Atlantic City Mayor Frank Gilliam, under fire recently on multiple fronts, this morning stood at a podium in City Hall and proclaimed it a ‘great day for Atlantic City’ because ‘justice was served’.

That justice was the Superior Court’s tossing of a criminal complaint filed by the AC Democratic Committee over a rerouted $10k check that went into Gilliam’s account, rather than theirs.  The judge ruled that there was no probably cause that Gilliam stole the check, as alleged in the complaint.  The Committee voted last night to file a civil complaint against the mayor.  Gilliam  explained it was an oversight and had “immediately reached out to the Board of Elections” and followed their directives to rectify the situation: redeposit the check, write the check back to the county, the county then forwarded the check back to the committee.  When pressed on why or how the bank (TD Bank) could allow a check to clear into someone else’s account he said “in human nature, that happens, and no one’s perfect”. He continued, saying “the key is was it resolved and was it rectified.  I’m of great concern that we’re concerning ourselves with things that happen everyday, oversights happen, and because we were in compliance with regulatory laws in terms of how we dealt with our financial end of our campaign, we were able to rectify that immediately.” 

When asked to comment about his own party filing the complaint against him, Gilliam responded, “This is not my party.  If it were my party, we would basically be able to disagree and do things behind closed doors like civil people do.  You cannot attempt to destroy the party and say that its the same party” and “shouldn’t be allowed to sink the ship” over disagreements.

Last night, there were two competing Democratic groups that met separately.  In Gilliam’s eyes, its a faction of the committee – not the whole committee, or a separate committee, with any standing.  “There’s only one Democratic Committee’ in Atlantic City, Gilliam said.  “It’s very important for the media to move forward with actual facts.  The law does not allow a group of people to create a committee,” calling the separated faction “fraud in my opinion”.  

The mayor said, “change can be very difficult for some people” but “we should embrace it and open our hearts and minds up to it because it is a healing agency.  Its important to be open, and to be disagreeable without trying to destroy the entire city.  At the end of the day its about the next generation, not about the people we see in the game currently.”

In his introductory remarks, he had said “it’s a sad case when a small group of people can actually place so much pressure on the system that it almost outshines the fact that Atlantic City is on the rebound.”

On former ally Councilman George Tibbett’s confirmation that he’s been contacted by law enforcement as a victim of missing checks, Gilliam said to look at the ELEC reports.  “I’m not sure what Tibbet’s MO is, but these are open public records that anyone can look at.”  “If he has alleged there are checks, he or anyone else has the ability to research that themselves and come up with your own synopsis. I do know this – if I were to have gotten a check from someone else for the purpose of someone else, then where are these people?  you’d think they’d be stepping up and saying, ‘Mayor Gilliam, where are our checks?'”

He attributed the reasons of those who have turned on him as “lack of loyalty, a lack of love for the city, a lack of vision.”

At one point, Gilliam said, “I was quiet for a reason.  You have to stand still when the world is crumbling around you.”