Transcript: Mayor de Blasio Appears Live On The Brian Lehrer Show

February 15, 2019

Brian Lehrer: It’s the Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. And with everyone still stunned by Amazon’s cancellation yesterday of its plans for a Queens campus, some people happily stunned, some not at all, we will begin with that as we begin with our usually Friday morning opening segment. It’s our Ask the Mayor segment, my questions and yours for Mayor Bill de Blasio at 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. He’s not there? He’s – he’s not stiffing us, we know that, he’s just running to the phone.

[Laughter]

We know he’s on the way, so listeners – 212-433-9692, or you can tweet a question, just use the hashtag #AskTheMayor. I will tell you something I’m going to ask him. It’s about how this went down at the end. Politico New York and Bloomberg News have differing accounts of the last throws of trying to save it, so we will get into that as Mayor de Blasio does join us right now. Good morning, Mr. Mayor. Welcome back to WNYC.

Mayor Bill de Blasio: Good morning, Brian.

Lehrer: You need to catch your breath?

Mayor: No, I’m ready.

Lehrer: Okay.

Mayor: [Inaudible] Brian.

Lehrer: So is it really over? Or could this be part of the process with Amazon?

Mayor: No, it’s over – and it’s astounding, and it’s disappointing, and it’s disrespectful to the people of New York City. To get a call after, you know, months of attempting to build a productive partnership on behalf of this city, to get a call out of the blue saying “see you,” you know, “we taking our ball and we’re going home” – it’s absolutely inappropriate. I’ve never experienced anything like this and I want to make the parallel upfront. We have a strong technology community in this city, and growing, and a number of other companies recently, major tech companies, have expanded in the city without a lot of drama, without desiring an operatic process, and this tech community here is going to be stronger and stronger regardless of Amazon. But what is so striking to me is something we should all be concerned about – is why does this company believe that it can make such arbitrary decisions with no regard for the people, with no regard for government, and it raises a lot of bigger questions, and there was no attempt at dialogue, there was literally – I mean, Brian, I’m telling you, I’ve never experienced anything like it. For months, working on specific details, and I had conversation with top level Amazon executives about additional investments they needed to make in the community and mass transit, and other community improvements, the fact that they had to engage the labor community, they had to address real and meaningful controversies like the ICE issue, you know, and these are the kinds of things that corporate America should come to grips with because we’re in an age of profound income inequality and people are frustrated and they’d actually like to see corporations be decent and socially conscious and good neighbors, and Amazon did the exact opposite all the way through, and astounds me – it astounds me. Why did they even bother to choose New York City if they didn’t want to actually be a part of New York City and do the work it takes to be a good neighbor?

Lehrer: You were the leading cheerleader for this deal, along with the Governor, but now you’re criticizing Amazon in the terms that you just use. Does this prove that you were wrong about what kind of New Yorkers the corporate leadership ever would have made?

Mayor: Well, look, we had no indication until yesterday would do this, so I can’t say we could have judged before they acted because up to that point they had made commitments and they appeared to be keeping them. So, I’m very disappointed. I think it’s absolutely unfair to the people of New York City – by the way, Brian, crucially, and I – this whole debate should reference an important thing – people in New York City were polled repeatedly, repeatedly and clearly wanted this plan. They wanted the 25,000 to 40,000 jobs. They got that we were going to get 9 – 1 revenue back for every dollar of incentives. The people figured it out, and I really would caution folks who happen to be very comfortable, and are critiquing this after the fact, that they should think from the perspective of working people in this city. They should think from the perspective of young people in CUNY right now looking for that opportunity for decent job, something their families never had in many cases, looking for a chance to make it to the middle class. When you talk to working New Yorkers, they don’t love everything about corporate America, obviously, and they don’t love that, you know, in many ways tax incentives still exist, but they do exist. This is a national reality. It should be changed on a national level. We should stop with national policy – this city against city, state against state reality that corporate America exploits. But that said, people are smart, and they’re discerning – they’re a lot more discerning than the elites in many cases. They said “we need the jobs for our community, for our people, and we understand it’s an imperfect world but we need the jobs, we need the opportunity,” and the majority said it clearly.

So that message got through – regardless of all the drama, that message got through. People wanted the jobs and they wanted the revenue so we could keep doing things like affordable housing and fixing mass transit and all the other things we’re doing, and it’s just very disappointing, but look, I have a lot of frustration with the opponents because I do not think they represented what they’re constituents fully needed. I think they did a disservice, but I have much more frustration with Amazon for just pulling out in the dead of night and not even attempting a dialogue and not being willing to give back more when that obviously would have solved the problem.

Lehrer: What if you had just trusted the city’s democracy and trusted the people more, like regular land use process, a decent amount of transparency, no non-disclosure agreement? Did you accidently poison the well by assuming New York’s democracy, that elected you twice, is so dysfunctional it couldn’t be trusted to handle a process?

Mayor: Brian, I understand where the question is coming from but I think the question misrepresents the reality, I really do. And I think this is sad that we’ve had such a broken dialogue on this because, in fact, the agreement was made public instantly. The non-disclosure was about the details of back and forth negotiations which are normally a confidential thing in any transaction, anywhere. The final product was put out publically. What’s so crucial here is, if we had said “hey, great proposal, we’ll get back to you in a year or more, year-and-a-half, when the land use process is over, I guarantee Amazon would have gone elsewhere. For everyone who said, and they said it with such self-assurance, so many wonderful experts who didn’t know what the hell they were talking about, “oh, Amazon has to be here, Amazon has to be here,” well, guess what – this morning it’s quite clear Amazon did not have to be here, we were in a competition. And if I had said, “hey Amazon, you’re going to have to wait a year-and-a-half for the full land use process,” I guarantee – guarantee – they would have said, “sorry, we’re going to Virginia, we’re going to Dallas, we’re going somewhere else,” and then all of you Brian, respectfully, would have said, “how on Earth did you lose 25,000 to 40,000 jobs,” so, there’s a lack of integrity in this debate, people should come to grips with it.

This was a pragmatic choice, a very unfortunate reality that cities and states are set against each other. This is not a newsflash, this has been going on for decades – we should break through it once and for all. In this city, we no longer give specific, tailor-made incentives to companies to stay or to come here. We just don’t do it. Amazon asked for it, we said no. Everything they did, with the City of New York, was through automatic incentive programs. If people don’t like those programs, go and change them. They’re state law – they’ve been on the books a long time. But in the final analysis, we said to Amazon, within the reality we’re dealing with, we will make sure that we hold up, as the City of New York, State of New York, our end of the bargain, but you have to do things for this city and this state too. And it was a very fair deal and they just plain walked away.

Lehrer: Let me ask you a little bit about how this went down at the end. Bloomberg News reports a day before they announced their intention to cancel, Amazon executives were still talking to state and union officials. At least one union leader said the framework of a deal had been reached. Stewart Appelbaum, president of Retail, Wholesale, and Department Store Union, said that the meeting took place in Governor Cuomo’s office and included four Amazon officials, and the presidents of the New York State AFL-CIO, a regional chapter of the Teamsters and his group, as well as some officials from the Governor’s office. Cuomo suggested a process to address labor concerns with the project. The union leader Appelbaum is quoted in this article saying “we all agreed to it and we said they next step was to start drafting language, and getting our wordsmiths involved,” and so “we were amazed,” he said, “that Jeff Bezos would just decide to cancel.”

Mayor: I wasn’t at that meeting but I can confirm, I had a conversation with a senior Amazon executive Monday evening, talking in detail about the kinds of things that needed to be done to address community concerns. And I thought it was a productive conversation, there was a meeting with Amazon representatives, it was either Wednesday morning or Thursday morning in the city, with the advisory board, again going over a lot of specific concerns, you know community members raised really important and valid concerns, Amazon had to contribute more to infrastructure. Amazon had to make clear its job commitments to Queens, Amazon had to make clear it would engage labor unions. They didn’t have to agree with everything about the labor unions, but they needed to engage them and see if they could find common ground and it appeared that things were moving forward.

And it’s very strange to me Brian, if they were getting cold feet, the respectable thing to do is say we need to meet because we feel it’s become a difficult situation and we want to talk through what to do, in which case we would have said, look at the polling that consistently shows clearly a majority of New Yorkers believe in this. Look at the many elected leaders, including the most prominent ones elected by the most people because let’s remember that, the Governor is elected by the whole state, I’m elected by the whole city to look out for the interests of all, not just one district but all. So when you actually look at it, if you say forget all the drama around Amazon Bezos, all that – just a simple equation, if you have a majority clearly of the people, it’s documented by objective sources, you have the Governor and the Mayor elected by the whole people, in unison saying we want these jobs, we want this tax revenue for the City of New York, it would have been over a billion dollars each year, so you know, the City and State, I’m sorry combined, over a billion dollars each year. So the fact is this would have been the context normally for something to work out. And what I do not understand is why on earth Amazon wouldn’t have said we have concerns, we want to see how to resolve them, that’s what any other company, any other government agency I’ve ever dealt with would have done. But there is something going on here which is a little lordly and it worries me, honestly where this company or any company in corporate America thinks they can just break a deal and walk away and leave a community and leave a city without what was promised.

Now we are going to work it through to say the least because our technology community continues to grow and our economy continues to grow. But the problem here is when people say why are folks so frustrated on the ground, it’s because they see these kinds of things, and you talk about the one percent, here’s Bezos and here’s Amazon, the definition of one percent, look how arbitrary this was, look how little regard there was for everyday people. And it just dispels the notion that these big corporations are willing to be good citizens and good neighbors and that – I don’t understand why they don’t see how corrosive that will ultimately be.

Lehrer: Nick in Astoria you are WNYC with the Mayor, hello Nick.

Question: Yes, hi good morning to both of you. Mr. Mayor, I have to say I live in Western Queens, I’m thrilled that this project has been canceled and just as one humble voter, if you are curious to put together some sort of autopsy report on what happened I would say, the general feeling I have here in Western Queens is that people are afraid of losing their homes and the swell of opposition that we saw was the product of years and years and RBNY abuse and general fear that Amazon equated losing their homes. So no matter what people heard about economic growth or diversifying the economy or jobs, all people really heard was Amazon comes, I’m losing my home. And it happened for a whole host of reasons, it’s like you know the Kushner Company is falsifying documents, not getting in trouble, it’s you know people in West Harlem who have a friend of a friend who got pushed out of a rent controlled apartment, had a fight with a big company, it’s small businesses losing their leases to big corporate chains, and all of these little things add up in the collective psychology to make people think that big company, mega billionaire means we are getting pushed out, so the only way to really pass any fancy project like BQX or Sunnyside Yards, or whatever the you know the big scale projects you have on your plate right now, the only way to get these things passed is to appease the collective psychology that people will be secure in their homes, bad landlords will be held accountable there needs to be some kind of visible punishments on bad landlords –

Lehrer: Let me get a response Nick for time, but you hear Nick’s autopsy, how much do you agree with it?

Mayor: I think Nick’s making a powerful point, Nick I commend you I think that’s a very insightful and nuanced analysis. And here’s the bottom line, there’s a tremendous frustration. I understood it six years ago when I was running for mayor, and I talked about the tale of two cities, and we, where I think you need to be Nick, in terms of following through your analysis, you need to be aware of the fact that in this city the ways we protect people’s housing, over two million rent regulated tenants who have gotten two rent freezes in the last five years, unprecedented, we are going to Albany to strengthen the rent laws so they will be protected long term. 400,000 people in public housing where obviously we are investing billions to fix public housing and to protect it against privatization. I think a lot of people in those two immediate categories, that’s over 2.5 million people, understand that something is changing, all the folks who suffered harassment from landlords are now being giving a lawyer for free by the City of New York to stop evictions. All of the folks who have won the housing lottery and gone into affordable housing would ultimately be about 700,000 people either get new affordable housing or have their apartment preserved in place paying no more than 30 percent of income in rent.

So for, ultimately when you add that in, it’s going to be over three million New Yorkers who are being protected. What happened here I think you are right about some of the psychology but I would caution you, the biggest public housing development in North America, Queensbridge Houses, walking distance to the Amazon site, a lot of folks there wanted the jobs and the opportunity right there in their neighborhood that they hadn’t had enough of. All the folks who were homeowners, let’s talk about homeowners too, they are big part of our city, homeowner’s in the community recognized there would be jobs, small businesses owners recognized there would be jobs, there would be more opportunity for the small businesses to grow, we heard this constantly. And homeowners thought it would actually potentially increase their home value and for a lot of homeowners that’s really, really important to them. They were not going to lose their home, they could keep their home, or if they wanted to sell it, they would sell it at a higher value.

I think you are right about the psychology, I don’t think that’s what was really happening on the ground. But I think we need a better discourse in this city and all of us are a part of it, to explain that in this city we will be very muscular about protecting working people and protecting tenants and keeping people in their housing. But we can’t say no to development and jobs and revenue to make ourselves feel better. We can’t say, you know the way we are going to protect people is to say no to some of the very things, that actually will give us the tools to protect people. That revenue would have been plowed back into affordable housing programs and education and all the things that every day people need. And in the end the jobs would have given a lot of people who do not yet have opportunity that chance. A lot of the opponents were people who already had made it, and god bless them, but a lot of folks who wanted Amazon were people who have not reached the middle class and wanted that opportunity. And, you can hear in my voice, I’m not going to you know, be an apologist for the things Amazon has done wrong, but I can understand why working people who have not had a good, solid middle class job, when they see that opportunity it means something to them. And that is part of the equation too, if they get that job they can afford to stay in their own neighborhood, and stay in their own city. So we just need to look at the whole picture more and I hope in the aftermath of this there is a chance for a different dialogue in this town because if we don’t have it we are going to make a lot of mistakes.

Lehrer: Let’s take another call, Jay in the Bronx you are WNYC with the Mayor. Hello, Jay.

Question: Hi, Brian. Hi, Mr. Mayor. I think the Amazon deal, like, went bad because people were protesting. And I had a huge problem with that. I was a supporter of Amazon coming to New York because I lived in Seattle. I saw what Amazon did when they started in Seattle, when they got everything in Seattle. I was a strong supporter of that because it was going to bring jobs and help people. But the problem was these protestors were the ones that ran them out. These protestors basically ran Amazon out of their city and cost jobs –

Mayor: [Inaudible]

Question: [Inaudible]

Mayor: What’s that last part again?

Lehrer: He said that’s the problem they caused – what really he means, they stopped job creation.

Mayor: And I want to say two very crucial things I think. One – let’s remember who made the decision. Amazon made the decision. After being treated with respect and given a fair deal, they walked away. They had a choice. They made the wrong choice in my book. Second, to the opponents – I know they are people of good will but I think they made a huge mistake, I really do.

And they now have to explain to their constituents why we don’t have these jobs, why we’re not going to have a huge amount of revenue for the very things their constituents want. Listen, I have a different perspective than any other local elected official. I respect them all but I’ve done almost 60 town hall meetings around this city. I get a real strong understanding of what the people of this city want. They want jobs. They want opportunity. Yeah, they care deeply about housing and affordability but they know one of the best ways to address that is for working people to get better jobs. And a clear majority was with it. So, if you have a clear majority documented, how do you say that a small group of elected officials “ran them out?”

I’m not disagreeing with Jay’s impulse here. I’m saying think about the juxtaposition. On one side, a majority of the people of New York City, the Governor of the state elected by the whole state, the Mayor of the city elected by the whole city – both recently. So, people understood what we were about and affirmed it.

And then you got a handful of local elected officials who are against it. You also have a handful of local elected officials who were for it. And then Amazon says, ‘we can’t stay because it’s too hot in the kitchen.’ I can’t even understand that. I cannot make heads-or-tails of that. But I would say as much as I think some of the local leaders made a mistake, and I think people will really evaluate that going forward and will feel bad about that, upset about that – in the end let’s go to the origin of the whole situation. Amazon started the competition. Amazon agreed to a deal. And then in the dead of the night Amazon walked away.

Lehrer: He asked about the protest movement running them out. Your brand is progressive mayor but an [inaudible] coalition that sees itself as I guess more progressive than you on this killed the deal. Here’s a 15 second clip of Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez of Queens and the Bronx reacting to the news of the cancellation yesterday.

Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: I think it's incredible. I mean it shows that everyday Americans still have the power to organize and fight for their communities and they can have more say in this country than the richest man in the world.

Lehrer: So, how does something like that clip make you reassess your own position in the local or national Democratic Party?

Mayor: I am very comfortable in my own skin, Brian. I am a progressive and I believe progressives have to govern effectively. You know, I came up watching the mistakes of progressives of the past – unfortunately what happened in this city when it almost went into bankruptcy in the 1970s, and I saw all the times when progressives did not show people effective governance and all the times progressives made the kind of mistakes that alienated working people.

And I think there’s a direct line between that and what happened even in the 2016 election where a lot of everyday Americans did not feel the Democratic Party was on their side. From my point of view, a progressive challenges Corporate America, by definition, and stands up for working people. But working people are very smart and very discerning. They want jobs, they want revenue, they want the kinds of things that government can do for them.

They understand it has to be paid for. I think it is a real oversimplification to suggest every working person out there just is feeling great that we’ve lost all these jobs and lost all this revenue. In fact the polls would suggest the opposite. The polls were quite clear. According to income level, low-income folks wanted this deal to work. Higher income folks, more educated folks who had already made it, were the ones who had opposition.

So, I think it’s quite clear that working people believe in economic development. They want rules that protect them against Corporate America. They want guarantees. They want Corporate America to give back and be a good neighbor. But I really would say as a progressive my entire life – and I ain’t changing – I’ll take on any progressive anywhere that thinks it’s a good idea to lose jobs and revenue because I think that’s out-of-touch with what working people want.

I think we need to change the rules of the game in this economy. I think the one percent has too much power. I think we have to tax rich people at a much higher level. Those are some of the things that definitionally make me a progressive. But I also believe in the role of government.

And when this city works – and it’s working right now – it’s because we have a strong government that invests in people which gives us a strong economy, safest big city in America, improving schools – we needed money to that. And we were about to get more money to do that.  And every-day New Yorkers figured that out real quick, some of the activists did not.

Lehrer: Mr. Mayor, let me give you a programming heads up and everyone else in the audience too – in just a couple of minutes, President Trump is probably going to announce a state of emergency with respect to the border and the funding that flows from that. We have Congressman Hakeem Jeffries of New York City standing by to react after that, so we may duck out just a couple of minutes early, Mr. Mayor, to go hear the President’s announcement –

Mayor: I’m sorry you have to do that, Brian, not because we’ll have a few minutes less but because what the President is doing is a travesty and I guarantee you it will be struck down in court. Just look at what – I respected Harry Truman but when Harry Truman tried to do something similar he was struck down in the courts very quickly. This President will be as well. This is just a sham.

Lehrer: So, let me touch on a few other topics real quick before we run out of time. One is the tragic and apparently friendly fire death of New York City Police Detective Brian Simonsen responding to an armed robbery report at a T-Mobile store in Queens – 42 shots fired by his colleagues in response to what turned out to be a fake gun. We should say Detective Simonsen was white, so there doesn’t seem to be an issue of bias perception of him as a perp. But is there any policy issue for you there about amount of force or quickness to shoot?

Mayor: Brian, I have to just call out – your question suggests an assumption I would be very careful about, respectfully. I think what you just said was very loaded and suggests something that is a lot more nuanced. So I would be careful about that because I think our officers – by the way we had 17 last year – I think I have my number right – we had 17 gun discharges in adversarial circumstances last year in New York City.

Our officers have been re-trained in implicit bias, they have been re-trained in de-escalation. It’s a very different environment now so I would not lightly assume what you just assumed, with all due respect. The fact is there’s a full review here.

We lost a 19-year veteran. I spent time with his mom and his wife in the hospital. It was absolutely painful and horrible that this good man was lost in this circumstance. There is going to be a very thorough review to learn from this and see what we have to do differently.

Lehrer: And to honor Detective Simonsen, I see you cancelled a trip to New Hampshire scheduled today. New Hampshire raises eyebrows. Were you going to test the presidential waters?

Mayor: I’ve said very clearly, I don’t rule out a run for president but my focus right now is obviously exactly everything we’re talking about right here about our city, and telling people around this country there’s a better way to do things – and we have a lot of great examples here in this city and in other cities around the country. And I want to show people what we’ve done in New York. I want to show them that you can take on income inequality. We can do things like guaranteed health care for all. We can do things like giving working people vacation days who have never had them. We’re the only country in the world that doesn’t guarantee at least two weeks of paid vacation for every working person.

I want to go out and preach that gospel. I want to go out and show people that there’s a different kind of country we can have. And I’ll be doing that no matter what happens in terms of electoral life.

Lehrer: You said earlier this week that there’s a deadline upon us and ‘time’s up’ for yeshivas that have denied access to investigators. The investigators are supposed to be determining whether the yeshivas are providing an adequate basic education, secular education. Can you update on whether there is –

Mayor: Yes. Brian, it went from dozens of yeshivas where there was a concern and a number of them opened their doors and agreed to a corrective plan. Then some others were being recalcitrant. We made very clear there would be consequences. They then opened their doors and now are working with us. There are precisely four yeshivas left in all of New York City that are not cooperating. Today is the deadline so my message to them is very clear – time’s up, let the Department of Education officials in immediately and work with us or we will report to the State Department of Education that you refused and we will be very clear at that point that the State can authorize us and they can take action directly to rescind the funding for those yeshivas.

Lehrer: And should Ruben Diaz Sr. resign from City –

Mayor: Yes. Yes, he has to go, he has to go. He’s been given every chance to apologize. He clearly does not intend to. He cannot be a productive public servant while he’s sowing division. It’s just – time’s up again. Ruben Diaz Sr.’s day has come and gone. He should leave the stage quickly before he embarrasses himself further.

Lehrer: And for our listeners – background – that City Council member from the Bronx had said the Council is “controlled by the homosexual community.” Mr. Mayor, we made it. The President waited for us. Thank you –

Mayor: The President did something good for a change.

Lehrer: Thank you as always. Talk to you next week.

Mayor: Thank you, Brian.