Transcript: Mayor de Blasio Appears Live on Inside City Hall

March 19, 2018

Josh Robin: Welcome back to Inside City Hall. We’ve been telling you about Cynthia Nixon’s announcement that she is running for governor. Nixon is a longtime supporter of my first guest tonight, so will he support her campaign? Mayor de Blasio joins me here in the studio for his weekly interview. Good evening, Mr. Mayor.

Mayor Bill de Blasio: Good evening.

Robin: How did you find out that she was running?

Mayor: I found out the same way you did, from the media today.

Robin: No heads up from –

Mayor: No.

Robin: And are you going to be supporting her?

Mayor: I’ve said many times that in terms of the 2018 elections, I’ll address them as we get further down the road, but I really don’t have anything to say about it at this point.

Robin: When was the last time you spoke with her?

Mayor: So over a month ago and, you know, was not sure in fact what she was going to decide.

Robin: Advice? Any issues that she should focus on?

Mayor: Well look, I think right now all over the State, people want to talk about the same things we talk about here in the City, you know, economic fairness, obviously ensuring that people can have a decent standard of living. It’s a big issue all over the country and you are seeing candidates all over the country coming forward, talking about issues like income inequality, talking about a progressive agenda, it’s become quite a national phenomenon, so I’m not in the advice giving business but I think that’s what we are seeing everywhere.

Robin: Did you see the video? A lot people have –

Mayor: Yes, I have seen the video –

Robin: What did you think? It was pretty well done –

Mayor: Look, again I’m not here to do punditry, you know, it’s – I just had not seen it recently, saw it today for the first time, but again this campaign will play out over the coming months, there will be plenty of time to comment on it.

Robin: Well let me just ask you, if you would, just a couple more questions on it? The fact that your former campaign aides are working with her, you’re not endorsing the Governor, you’re not endorsing Cynthia Nixon either, you – just leaves a lot of people to think that you’re somehow behind this candidacy, that you are at least tacitly supporting in.

Mayor:  You know, I’ve said repeatedly, I’m not involved, I did not know which way she was going to go with her decision, as I’ve said I haven’t spoken to her in over a month. I don’t know how many times to say it, not involved, some people who used to work for me are involved, but they are professional campaign consultants, of course they are going to work for different candidates, that goes without saying.

Robin: Right, clearly as you mentioned before about the issues, you want her – and you found your differences with the Governor, and we’re going to talk about some of those substantial differences in a moment – but you want her, I would say, to articulate those issues that you care about. To represent New York in a better way that you feel the Governor is.

Mayor: Well, she will talk about what she cares about, obviously. She is a very strong person and she will make her own judgements on what her campaign is about. I’m going to be talking to everyone around the state, to the legislature, to the Governor, to candidates, to everyone, about the same thing, which is fairness for New York City.

You know, my view, I always quote what Ed Koch used to say, that as Mayor my job is to support anyone who helps New York City and thank them and praise them, but if anyone does anything that hurts New York City, take them on, challenge them. So that’s the way I look at everything involving the state government.

I wish the state government more often tried to help New York City. Unfortunately right now we’re facing budget cuts from the State, between $700 and $800 million, that’s a lot of money, that’s going to have a hugely negative impact on our schools, on programs that help young people and kids in need, families. By the way, something as important as the Close to Home Program which has been reported on, which has been major, major reform in juvenile justice, State used to fund it, they cut it in this budget. There is no money for Raise the Age, which is tremendously good, progressive reform legislation to get juvenile’s out of adult incarceration. That’s a great thing, but the State voted for that, didn’t send us the money to go with it, we’re fighting to get that money, that’s what I’m focused on.

Robin: How is – how has the Governor been as far as New York City?

Mayor: It’s been a mixed situation, and I’ve spoken to each time. You know, last year I appreciated that he worked with me to extend mayoral control for two years. That was a good thing, I think it should have been longer, but it was still good thing. This year he has proposed between $700 and $800 million in budget cuts to New York City, that’s a bad thing.

So I’m going to call them like I see them. Obviously that’s been a mixed experience. I would like to see any Governor focus on the whole state of course, but recognize New York City as 43 percent of the state’s population, the engine of the state economy, the biggest contributor to the State Budget. We just want fairness, you know, we want fairness for the people in this City, 8.5 million people and growing, and that’s what I’ll keep fighting for.
Robin: Well you also – and I’m going to ask you one tangential question about this, then we are going to move on, we also want fairness from Washington, D.C. You’ve been extremely critical of the President, and I have a political question about this. There are some who see someone in the White House without political experience and they object to that. Would you say that that is something that people in New York should consider?  Someone running for office without political, elected experience.

Mayor: I think the whole landscape around us is changing and you see it all over the country. Folks are running who don’t come out of the political class, who don’t come out of government, a lot of them are community activists, people with other kinds of backgrounds, you know the number of candidates this year, particularly from the Democratic Party, is overwhelming, it’s outstanding at all levels of government. It’s a very healthy thing.

But a lot of those people do not come from the traditional path. I don’t think that’s the only way to become someone who can be really effective in government. I think comes down to the individual. And more and more I think what the public is looking at, and the voters are looking at, is people’s character, and their values, and what they stand for, and I think it’s perfectly valid that someone can be effective even if they don’t come from government.

Robin: Ok, moving on, let’s talk about you’re former, longtime aide, Phil Walzak, he is now the top NYPD spokesman and the police officer’s union isn’t particularly happy about that. In a statement they said, in part with the Mayor’s former campaign manager now overseeing information given to the press, including the body worn camera footage that the Mayor and Police Commissioner have pledged, to be released in violation of State Law, how can either police officers or the public have any confidence that it will be dispensed with an eye towards safety and justice, and not filtered through a purely political lens.

Mayor: Well that’s political if I ever heard it. That makes no sense whatsoever. Phil Walzak has been a great public servant, he’s served for years in City Hall, very effectively did a lot to help this administration achieve many of the things we have for New York City, worked very closely with the NYPD productively, and that’s where he got to know Commissioner O’Neill over the years. Worked at the Department of Homeland Security in Washington during the Obama Administration, so he served the country as well.

I think that’s absolutely unfair, he by the way did not happen to be my campaign manager, he was a senior member of my campaign team but he did not happen to be a campaign manager, so they should try to get their facts straight. But no, it’s outrageous, he’s a fair, strong, smart public servant and I’m certain he will serve the people of this City well, and the NYPD well, and Commissioner O’Neill well.

Robin: Let me ask you about self-driving cars, I don’t know if you heard about what happened in Arizona –

Mayor:  I did.

Robin: An Uber crashed and killed a pedestrian there. You have been critical of self-driving cars here in the City, another difference with Governor Cuomo, does this redouble, if you will, your concern about bringing them into dense area.

Mayor: It absolutely does. This is a tragedy, what happened today, and it’s a wakeup call. I respect, of course, the technology community. But when it comes to self-driving cars, there has to be a willingness to slow down, look at the ramifications, look at the dangers, as well as some of the potential advantages, and really focus on safety first. So I think this is a case where people were willing to move a little too fast, and that was my point of view in saying we’re going to defend New York City, we’re going to defend the people of New York City, because this is not a place, in my view, to test autonomous vehicles when we know they are far from perfect at this point and unfortunately this crash today proves it.

Robin: It’s pretty incredible that the Governor has some power over you when it comes to introducing that within the streets of New York. Maybe you could explain what the law is briefly?

Mayor: Well it’s a – I always say there is a neo-colonial dynamic between the State of New York and the City of New York that makes no sense in the modern age. Its 2018, as I said, we’re the engine of the State economy, we shouldn’t have to get Albany sign off on everything. It’s extraordinary how many things we have to go to Albany for. Protecting our own people, protecting our own streets, should be a matter of local decision making.

By the way, you know, Uber is throwing around a lot of money in Albany. And let’s be really blunt about this, and all over the country –

Robin: And in the City too.

Mayor: Yeah, and we should be clear that when it comes to people’s safety, that should not be a political decision, that should not be a decision based on who gave the most campaign donations. So I’m saying upfront, I don’t want their money, I want to keep my people safe, and right now, again, these autonomous vehicles are not ready for primetime, and they’re certainly not ready for the streets of New York City.

Robin: Ok, you had an announcement today in Staten Island. We’re going to talk about that in just a moment. We got to take a very quick break and I’ll be right back with more from Mayor de Blasio.

Robin: Welcome back to Inside City Hall I’m speaking with Mayor Bill de Blasio. You were out on Staten Island today with the First Lady and with the Borough President talking about an extremely important issue all around the city and particularly in Staten Island. What was the announcement?

Mayor: Well we are talking about the opioid crisis. It’s a huge issue in Staten Island. It’s a huge issue in the Bronx but it really is a citywide reality and in fact nationwide and it is affecting every part of the country so today we talked about intensifying our initiative called HealingNYC.

Now the reason we are putting more money immediately into it is the results over the last year have shown us that you actually can fight this crisis back. We had a horrible, horrible increase in opioid deaths as the fentanyl drug started to be infused into the opioids. That was killing a lot of New Yorkers, a lot of people all over the country.

We have found ways to fight back through the HealingNYC initiative. We put $38 million into it initially. It started to work. We saw the number of deaths, thank God coming down. We are redoubling our efforts. We are putting $22 million in more. We are going to get naloxone, the drug that reverses the overdose. We are going to get that even more widely spread all over the city. We are going to get a lot more peer counseling out there, a lot more treatment capacity out there. We see these things working.

If you get – God forbid someone is an addict and it is part of the human condition as my wife always says, addiction is unfortunately, a human reality just like mental health challenges are. If someone is addicted we have many more chances now to get them to treatment, get them to counseling help them get away from the danger. Or God forbid they go into overdose, now naloxone is so much intensely spread all over the city, every NYPD officer on patrol has it, every EMT, every firefighter. We know last year 3,000 overdoses were reversed by our first responders and other partners, 3,000 times they saved a life. That’s finally bringing down this horrible epidemic but we want to go on the offensive now. We want to knock it down even further.

Robin: Someone has an addict in their family, they are watching now. Do they call 9-1-1, do they call 3-1-1,do they call the mental health line?

Mayor: So 888-NYC-WELL is the go to number for anyone with a mental health challenge or substance misuse challenge. It’s part of the Thrive initiative my wife Chirlane started. It’s 888-NYC-WELL. You get a trained counselor 24 hours a day, seven days a week, multiple languages. Someone will talk to you as long as you need to work through the problem. And if you need counseling then to follow up, if you need drug treatment to follow up they will literally stay with you, make the appointment, make sure you get what you need next. If you need naloxone you can call that number you can also call 3-1-1, they can tell you where to get naloxone. Pharmacies now have them, no prescription needed, widespread and obviously first responders as well.

Look, this is I think a turning point in this crisis because we have taken these tools and we have spread them out widely. But we got more to do and I have to say one thing was very important today on Staten Island. We heard from a woman who lost her son to opioid addiction and she talked about the pain of that but she said to other parents and to other family members – don’t look away from the problem, don’t try and deny it, acknowledge it so you can get help in time. And that is what we have to do is get rid of the stigma – make sure all New Yorkers know that if you need help just ask for it and help is there.

Robin: Acknowledgement is the first step.

Mayor: Exactly.

Robin: Let’s shift gears over to NYCHA. The Governor again visited a NYCHA facility over the weekend, a second time in about a week – saying that the State was going to commit $250 million in repairs if the private sector were brought in to help with those repairs. You’ve talked that it isn’t a good idea. Why isn’t that a good idea?

Mayor: Look, the problem with NYCHA has been decades and decades of disinvestment. The entire concept of public housing was built with federal support decades ago with the notion of ongoing federal commitment. That started to decline after the election of Ronald Regan in 1980. Our public housing and our residents have been suffering ever since. The conservative estimate of need in NYCHA – about $18 billion, that was a few years ago, newer estimates have said between $20-25 billion in physical needs going on –

Robin: You are not going to get anymore in this administration.

Mayor: We are certainly not going to get anymore from Washington. We would like to get more from Albany. When the money is there we make sure that real physical change happens. Look at Queens Bridge Houses, the biggest development in North America, we put a lot of money into fixing the roofs, all of the roofs were fixed there. We put a lot of money into fighting violence, brought down violence a lot there, put in – wired the place for high speed internet so people would have opportunity.

NYCHA has proven that it can make investments and can make things work if it has the money. So the State needs to play a role. If the Governor is offering $250 million, well first of all I say amen. But we don’t want to do it through the private sector –

Robin: Why?

Mayor: Because what we have seen in too many cases with the private sector is that it leads to privatization, it leads to projects that are done for the private sector’s interest, not for the public’s interest. Here’s a case where the public sector can get the job done if the money is there. The other think I want to remind you is, I’m interested in the $250 million that the Governor already should have sent to NYCHA – $50 million for the 2015 budget, $200 million from the 2017 budget. Josh, these budgets were passed by the legislature, signed by the Governor, the money was authorized for the public Housing Authority of New York City. We still haven’t seen that money.

Robin: But if the private sector could do it in a leaner way, isn’t that a win-win?

Mayor: I think the leaner way is to keep using the ability of the public sector with design-build authority – that allows us to cut through a lot of the various rules around procurement that allows us to speed up the process, allows us to save a lot of money. That’s the kind of flexibility that you see at the School Construction Authority. The Schools Construction Authority is a public sector entity that used to be a nightmare. Now it’s considered very efficient, very effective because it has that freedom and that flexibility. The State can give us that design-build authority for NYCHA. We can get a lot done if we had it. That’s where the focus should be.

Robin: But the School – and I want to move on – but the School Construction Authority also uses builders in order to build. Not all –

Mayor: NYCHA consistently contracts with private sector firms but the activity is controlled by the public sector. Again, it’s part of my criticism of Donald Trump’s infrastructure plan. It’s a potentially a privatization of scheme, a lot of private financing, who benefits in the end? I’m willing to work with the private sector but on the terms determined by the public sector and again the thing that would cut through the most and save the most time and the most money is design-build.

Robin: Alright, a nice segway to my final question here about Jared Kushner. The Associated Press had a story about how Kushner Companies lied on documents that showed how many rent protected tenants were in the building. The documents that the Kushner Company signed off on said that there were no rent protected tenants and in reality it emerged that there were dozens. I don’t know if this is a story that you had heard of but the companies now are only facing a $25,000 fine. That’s really pennies compared to what they are worth. The City Council is holding hearings on. Is this something that you were aware of?

Mayor: I’m very concerned about this. And I don’t have all the details but I can tell you that any landlord, any developer that tries to evade the rules around rent regulation or the safety of our tenants, or tries to harass tenants, or evict them illegally we will throw the book at them. And that can be financial penalties, in certain cases it can criminal penalties. I don’t know the specifics here but I can tell you we are not going to take this lightly. We are going to go right at them and if in any way they evaded telling the truth there will be very serious consequences.

Robin: Okay and in a final sort of light hearted moment, did you ever watch Sex and the City and do you have favorite character?

Mayor: I definitely watched Sex and the City. There were a lot of great characters. On a purely ethnic loyalty level, I think Mario Cantone’s character was really –

Robin: And mine was Harry Goldenblachtt so there you go.

Mayor: There you go. Great minds think a lot.

Robin: Okay excellent, alright thanks so much Mr. Mayor I appreciate it.

Mayor: Thank you.