Thursday, March 21, 2013
An interview with Adelaide Portash, whose husband, Joe, led Manchester's famous scam to loot more than $10 million from the township's treasury.
The next installment of a series on Joseph Portash, who helped fashion the township as a seasonal alternative for retirees who thought Florida was too far, and too hot for them to treat as a year-round home. This installment deals with Portash's wife, Adelaide, a former mayor herself who has been living in Maine since her husband died. She was briefly interviewed by Manchester Patch. --------- Two decades ago, you could find Adelaide "Adge" Portash or her husband, the late Joe Portash, all over the newspapers. And not just local ones. And not just in the newspapers. You'd find them not just in The Asbury Park Press, but also on the T.V. news broadcasts in New York and Philadelphia, the same ones who once thought Manchester was merely a …
Wednesday, March 20, 2013
How Adelaide Portash reacted when asked if she would be interviewed about her husband, Joe, who helped loot more than $10 million from Manchester's treasury
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Wednesday, March 20
The next installment of a series on Joseph Portash, who helped fashion the township as a seasonal alternative for retirees who thought Florida was too far, and too hot for them to treat as a year-round home. The story is on Manchester Patch, appearing Thursday. This installment deals with Portash's wife, Adelaide, a former mayor herself who has been living in Maine since her husband died. She was briefly interviewed by Manchester Patch.
Thursday, March 14, 2013
Two decades ago, a ring of Manchester officials - led by Joe Portash - looted more than $10 million from the township's treasury
In New Jersey, scandal has become a part of the political fabric. But what happened in Manchester two decades ago could have made even the worst mobster gasp. Here is a piece on the man, former Ocean County Prosecutor James W. Holzapfel, who helped put them all in jail. ---- James W. Holzapfel will tell you that he was, perhaps, the first New Jersey prosecutor to take llegal dumping very seriously. But he never, ever expected to use this power to unearth the worst political scandal in the state's history. One day, in 1990, he found it hiding in plain sight, at the landfill in Manchester. On a warm June day, Holzapfel, now a state senator, got a report from the Manchester police about trucks headng to the landfill, each carrying filing …
Friday, January 4, 2013
Journalist Thomas Peele recalls how he began his career, connecting the handling of Pine Lake Park's water problems to a corrupt Manchester government run by Joseph Portash
Joseph S. Portash was nearly 6’ 5”, a mop of graying hair making him appear stately. He was 56 when I met him late one February afternoon in 1988, and he would be dead in two years, his name synonymous with scandal. He’d come through a side door of the Manchester Township Municipal Building wearing an overcoat as bits of snow twirled in the frigid Pine Barrens air. I remember him walking swiftly toward a dark Lincoln Town Car. I’d just pulled into the parking lot and there he was, right in front of me. “Mr. PO-rtash,” I said, popping the P and the O with obvious nervousness. I explained hurriedly there on the sidewalk that I was a new reporter for The Ocean County Observer who’d just been assigned to cover Manchester. “Welcome,” he said …
Wednesday, January 2, 2013
Award-winning Journalist Thomas Peele recalls how he helped uncover what was, perhaps, the worst political corruption scandal in New Jersey's history
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Wednesday, January 2
Joseph S. Portash was nearly 6’ 5”, a mop of graying hair making him appear stately. He was 56 when I met him late one February afternoon in 1988, and he would be dead in two years, his name synonymous with scandal. So writes Thomas Peele, who covered Manchester Township for The Ocean County Observer in 1988-89. Appearing Thursday is Peele's lengthy analysis on what helped bring down Manchester's own "teflon Don," the man who escaped an extortion conviction to dominate Manchester Township politics for more than a decade. Eventually, Portash and his puppet government would lead the retirement-home-mecca to financial ruin before Portash died in 1990. Peele is now an award-winning investigative reporter for the Bay Area News Group newspapers…
Thursday, December 13, 2012
Two decades ago, a ring of Manchester officials - led by Joe Portash - looted more than $10 million from the township's treasury.
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Thursday, December 13, 2012
In New Jersey, scandal has become a part of the political fabric. But what happened in Manchester two decades ago could have made even the worst mobster gasp. Joseph Portash infamously put Manchester on the map. He had been the man who helped fashion the township as a seasonal alternative for retirees who thought Florida was too far, and too hot for them to treat as a year-round home. In the early 1990s, however, he became the central figure in a scandal that transformed his image from a reformer and innovator to that of a large-scale petty thief and burglar. The wide-scale corruption may have lingered, undetected, for years; even decades. The one-time administrator had died, mysteriously, in 1990, months before the worst of the scandal …
type writer
7:48 am on Friday, March 22, 2013
"Joe Portash Dead. Scum of the earth crooked politician. Ripped off every single taxpayer in Manchester Township and all of Ocean County. May he never rest in peace.".....Short and sweet there you go.End of story more ›