Ex-NJ mayor appeals guilt in mistress's land deals

Prosecutors want to send the longtime mayor of Newark, N.J., back to prison to serve more time for steering sweetheart land deals to a mistress.

But a lawyer for 74-year-old Sharpe James asked a U.S. appeals court to reverse his conviction.

James is in a halfway house finishing up a 27-month sentence after leaving prison this month....

Prosecutors say Riley flipped the $46,000 land for $665,000. They say a federal judge ignored those profits in calculating James' sentence. They had sought a 20-year term....

Sharpe James (born February 20, 1936) is a Democratic politician and convicted felon from New Jersey, who served as State Senator for the 29th Legislative District and was 35th Mayor of Newark, New Jersey. James was the second African American Mayor of Newark and served five, four-year terms before declining to run for re-election. From June 1999 until leaving his position as Mayor in July 2006, James simultaneously served as Mayor of Newark and New Jersey State Senator. He declined to run for re-election to the State Senate in 2007; his term as Senator expired in January 2008. Prior to politics, James worked as a teacher, athletic director and professor at Essex County College.

H/T Wikipedia

Cut-rate land deals were a hallmark of Mayor Sharp James' administration. During his tenure, the city sold thousands of vacant city-owned lots at deep discounts in an effort to spur redevelopment. Many of the buyers had close ties to James and City Hall, records show. In 2000, the city was selling some of its land, typically in neighborhoods still scarred from the 1967 riots, for as little as $1 per square foot. Three years later, Newark City Council increased the minimum price to $4 per square foot, still a fraction of the market price.

His mistress, Tamika Riley's, discount was even steeper: She paid only $1.80 per square foot for two properties her company bought from the city in February 2005, public records show. By comparison, the average sales price of privately owned vacant lots in Newark in 2005 was more than $29.50 a square foot, according to a Star-Ledger analysis of all fair-market transactions.

Tamika Riley, a Jersey City resident, made each of the nine purchases through Tamika Riley Inc. or TRI Inc., her Newark marketing company, according to county tax records. Her business background was varied, though there is no evidence of any development experience.

She had been a flight attendant and a supervisor at the shipping company UPS, she told an interviewer for a 1998 profile in Black Enterprise magazine. After earning a certification from the Fashion Institute of Technology, Riley's first solo venture was an upscale women's clothing boutique in Newark called Fashion Dome. She told the magazine the store had projected sales of more than $250,000 that year and that she had arranged and hosted fashion shows. The company motto, according to Riley, was: "Make a statement without saying a word."

It was unclear if or when the Fashion Dome closed, but Riley registered TRI Inc. in 1999, state records show. For the past five years, it has been leasing an office suite from the city at Renaissance Towers, at 111 Mulberry St., for $732 a month.

In August 2001, the city council agreed to sell her company four run-down homes for rehabilitation in the city's South Ward for a total of $16,000. TRI resold two of the homes the following month for $25,000 each, sold a third in November for $130,000 and unloaded the last in May 2002 for $155,000.

A similar pattern occurred in April 2002, when the council approved a resolution selling TRI three more properties for a total of $18,000. Riley's company resold the parcels a month later for $115,000. At 592 Bergen St., nothing has been built; the lot remains vacant. Less than three months before Riley took ownership of the Bergen Street property, the city paid a demolition firm $15,000 to raze the house, city engineering records show.

The last batch of land deals occurred in 2005, when TRI paid the city a total of $12,000 for two more properties. One was sold three weeks later for $100,000; the other later that year for $150,000. Three-family houses now stand on both lots. SOURCE starledger.com

Mayor James’ last official scam as a “dedicated public official” was a trip to Rio de Janeiro, with a couple male pals, on the taxpayers’ credit card.

James’ tolerance, compassion and altruism really shines through-—particularly in tropical resorts with luxury hotels, high-priced restaurants serving fine wines, with magnificent topless beaches, and nightlife that rivals the whorehouses of Paris.

And let’s not forget James’ altruism when he abdicated his mayoral position after 20 years in office. James will pocket about $323,000 in taxpayer dollars per year, not to mention the nearly $1 million he already has in a retirement account (and those offshore bank accounts).

The $323,000 is compiled from his $150,000 annual salary at his new job heading the ....uh....Urban Issues Institute at Essex County College, his $49,000 salary as a state senator, and an annual government pension of approximately $124,000.

Here’s how he pulled it off: James returned to Essex County College after a 20-year leave of absence when he left the mayoralty. He already had $988,000 in an Essex County College’s alternative benefits plan, which is similar to a 401(k) retirement plan.....the director of human resources for the college, said that James’ alternative benefits plan was inactive while he was not working at the school, but investments already made continued to accrue during his (20 year) gap in service.

In order to obtain pension data, The Star-Ledger newspaper had to sue the city because James’ office denied a public records request. Later, a state Superior Court judge ordered the records to be released.

James did fax a statement defending his earnings. “We should not be jealous of an individual working for 36 years and earning a pension upon retirement,” this “dedicated public servant” wrote. “It is not a crime to collect your earned pension.”

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