Trenton Mayor Tony Mack needs more time to find a lawyer to represent him in the state's efforts to oust him from his post, he said in a letter.
By Jenna Pizzi and Alex Zdan
TRENTON — Wanted: Legal representation for convicted New Jersey mayor seeking to stay in office. Send all bills to the City of Trenton.
Trenton Mayor Tony Mack needs more time to find a lawyer to represent him in the state’s efforts to oust him from his post, according to a letter Mack sent to a Superior Court Judge this week. The request for a postponement was immediately rejected.
Mack is set to appear in court on Wednesday for a hearing before Judge Mary Jacobson, when Jacobson will consider a motion filed by the state Office of the Attorney General seeking to remove Mack from office following his federal conviction on corruption charges and take away Mack’s public pension and retirement benefits.
Saying he has not had the time to obtain an attorney, Mack asked Jacobson to push back the scheduled hearing an unspecified amount of time.
In the letter, penned on city stationery with Trenton Office of the Mayor letterhead, Mack said he has consulted with the city’s law department and he was told that he would need City Council to approve his hiring of legal representation funded by the city.
“The City of Trenton legal department instructed me on Wednesday, February 19, 2014 that I would need city council approval before I could hire legal representation,” Mack wrote.
“I am writing to ask Your Honor to intervene and mandate council to allow me to hire legal counsel to represent me in this matter as all chief executive officers have this same right or have the court cover legal obligations,” Mack continues.
The city’s law director has said that because this is a personal matter the city’s law department would not represent Mack. The city attorneys in the law department did not respond to a request for comment today.
“It’s an act of frustration,” Councilwoman Kathy McBride said.
McBride saw a conflict of interest in Mack’s demand to have the city foot his legal bills.
“How can the municipality that he was convicted of taking honest services from, how can he expect that municipality to defend him?” she asked.
While Mack fights his ouster, he continues to collect a $4,800 paycheck every two weeks. Mack’s brother Ralphiel, who also was convicted on corruption charges, had been suspended without pay from his job as a guidance counselor in the city school district since shortly after he and his brother were arrested in September 2012.
The mayor, who refuses to respond to questions from reporters unless they are emailed to his city office, did not respond to questions about how he intends to defend himself against the Attorney General’s motion to have him removed him from office, which Mack called “subjective” in a statement earlier this week. According to an email from Mack’s office, Mack will go forward without legal representation for now.
Mack is required to respond to the motion filed by Deputy Attorney General Steven Yomtov in writing by Monday.
Mark Davis, who represented Mack in his federal trial, didn’t pen the letter to the judge but said he offered his client some tips about how to respond to the motion.
“I talked to him about the filings and I talked to him about what appropriate responses or opposition would sound like,” Davis said today. “I helped to point him in the right direction.”
Davis also noted that Mack’s nephew James Rolle is an attorney and could help his uncle. Rolle, who had his law office in a West State Street building Mack owns, was the first-term mayor’s most recent appointment to the school board. Rolle is an active member of the state bar and was admitted in February 2013, according to the state’s attorney database.
Mack does not have a law degree, but graduated from Howard University with a bachelor’s in management and marketing. He also has a master’s degree in public policy from Farleigh Dickinson University.
If Mack had been convicted in state court, his removal would have been automatic. U.S. District Judge Michael A. Shipp will not strip Mack of his office until May 14, when Mack is sentenced.
Mack last took legal matters into his own hands three years ago, when he was trying to override his own law director’s interpretation of the city’s pay-to-play law and issued his own opinion of the law’s meaning.
At the time, it was revealed that Mack’s campaign received a $7,200 contribution from a political action committee that received the same amount of money from the Cooper Levenson law firm. Then-Law Director Marc McKithen said the Atlantic County law office should lose its contract. Mack disagreed, arguing that the strict city pay-to-play law had not been violated.
The city council stood by McKithen, and Cooper Levenson withdrew from its contract days later. McKithen resigned in June 2011 amid pressure from Mack, but returned to the Law Department last year as an assistant city attorney hired through the state Department of Community Affairs. McKithen did not return calls for comment this week on Mack’s fight to stay in office.
Jacobson issued an order Thursday denying Mack’s request for a delay in the hearing on whether to remove him from office, but did not respond to any other request the convicted mayor made in his letter.
Yomtov’s response to Mack’s letter had urged Jacobson to deny all of Mack’s requests, arguing that it is imperative that the forfeiture proceedings continue as quickly as possible, noting that the crimes for which Mack has been convicted clearly touch upon his office.
“An order of forfeiture of public office is not only clearly warranted, but a virtual certainty,” Yomtov wrote.
“Defendant has not yet resigned as Mayor of Trenton, and by all accounts, it appears that he does not have any intention to do so in the near future,”
Yomtov wrote.
It is crucial that these forfeiture proceedings continue to take place on an accelerated basis, Yomtov argued.
“As soon as an order of forfeiture is entered, an Acting Mayor can be appointed, who can effectively administer the vital daily tasks of the Office of the Mayor, without undue distraction on behalf of the citizens of Trenton,” Yomtov wrote.
Mack may get another chance to defend himself against his criminal charges. Davis filed a motion for a new trial in federal court on Thursday. Mack’s brother has also filed a motion for a new trial. The judge has yet to set a date to hear those motions.
Contact Jenna Pizzi at jpizzi@njtimes.com or (609) 989-5717.
Contact Alex Zdan at azdan@njtimes.com or (609) 989-5705.
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