Newark, NJ: The Ethical Damage of Hiding Corruption Behind a Racial Screen

According to a 33-count indictment filed yesterday by the United States Attorney for New Jersey, former Newark, NJ mayor Sharpe James appears to have been just another crooked urban mayor out to help himself and his friends to the sort of perks that aren't supposed to come with public service: trips, tickets, cruises, the usual.

What is sad about this particular instance of corruption is that James is a folk hero in Newark, despite the fact that he continues to deny all charges and that he shows no concern about further running up the taxpayers' bill for his investigation and trial. What is sad is that he hides his corruption and his denials behind a racial screen, when there is nothing racial about corruption or about attempts to prosecute it.

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It is a good thing that African-Americans came to power in Newark. But, too often, with power comes corruption. Once in power, one's corruption has nothing to do with one's color. Acting as if it does, making it out that success through corruption is acceptable (or even desirable, a way of getting even), because others did it before you, is just a way to hide one's personal misconduct and its consequences. Allowing oneself to be an example of success when some of the tokens of that success came out of taxpayers' pockets is worse than the acts with which Mr. James has been charged.

Here is just one of the charges based not on stealing public funds, but on the excuses James made so that his acts would seem for the benefit of Newark:

It was a further part of this scheme and artifice to defraud that defendant JAMES devised pretextual bases for, and made and caused others to make material false statements and representations regarding, these personal travel expenses in an effort to conceal the improper purposes of these expenses. For example, to justify a weekend getaway to a beachfront resort in the Dominican Republic in or about February 2006, defendant JAMES falsely stated that the business purpose of the trip was to assess the gardens on the resort property for the purpose of determining whether those tropical gardens should be replicated near Penn Station in Newark.

James did a lot of good things for Newark, but that does not justify the bad things he did. If he truly cares one iota about Newark, he will stop defending himself and start acting like the responsible leader he says he is. He can't harm Newark economically, but he can harm it ethically. It's finally time for him to live up to his folk hero status and act like a hero by showing the people of Newark and New Jersey that taking advantage of the public trust is a bad thing, no matter what color you are.