Podcast: Play in new window
This spirited Seth Grossman interview with Atlantic County Exec Denny Levinson begin with this question.
WPG Radio. AUG 23, 2025
Seth Grossman: Dennis Levinson is the Republican County Executive of Atlantic County. In a few minutes, we will have him on for a one hour interview. This is going to be very interesting. I have not spoken to Denny, for many, many years in-depth about any of the issues that we’ll talk about for the first time live on the air. Denny Levinson and I have a history. We both started out running for Atlantic County Freeholders back in 1988, that’s 37 years ago.
. Freeholders, that’s what we used to call County Commissioners in New Jersey for 400 years. This is until five years ago. That’s when Democrat Governor Phil Murphy cancelled the word “Freeholder” in the middle of the COVID Epidemic. The word Freeholder simply means someone who owns real estate. And years ago, only people who owned real estate were able to vote. That was because you weren’t allowed to vote back then unless you paid taxes, and the only people who paid taxes back then were people who owned real estate. Back then, the property tax was the only tax you had in New Jersey. But anyway, five years ago, Governor Murphy said that the term “Freeholder” is “racist”, so we can’t use that term anymore.
But, anyway, we ran, and we both successfully got elected as Freeholder back in 1988, and then Denny and I went our separate ways. He became a successful, political figure who has been, the County Executive now for many years in Atlantic County. There’s a whole bunch of issues, we can get to or maybe we’ll avoid. Who knows what’s going to happen?
Seth Grossman: Let’s start with The Atlantic County Utilities Authority. I can go on and on about how wind turbines don’t work. They’re a fraud. They’re a scam. They don’t produce energy when you need it. They cause everybody’s rates to go up. But, you know, I could say everything that’s wrong with it, and President Trump now is is talking about everything that’s wrong with this fake green energy. But yet the Atlantic County Utilities Authority, even though they’ve had those wind turbines up for, 21 years, they won’t admit they don’t work. They lie. They say, “Look at all the money that we’re saving for our operations”. They’re not saying we’re getting this money for our wind turbines by raising rates for everybody else. They go to our schools and lie to our kids. They lie on their websites that their windmills “can power 20,000 homes”. They lie on their website. They lie, lie, lie, lie. And yet they are appointed by a Republican County Executive and Republican Commissioners in a Republican County. Why do you let them lie like that?
Dennis Levinson: ,Seth, like a tattoo. At the time, it seemed like a good idea. And you’re talking about twenty years ago. And I had the opportunity, and I’m gonna say that I supported them. It is the first onshore, not offshore, first onshore wind farm in the country. We put them up. And to date, we have saved now you can say whether it’s saving or not or whatever it may be. But to date, it’s saved over $6,000,000 and, in the sanitation plant. Now whether the they’re subsidized, whether it’s Yeah. Because the electric bills have gone up, we know to date also also that we can only document two dead birds, but they’re there. And at the time, like I said, it seemed like a good idea, and it still seems like a good idea.
Seth Grossman: Denny, that’s where we disagree. We have the 12th highest electric rates in the country. We give money to people who have these solar panels and the wind turbines by raising the rates on everybody else. But isn’t isn’t anyone curious to see how much, energy they produce and does the electric company actually need it when its produced? Wouldn’t that be a perfect Stockton University laboratory project. Let’s see if these wind turbines work. Is the electricity actually used to power the grid, or is it dumped? How much does it cost to have back-up generators burning fossil fuels to be ready when the wind slows down.
Seth Grossman: The ACUA website say the wind turbines power 20,000 homes. How do we know they power a single home if you don’t run wires into homes to find out?
Dennis Levinson: Well, first of all, like solar, it only works when the sun is shining and the windmills, though, when the wind is blowing. What we have, as I said, it was twenty years ago. When we put that up and at the time, you know, the amount of, extra charge that would go was infinitesimal at the time. And, unfortunately, you know, it grew like topsy. And, would we do it again today? The answer is no. But they are there. They are effective.
Seth Grossman: Denny, Denny. What mean they’re effective? How do you know they’re effective?
Dennis Levinson: Well, we know what we are charged for the electricity to run the sanitation plant. We know we are saving on it. Now if that is false, if it can be proven false, I got no problem at all. You would say taking them and selling them for scrap.
Seth Grossman: No. I didn’t say that. The problem is when the county gets the money for the electricity that they produce, shouldn’t we know where that money is coming from? Is it because the electric company is really using the electricity? Or is the electric company forced to pay for something it doesn’t want and can’t use. Is it raising rates to make up for it? it coming from taxes? Is it coming from the societal benefits fee? The ACUA can give us so many teachable moments if they wanted to. But I’m not going to keep beating you with this.
Dennis Levinson: Let’s let’s put it this way. The Green New Deal, the clean energy that they are pushing all over the place, it turns out to be a scam. Yeah. I get it. The Chinese are building coal plants, every month. Nuclear power has taken care of France’s problems with energy for the past fifty years. We know it works. The problem is with the Green New Deal, it costs a fortune. The reason electricity is so high in the state of New Jersey is because of what has been implemented by the Murphy, and the Democrats that this is the way we have to go. We need clean air. We need this. We and we all want clean air, but that is not the solution. The United States Of America, if they decided to go green like the Democrats, socialist, communist want us to do, and the tree huggers who have I I imagine their hearts are pure. It it just doesn’t work. It is too expensive. And if we did everything they wanted us to do, two of the largest economies and also most the the Indians and the Chinese. If they’re not part of this, the pollution is gonna continue on just as it has been. And I tell people all the time, you wanna stop pollution, get rid of the plastics that we have, I mean, there’s plastics in our ocean larger than than you can even imagine glass again.
Seth Grossman: I’m just going to try one more time, and if it doesn’t work, I’ll give up. But, yeah, on the on the website of the ACUA, it says, our five wind turbines can power 20,000 homes. Right? There’s no evidence whatsoever. And if you if you follow the fine print, yeah, they would power 20,000 homes if the wind were always blowing at 25 miles an hour at seven days a week, twenty-four hours a day, three hundred and sixty-five days a year. If it’s not if the wind stops and you’ve seen many times you drive by Route 30. The windmills aren’t moving. Well, where is the electricity coming from? Well, somebody has to crank up power somewhere to make up the difference. Right? How much does it cost to crank out that power? How much power, you know, gas power is being wasted to be ready to be turned on? All those questions, and yet not one of it is is is on their website. They’re just used for propaganda. I just wish that we could hold them accountable. But like they say in Italian, what do I know?
Dennis Levinson: Listen, Seth. I have a board that changes continually. I will listen to the board at the ACUA. And like I said, at the time we put them up, it seemed like a good idea. The only detractor as far as that is concerned, the only one I have heard is you. Okay. Well, there we go. Alright. Now now now I guess to to let’s pretend that, that John DiMasi is sitting here instead of me. What would be the issue that you would wanna raise, if it were a normal schedule? Well, let’s just talk about the ACUA since you brought that up. Okay. It’s the lowest tipping rates in the state of New Jersey. We have 337 pounds pounds of garbage that go in there. The complaint is by the close apartments that are there, Bel Air, is that it smells. Well, you know what? Dumps smell. And it was there before the apartments. And if it’s such a big problem in EHT, if it’s such a big problem with it, why are they building 600 homes closer to the dump than the Bel Air? Now that’s what’s going on in EHT right now with all their complaints. Your d h Horton is putting in a development on Westcoat Road, which by the way is one way in each direction. You’re gonna have school buses. You’re gonna have such a problem there when these houses are built. But you know what? They’re putting them in there, and they stalk them on both sides of their mouth. If it is a difficulty, don’t put them in. You’ve got the airport right there and you got the dump right there, but they’re selling these houses, aren’t they? Now with that said, we have a senator that wanted to close and privatize the ACUA. Called a press conference, had five commissioners plus, Claire Swift standing behind them. We wanna privatize and sell it. Well, you know, that lasted for about a week until the commissioners got mad. We didn’t know that he was gonna say we wanna privatize and sell. Claire Swift didn’t know they were gonna do it. So he changed this tune within a week. Now why did he change his tune? He changed his tune because Egg Harbor Township, where he is the planning director, where he is the head of the Republican club, decided that he better change commit, we get we get 3,000,000 by being a host community. So consequently, shut your mouth or we’ll get a new planner, a new engineer, and that is over. You haven’t heard a peep from Vince Palestine. So so Society wanted to close the damn thing. So what you’re What’s that said? So what you okay. Okay. I’ll repeat it. $3,000,000 host community benefit. So what so what you’re Suddenly, it doesn’t stink so bad. Suddenly, it’s not much of a problem. And they decided to put another 600 homes in there. So what’s that gonna do to the schools? What’s that gonna do during rush hour when everybody’s going to work when people are going to schools? Yeah. Yeah. They didn’t check with me when they did it.
Seth Grossman: Let go because there’s a little inside baseball going on. Basically, the Atlantic County County Utilities Authority is paid through a hidden tax. Every time your town picks up your garbage, it takes it to the ACUA and that Authority charges a fee for taking that garbage. Your town pays that fee and you pay it through your taxes. So everybody in the county pays extra in their local property taxes so we can give $3 million each year to the Egg Harbor Township local government.
Seth Grossman: And here’s another thing. There’s something called a Solid Waste Managment Plan. Let’s say I’m running a town and I say, I don’t want to dump my garbage with the Atlantic County Utilities Authority. I I found a place in Salem County or I found a company in Pleasantville, a company with railroad cars, that will charge me a lot less. But we have this Solid Waste Management Plan–we have this county law, it it makes it a crime to compete with the ACUA.
So, is this the way that Republicans should be running things?Â
Dennis Levinson: You made a comment that the business in Pleasantville would have charged half the price to ship the garbage somewhere else. Well, the bottom line here is that has never ever been proven. We have told them time and time again, come before the solid waste committee. Make your case. They still have not come. The city government in Pleasantville went south on it. If you wanted to dump all that stuff, where were those tractor trailers with all the garbage going to be lined up on the Black Horse Pike with their engines running? And then you’re going to dump it there? Hey, look. We’re talking about right now 337,000 tons of garbage. The reason it’s where it is, it was an industrial area when Sonny McCullough allowed it to go in, but he wanted to be paid for it. We did not know where to put it. Every county was charged with taking care of their own garbage at the time. And at the time, this is where we decided to put it. Nobody wanted. We wanted to put it out in Amatol. We wanted to put it out in Mullica. Everybody said no. Okay. Seth Grossman: Denny, one thing. Fast forward. Is the dump now is it getting filled up? Is it gonna have to close anyway? And what’s the what’s gonna happen when that dump is filled? Or could you fill us in there? They’re opening up new cells. It does have a life. And, of course, we are hoping, at least I am hoping and everybody ought to be hoping, that we stop this nonsense of a throwaway society. Somebody just sent me a text message that I’m picking on Vince Palestine again. I’m not picking on him. He’s a handsome, bright, extraordinary wealthy businessman. He has a lovely family. I got nothing against Vince except this politics. You can’t stand there and say I wanna close-up this dump because it smells. You gotta say, oh, by the way, I’d like to see it gone also. But you tell me what I’m gonna do with 337,000 tons of garbage. That’s what it comes down to. You can’t just have five freeholders standing behind you, plus an assemblywoman, and then jackpot them and say we’re privatizing and selling this. Paper, plastic, what happens to that stuff?
Seth Grossman:  Let’s go to another issue. Isn’t the Atlantic Utilities Authority promoting a scam when it puts out a taxpayer funded newspaper every month, a free newspaper, that says, “Recycling is wonderful? Look at the great job we’re doing!”. Wouldn’t it be nice if the ACUA would tell the truth? Wouldn’t it be nice if it said,
“This recycling doesn’t work! The only reason we’re doing it is because Governor Murphy and the Democrats passed laws that force us to do it. We’re wasting gas. We’re wasting money. We’re giving people the illusion that they’re recycling stuff that isn’t getting recycled. It just getting dumped somewhere else! Shouldn’t it start using its newspaper to tell us the truth? Republicans control the Utilities Authority. Why can’t we make them put out a truthful message instead of this dishonest fake green energy message?Â
Dennis Levinson: You live first of all, Seth, you live in a society that recycles. We could do it better by having a recycling center like other places do, and you can have the the the homeless you walk down the streets in New York, you see a guy with this huge plastic bag, which you can see through, all filled with aluminum can. And he goes down there and he gets money for it. The boy scouts, the girl scouts, the churches, they all can make money by recycling. We in the state of New Jersey, we are under law, and we do what we are told to do because you wanna continue to put in these liberal left wing socialist that decide we know what is best for you. I do away with that tomorrow. And there are by the way, how how about paper? We used to have it used to be profitable to pick up news paper. It ain’t profitable anymore when you put the paper in there. Well, the only that Denny, the Denny, the only reason the newspaper was profitable is until 02/2018, the communist Chinese were paying for it because they had they were selling all this junk to us, and they had their empty ships going back to China. So they said, sure. Give us all your your paper. We’ll buy it. 02/2018, they stopped buying it, and and now there’s no market at all for it. Seth, you’ve got one of the highest IQs of anybody I know. You’re as bright as they can possibly be. But, you know, you keep digging the same hole, and you keep getting deeper in it. We’re talking about all the problems of the world, and you’re stuck on the ACUA. Now, about the trash and the recycling and and the rest of that. It’s, I guess, you know, your your mind seems to work in one way, and I’m gonna stick with this until Denny agrees with me. How does this sound, Seth? I agree with you. Alright. Well well, if you agree with me, stop brainwashing our kids because we could we could end this recycling overnight. I mean, why should we think of all the people who actually waste they they take their dirty bottles or their dirty cans, their beer cans. They wash them out. We’re the only country in the world that washes our garbage before we throw it out because we think that the blue can is not garbage, but it’s garbage. Seth, let me be real carefully, and I wanna make a statement here. Sure. I got nine members on the ACUA. They’re volunteer. I just had an opening. I put Mickey Palava on there from Edmonton. The next opening I get, Seth, I’m putting you on there, and you can shoot your mouth off and try to make them believe what you want to. Now how does that sound? Boy, is that a promise or a threat? The U. A. Well, I’ll I’ll I’ll tell you, by the way, that’s an incentive for me to eat right and, and do exercise and live an extra five years so I could actually do something like that. I want you to argue, your points with them who can make a difference. They will tell you why we can do this and why we can’t. You know, you wanna pick out one thing and decide the finest run county in the state of New Jersey. I just got $59,000,000 from the state after I sued them. I saved the whole shopping center with Boscoff. And, you know, you wanna talk about the ACUA and recycling. I’m with you, Seth. Make a change. Do something. And by the way, Seth, get off your ass and go to the ACUA meetings because they’re wide open and you can speak and say whatever you wanna say. So you don’t even have to be on that frigging board. Go there, sit there, and let them know what you’re saying and let them answer you. How’s that for a challenge? Well well well, it’s a great challenge, but you could see how it how it’s playing out because Donald Trump, for the first time, is saying, you know, all this green energy stuff is a lie. The recycling is a lie. It’s all a money laundering scheme, and and it’s true. But the trouble is when you have taxpayer funded agency like the ACUA, that print a propaganda newspaper every month to promote these woke Democrat lies, I could understand why they would do it anywhere else, but not in the Republican Run county. So that’s what my beef is. But, and, Republican Run County is in a Democrat run state. And don’t worry about the newspaper because nobody reads it anyway, as far as I know. And you’re giving that’s got, like, enlightening the people that are listening. You wanna stay on this kick. I’m gonna tell you again. Before I get an opening on the ACUA, go to the meetings and make your case and get your answers and argue it. Well, it’s all Terrific lawyer. It it it’s all it’s all posted on, libertyandprosperity.com. So I I I’ll send an email to them to to have them, look. Anyway, so so I guess you’re answering the question. So we both started out in 1988. Both got elected freeholder. I served one term and I was done. And and you’re still there, you know, winning election after election. So I guess I should be listening to you more instead of, you know, giving you a hard time. But, anything, that that you would wish to add? You know, we have a a few minutes left, that that you’d be talking about, anyway. There is, Seth. Sure. I want countywide assessment. At this present time, each town is responsible for assessing their properties. I use Margate as an example all the time. Margate is at a 50%, which means if you have a $500,000 home, you’re paying taxes on a million dollars. Now every town should be at 95 to a 100%. This way, everybody is paying their fair share. Now until we get countywide assessment, you’re gonna have these inequities from town to town. And under the circumstances and the commissioner board, I’m not gonna knock them because they’ve been a cooperative with me as they could be except for a few things. You know, we have to start looking at countywide assessment. This way, you don’t have to spend the thousands and thousands of dollars to re to re reassess and do revals. If we did it countywide, everybody would be assessed at close to a 100%, and that goes away overnight. But now that’s one thing that ought to get done. 911 dispatch that we go into one center with the fight that I’ve gotten with the police department and the rest of them, one centralized 911 call center. And they said, well, people don’t know. We know our tech. Doesn’t matter if the call center goes into Nome, Alaska. It’s still gonna be dispatched, and we can save on many, many, problems that are occurring right now with, the difficulties that are with dispatch. Now there’s two things that could be done overnight that we can’t do. We’re gonna have a fight very recent very soon with a regional jail. We have to replace the jail we have in Mays Landing. There is gonna be a there’s a push for a regional jail at Ancora in Winslow Township in Camden, And there is a fight on this one. The commissioner’s gonna make a decision whether they want a regional facility or they wanna keep one in this county. That people from Hamilton in the western end of the county, we don’t want a jail in our backyard, which is Winslow in Camden. Well, right now, we have a jail in our front yard in Mays Landing. Right now, in Winslow, they’re going to put a juvenile justice facility. That is the kids are gonna be sent there that are criminals. And by the way, this ain’t the dead end kids. These guys are robbers, murderers. They’re it’s a horrible group. Denny, you know, that that’s a very important issue, and I I wanna mention that. Because right now, from what I read several months ago, and I had completely forgotten about this, we have a a youth detention center in Harborfields. Right? Neg Harbor? Yep. And how many beds does that have? Got 20 some beds. So it has 20 some beds, and yet we have the prosecutor talking about maybe 40 or 50 really dangerous kids, that he wanted to lock up. And then the state would say, well, you can’t lock them up because there’s not enough room, and you gotta put, what, bracelets on them and send them home where they could terrorize more people. Why is it so hard? Why can’t we build a youth detention center with 50 beds and and deal with this problem once and for all? We we do have contracts with other counties where we send our kids when we have an overflow. But doesn’t that cost a fortune? It does call well, listen, Seth. These kids, you wanna call them a kid, you wanna make him 17, or you wanna make him 18 and 363, he’s still a kid. The fact that he killed his whole family, or he he opened up and he shot his neighbors up, or whatever he did to harm all of a sudden. He’s a juvenile. There’s no such thing as a bad boy, and his brain is not formed until he’s 26 years old. So let’s keep incarcerated till he’s 21, and and then we’ll let him out after we rehabilitated him. Yeah. We have a system that’s broken. Alright. The prison system. Listen. Let me tell you something. Leslie Van Houten, one of the mansion families who killed the Lobiondo, people. She’s out of jail. Okay? Tex Watson, who we put in jail, we’re really punishing him. He was the one that killed, Sharon Tate and the rest of the But but but, Denny, now now that you’re you’re triggering the the thought. So, in Florida, when they wanted to set up and Trump wanted to set up the detention centers, the Alligator Alcatraz, they built the whole thing in, like, six weeks. Why can’t we build temporary facilities to get these dangerous kids who are really not who are really hardened criminals, get them off the streets instead of having to, argue with this personally. Don’t take this personally, Seth, because it’s people in your profession, pal, that don’t allow common sense to go through. You’ll have somebody arguing as much as they possibly can for the Coburgers of the world and the Jeffrey Dahmer’s of the world. That they’re they have they have a right. Let’s give a two kids that slaughtered their parents and reloaded. They’re now this is the number one news story in America. Should we let these poor souls who were abused out of jail? Now this is where we are. It’s the bleeding heart lawyers that will jump on it, the ACUA, and the rest of them that don’t allow us Alright. Common sense. Well, it can that for an answer? Well, I’ll give you a better answer. What John Kennedy said, a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.
