NJ homeowners who staved off foreclosure another month.
Gov. Jon Corzine has decided the best way to solve the property tax rebate dilemma is to replace it with credits allowing New Jersey residents to gamble in Atlantic City like it was 2006.
Senior administration officials described the new plan as a way to help balance the upcoming budget and ensure goodwill among likely voters. Property owners and renters would receive a credit at the Tropicana for half of what their rebate check would have been and a coupon for one meal at the Fiesta Buffet.
“This is something that helps not only the taxpayers of New Jersey, but also an industry that has helped turn the state into what it is now,” Corzine spokesman Sean Darcy said. “What citizen wouldn’t welcome the chance to become fabulously wealthy - not as rich as the governor, of course - and eat at what has been described as the ninth-best buffet in Atlantic City? Beef stroganoff. That’s all I’m saying.”
Officials said Corzine came up with the idea at about 4 a.m. one Saturday after he’d been playing Pai Gow poker and drinking Red Bull for 27 hours straight.
“He was up pretty good at one point and thought he might be able to solve the state’s budget crisis by donating his winnings,” a witness said. “But then some blue-hair from Leisure Village sat down and just wiped him out of about $1 billion or so.”
Immediately after that, Corzine met with Tropicana officials, who consented to the deal as long as the governor also agreed to pay off the markers run up by the Casino Control Commission during its “work” lunches.
Staff at the Tropicana was said to be busy preparing, evicting squatters and finalizing plans to offer every 100th guest a partial no-bed-bug guarantee. The casino also has lowered its minimum age for cocktail waitresses from 70 to 65 to attract, as floor manager Don Durango said, “gals who can turn heads but not break hips.”
Monroe Township retiree Lou “Lucky Roller” Castellano said he wasn’t sure he’d be able to continue living in his house without the rebate, but figured a gambling credit couldn’t hurt anyone.
“What, we don’t get a show, too?” he asked. “If the Republicans were in charge, they would have given us a show.”
