Five-time Newark mayor Sharpe James is leaving Petersburg Correctional Complex in Virginia this morning and hopping a bus back to New Jersey. He'll finish out his 27 month sentence—for arranging the sale of state property to his girlfriend, who flipped it for a huge profit—from a halfway house in the city he helped run for 20 years. The unrepentant former official recently spoke with the Star Ledger, claiming wrongful conviction and bad-mouthing current Mayor Cory Booker. more ›

Nothing wrong with helping mend the huge city deficit by putting up ads right on city property, right? Billboards are already filling up the skyline, and advertisements have even begun to wrap themselves around the subway cars...but what if they were on a garbage truck? amNY reports that one estimate shows that "the city could generate up to $10 million to put toward billions in deficits by selling ads on garbage trucks and city vehicles." What surface of the city isn't marketable to a client at this point? Vanessa Gruen of the Municipal Art Society says told the paper that: "It seems to make sense that there would be a saturation point. Once it spills out to residential areas …people object to having it in the neighborhood." She also noted that it's hard to imagine "Chanel or Gucci putting an ad up on a garbage truck." [via Curbed] more ›