Gov. Christie calls in Emergency Team to turn around Atlantic City

“I can’t wait any longer,” said Governor Chris Christie while announcing that he’s calling in an ’emergency team’ to deal with the Atlantic City crisis. “We need more aggressive action. It’s time to confront the dire circumstances with which we are confronted.”

The dire circumstances that Christie speaks of include yet another declining year for Atlantic City, as their 2014 revenue tallied $2.74 million – down 4.47% from the previous year. The Governor, who’s also deciding whether to run in the 2016 Presidential Election, said that now is the time to pull the East Coast gambling mecca out of “an enormous hole.”

Heading Christie’s emergency dream team is Kevin Lavin, a corporate finance attorney whose job is to help ailing companies. Kevyn Orr, another corporate attorney who guided Detroit through the United States’ largest municipal bankruptcy filing, will work as a special counsel to Lavin. Given Lavin’s experience, it’s not out of the realm of possibility for Atlantic City to declare bankruptcy.

But as NJ.com reports, the immediate plan is for the team to, within 60 days, “place the finances of Atlantic City in stable condition on a long-term basis by any and all lawful means.”

“What we’re doing right now is getting information,” Lavin said when describing the current situation. “That’s all we’re doing. Getting an understanding of the situation we’re in. We need to delve into the details to see what’s going on.”

The plan to turnaround Atlantic City hasn’t launched just yet, and Lavin and Orr don’t even know where in the city they’ll be working. Furthermore, they were quick to point out that there’s no official plan to have Atlantic City go the bankruptcy route. But again, it’s not out of the question, seeing as how Orr helped Detroit shed $7 billion of its $18 billion debt in the nine months he spent working with the Motor City.

Christie’s idea of bringing an emergency team in, which was floated to him by an advisory commission, has been met with resistance from local officials, most notably Atlantic City Mayor Don Guardian. The Republican, who’s only been in office one year, said that he was “100 percent opposed” to an emergency team coming in. However, Guardian recently changed his tune, seeing that the local government officials haven’t been replaced. “It’s cooperation that we need,” he said. “It’s working together. It’s necessary for us to rethink how we are doing business in Atlantic City.”