New Jersey Nightly News; New Jersey Nightly News Episode from 02/27/1980 6:30 pm

The Caesars boardwalk Regency casino gets a three month license extension wins for Rutgers St. Peters and Princeton will have all the highlights tonight in sports. And amid new Abscam reports Candide mayor Angelo Eric how he tries to prevent a grand jury action. New Jersey Nightly News with Catherine stone and Bill Perry with sports. The four remaining members of the state's control commission voted unanimously today to extend the temporary license of the boardwalk Regency casino one month ago most people thought the extension would be unnecessary. Then came Abscam Steve Taylor reports. Caesars boardwalk Regency Casino in Atlantic City has been operating since last June on a temporary license from the Casino Control Commission. The license expires March 26

and the five member commission had planned to have completed hearings on a permanent license by then then Abscam hit and Commissioner Kenneth MacDonald resigned under a cloud. Chairman Joseph Lodi whose own future is in doubt because of Governor Burns plans to alter the structure of the commission decided to delay Caesar's license hearings indefinitely. The law requires four yes votes for licensing which means this commission has to be unanimous to approve anything and the commissioners were unanimous this morning pressure to vote yes. Yeah. Yes well the commissioners voted to do with a little debate was to extend the Caesar's temporary license until June 26 so users have asked because it wants the attention of five commissioners when its future in Atlantic City is decided and the commissioners were thinking the same way. We should not go into any class without no membership and without all the members having fixed terms of

office. The future of the commission is in the hands of the legislature. If and when the restructuring is done and the governor's nominees are approved it may be that none of the remaining four commissioners will still be serving under those circumstances chairman what I said today he didn't know when the Caesars hearings would be rescheduled in Atlantic City. I'm Steve Taylor. And Camden mayor and State Senator Angela Eric Katty and U.S. senator Harrison Williams who both figure prominently in the Abscam reports are back in the news tonight. Eric heavy is seeking to prevent a grand jury from hearing evidence gathered against him. Eric had his attorney Raymond Brown says he plans to file a motion barring grand jury action. Brown claims grand jurors could be influenced by all the Abscam news reports and the New York Times reported today details about alleged links between both Eric caddy and Senator Williams in a reported Abscam deal. The newspaper said Senator Williams attorney Alex Feinberg from Cherry Hill set up three mining companies about the time Williams was allegedly forging an agreement with FBI undercover

agents on the titanium mine incorporation documents according to The Times list both Williams and Eric Kennedy as trustees of the mining companies according to Abscam reports. Williams allegedly promised to try and get government contracts for the mining operations and accepted stock in the fake Arab's titanium venture. A federal judge dismissed obstruction of judges just as charges against former Congressman Harry hull Stasi today. U.S. District Court Judge Curtis meanor said the evidence of the case was tainted by violations of Henry Hall stasis legislative privileges health Starsky was indicted in 1976 on charges of conspiring to take bribes from illegal aliens in return he allegedly sponsored bills to allow them to stay here. The state budget cap had its seal broken in 21 out of 40 local elections around the state yesterday while voters in 900 muties said no to exceeding the budget cap. The others will be spending almost four and a half million dollars more than state law calls for the municipal cap laws designed to hold local

governments to a 5 percent percent annual budget increase. The exception of course comes when local voters consent to spending more than that which is just what they did yesterday in almost half of the cases. And that proposal to change Atlantic City's charter was soundly defeated at the polls Tuesday by about a 3 to 2 voting margin voters said they did not want to adopt a mayor city council form of government at least not the one proposed city commissioner Pierre Hollingsworth who wrote the charter change ordinance and was active in the unsuccessful effort to convince people to vote yes in charge of the other side distributed hate literature. They accused the U.S. Committee of being Marxists Socialists racists and all kinds of things and that they had about five or six pieces that was circulated into the white community so this was the third time in just over two years that Atlantic City has voted against a mayor city council system Hollingsworth said he didn't know yet if there'd be another attempt to get the change approved.

The trouble plagued sale of one nuclear reactor shut down automatically again last night a public service electric and gas spokesman said a broken water cooling pump triggered the shutdown. PFC Energy says the plant should be back on line by Friday. Meanwhile another state utility Jersey Central Power and Light says it is paying more to produce energy and customers are paying to receive it. That statement came at a hearing last night on JCP and Elza request for a 19 percent rate hike. The utilities president told the Board of Public Utilities examiner in the past six months JCP analysis spent 25 million dollars more on power than it took in from its customers. The hearings will continue. The state Supreme Court has refused to do issue a six month delay on liquor price decontrol. The court already has delayed the controversial deregulation order until March 10th so opponents could appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. The foes of deregulation claim Attorney General John Degnan does not have the authority to lift controls Degnan. And so far the courts say he does have that power.

Governor Burt Vernon vetoed thirty two bills today including one banning the sale of drug paraphernalia and another calling for a referendum before pornography pornography zones can be set up among bills signed at the governor. Among bills of the governor signed today is one requiring nonunion public employees to pay a fee based on union dues. Bernie has until Friday to act on all the bills passed during the last legislative session. This is a tough week for would be attorneys in New Jersey is one of the weeks the bar exam is given that of course is the test all law students must pass before they can practice. This time there is more than the average amount of anxiety surrounding the exams However because of the high failure rate of the last time it was given. More from Jack Carnegie. These law students the bar exam is the last big hurdle. After three years of classes and tests simply hold a law degree is not enough one

must pass the New Jersey bar exam to practice here and the test is so important. Classes are offered to prep potential lawyers to its quirks and demands a corresponding seven basic subjects contract for constitutional law property. These books sell especially well now because last July over 50 percent of the students taking the bar exam in New Jersey failed. It was the highest failure rate in the nation. It must be noted though that New Jersey has one of the highest standards for passing of any state in the country. Even so it has legal educators worried. A group of young people and some are not quite that young who take three to four years out of their lives work very seriously at their studies at substantial personal. An economic sacrifice and performed quite well by our standards as students and then suddenly find that they are found wanting. Why are we seeing different standards. And why are we seeing different grading

procedures. I think you'd have to address those questions to the board by examiners because they're the ones who have changed their grading standards and so far as I understand the matter but the bar examiners that is the attorneys who actually grade the exam when we talk about last July's bar results how they were graded or why so many failed. But here at Rutgers Law students who still face that bar exam have their own ideas about what happened. It seemed like. Time to remove and I'm turning that upon its own people and going out of them with the bomb on me. You know they're going to bomb in Iraq trying to limit the number to. Buy. Down. The average New Jersey law student has the same native intelligence as I as any other law student in the nation. So no one will be able to convince me of the fact that in New Jersey Westerns for porno are any less prepared for the bar exam than in any other

jurisdiction. One of the Bar Examiners who declined our invitation to appear on camera emphatically denied any manipulation in the grading. He said the bar exam has no quotas for passing that it is impartial and objective. And he said that the high failure rate last July was a statistical quirk aggravated by a large number of foreign students taking the test who had over a 90 percent failure rate. Nevertheless the controversy about the high failure rate in New Jersey continues. Law school officials will meet with the state attorney general and Supreme Court justices to discuss the exam next week. And for those who failed there is the chance to take it again in the mean time everyone will wait for the results of this week's exam. To see if last July's results were in fact a fluke. In Newark I'm Jack Conway. And now here is the weather forecast for the state. The clouds and snow flurries of this afternoon should

give way to clearing skies tonight but it will become windy and very cold. Lows will be in the mid teens tomorrow it will be partly sunny but again windy and cold. Temperatures will range from the mid to upper 20s. And the outlook for Friday mostly sunny and cold. Bill Perry says lots of basketball tonight.

Bill lots of wins for Rutgers St. Peters and Princeton and we have the highlights first of all Rutgers over St. Bonaventure 76 74 in an Eastern 8 opening round game campaign put records up by 10 11 minutes left to play the knights were up by 13 at the half but here come the bodies getting inside easy buckets here the nice dish off to Delmar herad. Come on nights. Sign her up arrives there to follow the leads cut to three 68 65 50 left. Again it's Herat inside he had 21 strangle that towel Tom Kelvin Troy answer 17 points for Troy. Darryl Strickland number 24 with the jumper 22 points for Strickland right here 75 70 nights by five but the nice feat to Herat makes it 75 72. Kevin Brock loses to Earl Belcher of the Steal the layout of the brownies with 28 75 74 Stricklin at one of two free throws 37 seconds left 76 74 now the bunnies have two chances to win.

Belcher blocked by Roy Hansen still 1 second on the clock Bonnie's ball Mark Jones from the corner no with the buzzer. Rutgers moves into the Eastern 8 semi as they play West Virginia and Pittsburgh Friday night. St. Peters 54 Fairfield 42 the peacock's advance to the ECAC Metro semi's. The defense creates the off bench the peacock's top ranked nationally and high score a Mark Murphy got going. Murphy had 17 and he can shoot from long range witness these two buckets. St. Peters took a 28 18 lead by half time and although Fairfield trimmed it to five a 34 29 St. Peters was never really threatened as they immediately went on a nine to spurt right here look at their tough defense. St. Peters will play Thursday night against Fordham in the semi's at Alumni Hall at St. John's. Iona beat Bradley Dickinson 69 53 the Gaels winning CNN and the other semi that shaping up as a St. Peters Iona showdown in Saturday's finals. Earlier this season. Iona beat St. Peter's and overtime 65 62. The peacocks are now 19 and seven. What a year they are having.

Princeton and Penn the Tigers went 78 69 in OT to tie the Quakers for first place in the Ivy League Princeton up by 10. Less than five minutes to fly but the Salters moves the Quakers back and this jumper made it fifty four forty eight. The discipline Tiger's back door David Blatt hits me. Again it's open under the umbrella. Fifty eight forty eight by 10 to 20 left the last Tiger points in regulation Here's can haul a couple of jumpers then Angelo Reynolds from way out. Fifty eight fifty four one forty four left two free throws minute fifty eight fifty six right here. Tigers look like they get away up to clench but no bill. Randy Melba blocked by Paul Little Paul right here ties it at 58 with a follow 29 seconds left Princeton then turned it over. Penn has a try at the buzzer but Salters missed 58 all we gota OT Princeton with the opening tap Melville's there as crystal misses. That's the last you'll go for Princeton. The Tigers added 18 points from the free throw line incredible to win it 78 69 just one more thing to tell you about basketball tonight the nets host Golden State Well that's a lot of it

seems like I just got here. In 40 municipalities the bulls were open yesterday to decide the issue of state caps in less than a month they will be open again this time statewide. And tonight education commentator David why shuttle sounds off on the issue to be decided. On March 25th the jersey goes to the polls not to elect a governor or legislature. It goes to the polls for schools. The annual school elections have a new date. But I doubt if there will be a new pattern of voter turnout. In the past few have gone out to vote on the school budget. Granted the election is not an exciting event. Or candidates have now campaign issues and evoke little enthusiasm. Efforts to spark the election offer little help until Teenie elections took place in mid winter. It was felt that bad weather kept the voters at home. No one really wanted to admit there was simply a lack of interest. Frankly poor election turnout not only indicates a lack of interest but also a lack of good sense. A large number of

people let the few numbers of voters control hundreds and millions of dollars in state aid and local property taxes as few as 6 percent of the registered voters cast ballots at the annual elections. These few people elect board members and make judgments about the expense budgets and major building programs. It's a clear case of minority rule. Of course the majority have the option to complain about school budgets being too high and board members too careless. Needless to say these antics are useless. Board members are elected and budgets passed by Slim numbers. One vote is often very significant. It could be your vote. On March 21st. Go to the polls. Vote. Vote for yourself and vote for your schools. I'm Dr. David Weiss shuttle. Port Authority chairman Alan saying they're called today for the creation of a regional trade center in Red China and for increased business dealings with the Paikin government. So I've never made the remarks at a meeting of foreign diplomats businessmen and Port Authority officials.

We have gotten definite information now that the government of the People's Republic is going to build a World Trade Center in Peking. We think that this region should get in on the ground floor not literally maybe we'll take a top floor but we should be have a presence for this region in the Trade Center. So Agner says the potential for business with the People's Republic is tremendous. World Airways is in the air today after being grounded for the last eight months. Shortly after the airline launched its cut rate flights between New York and the West Coast on its fleet of DC 10s the FAA grounded the planes but even after the government lifted its ban on the DC 10s IT world stayed in the ground because of a strike by maintenance workers. There's a new contract now and World is back in the air still offering bargain fares. And tomorrow the airline will inaugurate a New Delhi's service between Newark and home. Since the Newark New is one out of business eight years ago that city has had only one major newspaper The

Star-Ledger. Now a Canadian newspaper chain wants to bring a new deli to the city within the next couple of months. Manahan has the story. When the new paper hits the newstands it will probably be called the Sun and its publishers hope to circulate 100000 copies all over North Jersey within a year. But readers won't find it anything like the old New York Evening News which folded in 1972 or New Jersey's biggest daily newspaper The Star-Ledger The New Paper will be a tabloid and will follow the brash style of its sister publication the Philadelphia journal a lot of sports entertainment and steamy material. Why according to a publisher Pierre Pell Adele because of television television is entertainment and today's paper many many of them are not yet. They're already very low tone. And people want more now that people want dynamism. They want when they want to have fun. And we try to give them a paper that answers the

television needs that television has created. The ledger does the paper ones will be going in at different times. The paper will be published by quote a Core Group Incorporated of Canada which has published the Philadelphia journal for the past two years and the highly successful Montreal journal since 1969. The publishers say there's room for another paper in New York and they've already secured advertising contracts worth $15000 a day for a year to launch the paper. The Star Ledger had no comment about their prospective competition. The New Paper will not be the last publication venture for Pierre Peleg though he expects to publish a fourth newspaper in Boston this fall in Philadelphia. I'm can't man a hand. Last summer Penthouse magazine delivered some film to the Kodak plant in Fairlawn for processing the pictures were of various poses of the 1979 Pet of the year Cheryl Rickson. But after they were developed a Kodak official decided obscenity

laws would be broken if the explicit photos were returned. One batch was delivered to Pat house but Kodak held back the remaining two hundred thirty nine exposures. Yesterday the House filed suit against Kodak claiming the pictures are not lewd and saying the plant does not have the right to withhold them. The case goes to the superior court next month with quote Kodak showing cause why it should keep the pictures. Abscam it has effectively scuttled one senator's gubernatorial campaign

calls the resignation of a casino control member and has even cast a shadow on the political futures of several other lawmakers. Tonight at issue commentators Tom Kane and Dick Leone say it has also damaged the integrity of the entire state. But here we are New Jersey I think right in the middle of a national scandal. Not only of the state is New Jersey. We've got a U.S. senator. A congressman legislative may is. It's put us back years before the work of Lacy Goldstein and Highland and many of the things done by Governor Bush and here we are again as a state that's got all sorts of allegations of corruption. I don't know where to go. Well it is said Tom I'm part of the thing that bothers me about it is even with all of the allegations are true and ultimately these people are convicted of being guilty in a way this state and they have been tried already there been leaks in the paper or sensational headlines I think civil liberties have been trampled on it may be difficult to get a fair trial. There are questions of entrapment that the people. That the truth is that the only facts we have

at this point is that a member of the casino commission had to resign. Other than that we have stories in the paper of people having seen tapes or having done things. But no real evidence no one's been indicted and nothing's happened in a court of law. And I don't think that's the way to proceed. Well Dick I can't disagree with you that it's a way to proceed but I think this business of blaming the press for leaks talking about whether or not there was entrapment by the FBI is really a red herring to what really concerns me what concerns me is that it does seem to me that people at very high levels were engaged in wrongdoing very important wrongdoing that were taking bribes they were using their influence. And it now entrapment. And trap one I assume takes place when you walk down the street and somebody imitating a prostitute or somebody on drugs and waiting to see if somebody's going to come along and knock them over the head. You do that because you want to you want to catch somebody who's out there and it's going to be a wrong doing. And what concerns me is we've evidently got a lot of congressmen out there. With a handout who are looking for somebody who's going to offer them a bribe. And we have we

have pretty good evidence at this point if we can believe the papers that the congressman you know stuffing bills into their pockets and trying to get out before to see if it showed or not before anybody could catch them. And this is not new. You know Congress has just gotten through Korea gate their average I guess of four congressmen a year now are in some trouble of some sort. It gets back. You know it gets back to I guess what Mark Twain said America has a uniquely criminal class it's the United States Congress. Well I think that you know the roots of this thing go a little bit into the nature of politics in this country. Which is that people have to raise a lot of money to run for office they have to make a lot of friends and because of the way we develop a candidate out of a constituency. He or she winds up doing favors for people and having favors done in return. And that begins to shade over into areas that are very troubling. If in fact you're in public life and you refuse to do favors or even if you refuse to talk to people I remember as Treasurer I used to refuse to meet with people who want to do business with the state. And I made a lot of

enemies that way they weren't proposing anything wrong. But I felt that you started down a road which led eventually to people misunderstanding your motives. Then you get people with relatively weak character. They find these temptations are irresistible. The heart of the problem is that we have this mix of money and politics and that in fact I'm not sure our campaigns test some of the right things about people. They test out you're really a nice guy will you do favors a little bit more than they are to test what your character and what your independence. I think that's true. Of course one of the one of the problems also is that these congressmen investigating themselves and you just can't do that in the Ethics Committee of the legislature here in New Jersey and you have to vote as to whether done some people have done something wrong when you know that wives and children you're going to be sitting with them lunch sure at a committee meeting a little later on and I remember that happened to me once I voted to convict somebody in a sense the vote wasn't passed and I had to sit with them in a meeting and now light it and it just it just can't be done I think that there

should be an outside prosecutor an outside investigator somebody who's not a member of those bodies. But the bottom line Dick I think is that New Jersey received a terrible black eye. And. No matter what the outcome is. I think it's going to take us a long time to build back our reputation in this country. Once again our top stories tonight Caesars boardwalk Regency casino was given a three month extension on its temporary license today. The Casino Control Commission has delayed considering a permanent license for Caesar until it gets its own house in order following Abscam. So when one is down again officials said a broken water cooling pump triggered the shutdown. They hope the nuclear plant will be back on line on Friday. Finally Newark may get a new newspaper the publisher of The Philadelphia Journal says the new paper should hit the newsstands within the next few months. And that's the news for Bill Perry. Parents good night for the New Jersey nightly news. New Jersey is a joint presentation of New Jersey Public Television.

Broadcast weeknights at 6:30 p.m. on Channel 13. And it's Jersey Public Television.