law director Marc McKithen quits, reportedly after clashing with the administration over public information requests.
• Mack’s brother Ralphiel Mack is rehired as Trenton Central High football coach after an assault charge was dismissed.
August 2011
• Layoff notices are sent to 149 city employees, including more than 100 police officers, about a third of the department.
• Judge Feinberg rules the administration violated open public records laws by not releasing financial records to two civic activists.
• Municipal court director Nathaniel Jones is found to be serving despite a past assault conviction and never receiving council approval. He goes on paid leave and is later shifted to the law department.
September 2011
• Just before the police layoffs, Mack unveils a $4,000 portrait wall in City Hall of himself and preceding mayors.
• Business administrator Eric Berry, the seventh person to serve in the position under Mack, quits after six months.
• Mack names Harold Hall acting public works director despite DCA criticism of his qualifications.
October 2011
• Acting housing director Carmen Melendez owes more than $50,000 in taxes and $90,000 on two business loans.
• Mack orders police drug and anti-crime units disbanded in favor of more foot patrols. Four council members rebuke Mack for his hiring missteps and policing plans, with two endorsing the recall effort.
• The Mercer County prosecutor intervenes and Mack compromises on policing, agreeing to preserve the specialized units.
• A judge orders the reinstatement of two Water Works employees who said they were demoted and then suspended for providing evidence in the criminal case against Mack’s half-brother. The decision is later reversed.
• Mack appoints his fourth acting police director, removing Sgt. Chris Doyle, who opposed the foot-patrol policing plan.
• Mack threatens to reject $6 million in state aid accompanied by stronger state control of city hiring. He later agrees to an altered agreement.
• Laid-off recreation staffer Maria Richardson alleges Mack gave an aide a no-show job and Harold Hall hired unqualified friends and relatives and sought to bypass competitive bidding laws.
• Records show Hall split up construction project bids; that allowed the city to bypass public bidding requirements.
• A proposed bond measure would help pay for field improvements at Trenton Central High, where Ralphiel Mack is the football coach. The city comptroller says Mayor Mack personally asked for the funding, which a state finance board later bars.
November 2011
• The recall committee fails to collect enough signatures to force an early mayoral election.
January 2012
• Mack unsuccessfully asks council to hike his pay $28,000 to $154,000 and give raises to top city officials.
February 2012
• Council suspends the salary budget for the mayor’s office for four months, citing poor job performance.
• City Hall, the police and senior centers run out of toilet paper after a bidding dispute, drawing international attention.
• The DCA rejects Trenton’s request for a permanent state aid increase, citing the city’s lack of a “sound management structure.”
Trenton Mayor Tony Mack holds his first "Ask the Mayor" question-and-answer session on Tuesday, November 13, 2012.
March 2012
• Mack calls the council’s budget approval “out of order” because of his staff’s salary cuts, but the DCA says the budget is valid.
• Veteran housing department employee Henrietta Owusu sues, alleging she was denied promotion as punishment for reporting inappropriate actions by acting director Melendez.
April 2012
• Mack begins reopening shuttered library branches as “learning centers,” bypassing the library board and state rules on libraries.
May 2012
• Local legislators propose a law change making it easier to recall mayors.
June 2012
• Council rejects employment extensions for Hall, Melendez and acting health director Ruth Carter. Mack ignores the vote.
• Council scrutinizes recreation spending under Hall, who effectively runs the division, criticizing a $17,000 sign installed at Cadwalader Park without landmarks commission approval.
July 2012
• Mack takes direct control of recreation, removing the division from Hall’s control.
• FBI raids Mack’s, Ralphiel Mack’s, and campaign donor Joseph Giorgianni’s homes.
• Warrants show that an East State Street parking garage project is part of the FBI probe.
August 2012
• Electricity and gas to Mack’s home are temporarily shut off due to nonpayment, PSE&G says.
• Public records show Mack owes more than $50,000 to the IRS and has two properties in foreclosure. Mack later puts his home and two other buildings up for sale.
• Two companies named in FBI warrants received no-bid city contracts, records show. Warrants and subpoenas name a long list of individuals and entities, including Trenton Babe Ruth Baseball and a towing company that has had a city contract.
• The owner of an auto-detailing company named in an FBI warrant says she paid an unidentified person a “finder’s fee” for getting her a power-washing contract for Mill Hill Park.
• Figures show crime in Trenton is up 12 percent over seven months, following police layoffs.
• The Cadwalader Park sign erected without landmark commission approval is removed.
September 2012
• The city scraps Mack’s plan to start its own recycling program. Mack was previously the city’s recycling coordinator.
• Mack, Ralphiel Mack and Giorgianni are arrested on extortion charges for allegedly receiving bribes from a developer of a proposed downtown parking garage, who was working with the FBI. They allegedly received $54,000 and expected another $65,000. Mack’s phone was wiretapped for months, according to FBI documents.
• City Council members, county officials and a state legislator call from Mack to step down. Ralphiel Mack is suspended from his school coaching and counselor jobs.
• Police Director Ralph Rivera swears in 15 rehired officers and reorganizes the department.
• Former councilwoman Cordelia Staton is rehired as deputy clerk, after being fired two years earlier.
• The administration proposes a $186 million budget with a 5 percent tax increase.
• Mack’s half-brother Stanley “Muscles” Davis gets six years in jail for defrauding the city.
October 2012
• The Marriott company says it is taking its name off Trenton’s struggling city-owned hotel.
November 2012
• Council votes to cut Mack’s salary in half; Mack vetoes the measure and an override effort fails.
• Trenton request $21 million in state transitional aid.
• Mack begins holding “Ask the Mayor” sessions about every week.
• Council agrees to pay $1.3 million to settle with Westside Plaza, which sued after Mack canceled a deal to build a municipal courthouse there.
Trenton Mayor Tony Mack is led in handcuffs from the FBI field office in Hamilton by federal agents after being arrested on corruption charges linked to $119,000 in bribes for a parking garage project in the city on Monday Morning, September 10, 2012. . He was taken to the federal courthouse in Trenton. Martin Griff / The Times of Trenton December 2012
• Prosecutors tell Mack’s attorney Mark Davis a plea deal would likely yield a 5-year term; Davis says his client is not interested.
• A series of murders rock the city, bringing the homicide count to 24 this year.
• A federal grand jury releases an 8-count indictment of Mack, Ralphiel Mack and Giorgianni.
• Following his indictment, more local officials join the call for Mack to resign, including former supporters. Gov. Chris Christie also says Mack should step down.
• Mack unveils a bust of President Barack Obama in City Hall. Although a Mack aide said the bust was paid for through private contributions it is later revealed that many of the contributors are city employees and the $1,000 marble base was purchased with public funds.
• Mack changes the format of his “Ask the Mayor” meetings, barring the media and meeting with residents one-on-one behind closed doors.
• Two Mack supporters plead guilty in Hamilton municipal court to disorderly persons offenses, admitting they harassed volunteers gathering signatures to support the recall campaign.
• Mack, his brother Ralphiel and Giorgianni enter not guilty pleas on all charges in the corruption case.
• Tony Mack holds a Christmas party and fundraiser with tickets going for $50 a person.
January 2013
• Council seeks again to cut Mack’s pay, but is unsuccessful in getting enough votes to override the mayor’s veto.
• Mack travels to Washington, D.C. to attend President Obama’s second inauguration, despite a judicial order confining his travel to New Jersey unless approved by Pre-Trial services.
• The school district’s state fiscal monitor orders Ralphiel Mack suspended without pay from his job while the federal corruption case is pending
February 2013
• Charles Hall III pleads guilty to extortion and drug distribution charges, admitting that he, Giorgianni and Ralphiel Mack acted as intermediaries to insulate the mayor from cash payments related to a parking garage project. Hall’s drug charges stem from a separate narcotics distribution scheme between he and Giorgianni. The Mack brothers have no involvement in the drug ring.
March 2013
• Giorgianni is charged with six more counts in a separate federal indictment regarding a narcotics distribution ring he ran from JoJo’s Steak House in North Trenton. He initially pleads not guilty to all charges.
• Lemuel Blackburn, a former city attorney and FBI cooperator in the case against Mack, dies. Blackburn recorded several in-person meetings with Giorgianni and Melendez and phone conversations between he and Mack during the two year investigation.
April 2013
• Mack hosts public town hall meetings, which are sparsely attended. Mack says, “If you look at what we’ve done, we’ll be re-elected overwhelmingly.” Mack has no officially announced whether he will seek re-election, even as a pool of eight candidates are clamoring for his seat.
June 2013
• Federal Judge Michael A. Shipp sets date for Mack's trial.
• Mack holds another fundraiser, this time charging $40 a head.
July 2013
• State Senate President Stephen Sweeney calls for Mack to step down, saying state and local officials will not work with the indicted mayor.
Trenton Mayor Tony Mack speaks at a press conference held in the City Hall Atrium about National Night Out.
Michael Mancuso/The Times
August 2013
• In the deadliest year in Trenton’s history, Mack calls on the state to help the city hire officers. At a news conference to promote National Night Out an animated Mack said he was “burning up on the inside” with anger over the way the city is portrayed in the press.
• Christie refuses to directly address Mack’s request for money to hire officers. A few days later the state acting Attorney General John Hoffman announces a new initiative in Trenton to address violent crime. Mack is not in attendance when Hoffman makes the announcement.
• Mack scolds the press for asking about a rise in crime during a press conference about park improvements in the city.
• The city is ordered to pay $140,000 to eCivis, a company that offers computer software to assist in grant research management. The contract was inked just before Mack entered into office and he attempted to cancel the contract to instead hire his own grant writers.
September 2013
• Mack admonishes the press for asking about his criminal charges during a press conference about the city’s crime rate.
• Giorgianni’s attorney seeks for Judge Shipp to consider declaring the Mack campaign supporter mentally incompetent and unable to stand trial. Giorgianni is later sent to a federal correctional facility to undergo examination.
• Documents surface revealing that the FBI had an active wiretap on Mack’s phone even after the court authorized tapping stopped. The government has since said unauthorized calls were not heard by investigators and none of the warrant-less taps are admitted as evidence in the case.
• The board of Mack appointees that oversees the city-owned hotel decides to file for bankruptcy protection to sell the inn.
• Mack speaks at a press conference to kick off the demolition of the former Glen Cairn Arms apartment complex. The former city-owned lot, purchased by Trenton for $1.3 million in 2004, was sold to Thomas Edison State College fo $1 with an additional $300,000 payment as a one-time mitigation fee. The college plans to build a new nursing school, a development expected to raise property values in the area.
• City council refuses to pay a vendor who performed unauthorized engineering work at the direction of Charles Hall III.
Trenton Mayor Tony Mack waves from a float during the Thanksgiving Parade in Trenton on Saturday, November 23, 2013. Andrew Miller/For The Times of Trenton October 2013
• Mack names his nephew James Rolle, Jr. to a seat on the school board.
• Girogianni leaves for a medical correctional facility in Massachusetts for a psychological evaluation.
• Mack aide Anthony Roberts says he will go ahead with a planned Trenton Thanksgiving parade despite city council’s refusal to OK funding for the event.
November 2013
• Giorgianni returns from evaluation and is placed back on house arrest.
• An attorney who represented Mack a bankruptcy case he filed in June 2013 said the goal of the bankruptcy filing was to protect a West State Street property Mack owns across from the former Glen Cairn Arms apartments. The bankruptcy case was dismissed after Mack and his attorney didn’t show up to court.
• After a hearing, Judge Shipp denies a motion made by Mack’s attorney to have wiretap evidence in the case thrown out.
• Documents show that the Mercer County Grand Jury that brought charges that eventually led to the conviction of Mack’s brother Davis considered charging the mayor.
• The former Trenton Marriott is sold at auction as part of the bankruptcy process for $6 million. The city will have to pay the remaining long-term debt on the building totalling about $11 million.
• Records reveal that for nearly five years Mack has not been charged for any water usage at his West State Street property. A Mercer County Prosecutor’s Office execute a search warrant on the building on Thanksgiving day.
December 2013
• Giorgianni is declared competent to stand trial alongside the Mack brothers. A day later Giorgianni pleads guilty to corruption charges and drug charges. He admits in court that he handed bribe money to Tony Mack in the spring of 2012 as part of the extortion conspiracy.
• The FBI investigates “rat” signs found at three locations connected to Giorgianni.
Trenton mayor Tony Mack, center and his brother Ralphiel Mack, left walk up the steps of the Clarkson S. Fisher federal courthouse on East State Street for the beginning of closing arguments in USA v. Tony Mack and Ralphiel Mack, on Tuesday, February 4, 2014.
Michael Mancuso/The Times
January 2014
• Hall pleads guilty to an additional charge of lying to the FBI, admitting he took $1,000 in bribe money and spent it. Hall had previously told investigators that he didn’t take the cash.
• The trial begins with jury more than two days of jury selection before opening arguments are presented.
• Supervisory Special Agent Mike Doyle is the first witness to testify. During his five days on the stand, the government plays recordings made by Blackburn, whom Doyle directed to have the conversations. Jurors also hear recorded wiretap phone calls made by the FBI.
• Hall testfies in the case, saying the code word “Uncle Remus” meant cash payments and that Mack knew what it meant.
• Mary Manfredo, the owner of JoJo’s Steak House and Giorgianni’s caretaker, takes the stand telling jurors that she saw Giorgianni hand Mack what she beleieved to be a cash bribe payment in the spring of 2012.
• Melendez testifies that she got the OK from Mack before sending a letter to the purported parking garage developer listing the sale price of the city-owned property at below the assessed value.
• FBI agent James McCaffrey testifies he found the marked bills in Ralphiel Mack’s wallet during a search of his house.
• The defense calls its only witness, Terry Birchenough to the stand. Ralphiel Mack’s attorney asks Birchenough about his friendship with the younger Mack brother and how Ralphiel Mack asked him for a loan in the months before the marked cash was found in his house.
February 7, 2014
• Mayor Tony Mack is found guilty on six corruption charges while his brother, Ralphiel, is found guilty on three of the six charges.