Christie Announces Plan to Bring Financial Stability to Atlantic City
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Photo by Andrew Burton/Getty Images(TRENTON, N.J.) — Gov. Chris Christie acted on Thursday to help solidify the finances of Atlantic City, announcing an executive order to install an emergency management team to help dig the city out of “an enormous hole.”
Christie named Kevin Lavin as the Emergency Manager for Atlantic City and Kevyn Orr, the man who helped guide the city of Detroit out of bankruptcy, as a special consultant. Christie highlighted Orr’s success in helping Detroit “shed $7 billion in debt and reinvest $1.4 billion over 10 years in public services.”
“We haven’t gotten there, and I can’t wait any longer,” Christie said, “and so we need to take more aggressive action and that’s the action that I’m taking today.” He stopped short of calling the work thus far a failure, saying instead that the city would “move forward from here.”
“This is something that needs to be done,” Christie said. “It’s something all of us worked hard to try to avoid having to do, but it is also let me say not the end of the world. We have problems we have to fix. I absolutely believe that none of them are unfixable if in fact we have the political will to be able to get them done.”
“The people of this city and this region are depending on us,” Christie said, “[to] be a part of the solution and not a part of the problem.”
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