(4 of 8)
One explanation for the casinos' failure to live up to their civic responsibilities is that only five out of twelve posted a profit last year. Overall, the casinos earned just $14.7 million after expenses in 1988, a meager return on the $2.73 billion that gamblers lost in the slot machines and at the tables, according to Marvin Roffman, a casino analyst with Philadelphia's Janney Montgomery Scott. The reason is the debt the casinos have taken on in the past three years, much of it through junk bonds, either to fight off takeovers or engineer them. Atlantic City's casinos have incurred more than $2 billion in debt, $6 for every $1 of equity. Some analysts say that next year, with the opening of Trump's Taj Mahal, two of the weaker casinos may go under. "If they can't fend for themselves, how can they possibly meet the greater social goal of an urban renaissance?" asks Anthony Parrillo, director of New Jersey's division of gaming enforcement.
Casino executives, for their part, resent what they describe as a city hall whose idea of governance has evolved little since the 1930s, when the city's political boss Enoch L. ("Nucky") Johnson, a carnation in his lapel, kept a paternalistic eye on the rackets, the bordellos and the firehouses from a suite at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel. From the 1890s until 1972, Atlantic City was ruled by a succession of political machines, and while nothing quite as feudal remains today, political leaders still seem to exhibit the high-handed habits of that era. Only eight years ago, the city commissioners passed a resolution ordering all municipal employees to show them "respect and obedience."
Most of the time, however, Atlantic City leaders seem content with cash. Four of the past six mayors were charged with some kind of official misconduct. In July the incumbent, James Usry, and 13 other officials, including three council members, were charged with taking bribes. In a place where millions of dollars change hands every day, the mayor is accused of accepting a paltry $6,000 from an undercover agent to let electric passenger carts run along the Boardwalk. "This town is like an aging whore," says Carver. "Disrespect me, but give me something -- just give me something."
Carver compares the standoff between the casinos and the city to the "British army in Belfast," but a metaphor from neocolonial Africa might be more apt. For in a city headed by its first black mayor, with a gambling economy run largely by white accountants and business school graduates, most of the civic tensions are circumscribed by race. Two years ago, a suggestion by Carver that the city's black administrator be replaced by "the best municipal manager" was met at city hall with charges of "Ku Klux Klan" tactics.
In the city's precasino days, blacks and whites were at least united in their municipal misery. Atlantic City once had a strong pull on Philadelphians and New Yorkers seeking the seashore, but air travel changed all that. When the city snagged the Democratic National Convention in 1964, its creeping tawdriness became a national story. By 1970 Atlantic City was the poorest town in New Jersey but the richest in reported cases of contagious diseases.