Transcript: Mayor de Blasio Appears on Inside City Hall

July 19, 2021

Errol Louis: Welcome back to Inside City Hall. As we were just discussing before the break, some City officials have been calling for mandatory indoor mask mandates to be reinstated as the Delta variant of COVID-19 continues to spread across the five boroughs. But Mayor de Blasio was saying that, for now, at least, the focus should be on vaccinating as many New Yorkers as possible. The Mayor joins me now from the Blue Room inside City Hall to talk about that and more. Good to see you, Mr. Mayor.  

Mayor Bill de Blasio: Good to see you, Errol. How are you doing this evening?  

Louis: Just fine, thanks. I wanted to get to this whole question of these rising cases. Concern over the Delta Varian is on everybody's mind. Have you considered the scenario, the numbers, the threshold where you would think that we have to start reimposing restrictions? 

Mayor: There's not a specific number at this moment because what matters the most is the toughest impact that COVID has, when COVID has a really profound impact on someone's health, obviously, when we lose our fellow New Yorkers, what we're seeing is, thank God, very few people are suffering the worst impact of COVID. Hospitalization rate remains quite low. That's what our doctors are focused on. I've had this conversation multiple times with Dr. Katz, Dr. Varma, Dr. Chokshi – absolute agreement that it's not time to be talking about those theoreticals, it's time to be talking about vaccination, and to go every extra mile to get people vaccinated. We're closing in on 10 million doses since the beginning of this effort, we've got 10,000, 20,000 people who show up every day to get vaccinated. There's still a lot in the tank here, Errol. But, look, we've literally said we will go to people's homes now. Anyone who wants to get vaccinated, we'll go to their home. You can sign up to have an in-home vaccination. We're going to go – we're working with pediatricians to get kids vaccinated. Now, they have all kids between 12 and 17 are eligible. I mean, we're going to go the extra mile to get this done. But what the doctors say, Errol, is masks – they have an impact if you don't have vaccination. Why not, if you have vaccination, go for the real thing. Go for the thing that will actually save lives and guarantee people that they will not have the worst effects of this disease. So, I don't want everyone to say, oh, we're wearing a mask, we're okay. I want people to get vaccinated. 

Louis: Well, I mean, the problem right now, or the challenge right now, right, is that people are not vaccinated and not wearing masks, right? And it's the current sort of honor system is allowing people to just put the whole thing out of sight, out of mind and that might be why we're seeing rising cases.  

Mayor: I hear the point and I appreciate the point, Errol, but look, here's what happens that I think is problematic with a mask mandate. You're saying to the millions and millions of people – you know, we're talking now about 4.5 million fully vaccinated New Yorkers, 4.8 million who have had at least one dose – now you're telling them, they have to wear a mask, even though they did the right thing. And you are taking pressure off the actual solution, which is vaccination. I'm talking about, you know, health leaders who have been through this storm and helped New York City to survive it and they feel adamantly, and I agree with them, the focus needs to be on vaccination. There's more we can do on vaccination, that's where we put our energy. And we'll keep watching – we're always going to watch the data, and we reserve our rights to make other decisions that we need to, but the thing that would solve it – this is what's so frustrating – to hell with masks, the thing that would solve it as vaccination. And there's so many people who are even willing, we just need to get to them and get that right moment when they agree to be vaccinated.  

Louis: Well, let's pick up on that question, putting pressure on vaccination, which is, in fact, the correct and ultimate solution. What are the actual limits of your power as an employer and as the Mayor of New York to require vaccination, at least among City workers? 

Mayor: Well, that's – look, we're always going to look at different options. But what we prefer here is to come to a positive outcome whenever possible with our workforce. We got there on testing, for example, in our schools. We went through a lot of intensive conversations with the UFT, with DC37 AFSCME, CSA, and we got to a good place. That's what we always prefer to do. We're also watching the situation with urgency. So, we're going to have to look at all those factors and figure out the right way to move forward.  

Louis: You were asked today at your press conference about the approximately one-third of Health + Hospitals staffers who are not vaccinated, and I'm just wondering is persuasion your only tool in negotiation? Because at that – you know, that that group in particular, they seem determined to ignore the medical advice from their own leaders. I mean, that's where the vaccination is happening. 

Mayor: Well, I want to remind you, when we started out, that was a community of workers – if my memory is – we were around 30, 40 percent in the beginning. Now, we're at 60 percent. So that is another example of people do keep moving. We want to figure out the way to make the most impact the right way. So, they’re having those conversations now. What's the right way to get the most people vaccinated? And that's what we'll have more to say on as we determine that strategy. 

Louis: I mean, there surely must be a point where if you're offering, you know, donuts and tickets and sports events and cultural events, and you're offering to come to people's homes, and, of course, none of this cost anybody anything – at some point you are going to need to decide that people simply are refusing to do it, right? 

Mayor: Well, I'd say it differently, honestly. I mean, again, we're New Yorkers, so when I say to you, 10,000 or 20,000 people a day are getting vaccinated, you're like, oh, no big deal. That's actually a really big deal. That's why we're on the verge of 10 million vaccinations since the beginning. Every single day we're putting up more numbers and every single day, people are making the decision to step forward and get vaccinated. I think those incentives have helped in some cases, for sure. And we're going to keep working on what kind of incentives make the most impact. We have this referral bonus approach where we say to a house of worship, a community organization, every single person you bring in to be vaccinated, we're going to donate $100 per person to your organization. We're seeing some real pickup there now. So, I think you've got – you combine strategies. But we're going to look at all the different options. I just don't want anyone to miss the fact that every single day there are thousands of New Yorkers coming forward for the first time they get vaccinated, and that really counts. 

Louis: I appreciate it. I mean, 10,000 or 20,000 per day, those are great numbers. It's just that when I also see that the infection rate is going up over the last 14 days by, I think, it was 167 percent – you know, admittedly from a low base, that's – we've seen – I mean, we've learned this lesson the hard way, that it can turn into explosive, exponential growth if you let this virus get any kind of a leg up on us. 

Mayor: Very fair point. But here's the thing – I always tell people in City Hall when we're having strategic discussions – I always say, don't fight yesterday's war. What our health leadership say, Errol, is this is not the scenario we were in a year ago. This is a scenario where there's 10 million vaccination doses in the equation and growing all the time. That's why – and, of course, the focus especially was on our seniors and our most vulnerable folks from the beginning, so that community of people is even more – a high percentage vaccinate. That's why you've seen this growth in the cases, which we take very seriously, but you have not seen a growth in the hospitalization rate. The hospitalization rate has been remarkably stable. Our health care leaders say that's because with everyone's help, including the media, we got to almost 10 million doses, and that has changed the playing field profoundly. Now, we’ve got to keep doing it. We've got to keep going. But we are not in the same scenario we were in, in 2020, not by a long shot. And that's why we're looking at all the options, what's the best way to proceed from here in a new environment. 

Louis: Okay. There's a viewer question, this comes from Matt. And the question is, why is the Mayor moving homeless New Yorkers into congregate shelters when there's still a pandemic and case numbers are currently rising? 

Mayor: Because there's been almost 10 million vaccination doses given. It all comes back to the same thing, because vaccination is now available to every single individual in shelter for free, constantly being offered to them. And we have an entirely different situation in the city right now. We know we can provide the better services, health care services, and all sorts of other services to homeless folks, in the shelters, and constantly provide the option to get vaccinated. Our health care leadership looked at this and they said, this is absolutely the time to make this move. And the ultimate goal, of course, is to get homeless folks to permanent housing, which we've done now in the last eight years for 160,000 New Yorkers – we got them out of shelter, into permanent housing. I've said that number many times, Errol, many times publicly – haven't seen a lot of pickup and I would urge folks in the media to look at this question. 160,000 people got to permanent affordable housing. That's the ultimate goal. That's what we do when we get people to shelter, it’s just a stop on the way to permanent affordable housing. 

Louis: Yeah, but, I mean, on the particular question though, I think the issue is along the lines of, if I'm in need of shelter, I'd like to know that I'm not being asked or steered into a place, a congregate setting, where there may be people who are vaccinated, there may be people – may be people who are not vaccinated, putting my health at risk. 

Mayor: And the answer is get vaccinated. We're going to constantly make it available to you and it's free. Get vaccinated. 

Louis: Yeah – I mean, again, so, I'm a client coming in, I don't know anybody in this place, I don't know who has been vaccinated or not. You've offered it to everybody, but you haven't required it of everybody else in this congregate set up. 

Mayor: Look, this question is just a variation on the question that we hear constantly. And I can tell you, Dr. Varma, Dr. Katz, Dr. Chokshi answered the exact same way – then get yourself vaccinated and you will be protected from COVID. By far, what we've seen overwhelmingly – I mean, you know, almost everyone who has died from COVID was unvaccinated. And folks who are vaccinated, even if they get it, have very limited impact, typically. So, I feel like – you know, yes, we're a compassionate city, we're a kind city, but if I'm saying to people every single day, here it is, it's free, it's everywhere. It's free, just get vaccinated, protect yourself, get vaccinated, people do have to take some responsibility to themselves. It's there for them. 

Louis: Okay. Let's take a short break. We've got more to talk about. I'll be back with Mayor de Blasio in just a minute. Stay with us. 

[…] 

Louis: Welcome back to Inside City Hall. And once again I’m joined by Mayor de Blasio from the Blue Room inside City Hall, and Mr. Mayor, I wanted to ask you about City Correction workers. As we know, they have filed a lawsuit alleging terrible working conditions, including requiring some officers to work so-called triple shifts, meaning 24 hours, you know, three back-to-back eight hour shifts due to staffing issues. There's a story about one officer who was lactating, sitting in pain with a soaked shirt, because she could not take a break. I'm not asking you to comment on the litigation. I know you don't do that, but what is the situation there? Why, if we've been hiring more corrections officers, there were fewer people in detention, why are there such staffing problems? 

Mayor: So, there's a lot going on, I'll summarize it, but as you say, there's a litigation matter, so I'm going to stay very broad. I mean, first of all, I read that article too, I don't know the specifics and I need to get the objective facts, but that woman, that officer who went through that, I never want to see that happen, for sure. But to the bigger picture, what we've been trying to do is fundamentally change the situation in our jail system. Ultimately, we need to close Rikers Island, that's the track we're on right now, go to an entirely different approach, smaller, modern community-based jails. That's what we're moving. We obviously ended punitive segregation. That was crucial. And during the worst of COVID, we acted to make sure that inmates and officers were safe by getting a lot of people out of there, but we're still suffering the effects of the very, very traumatic time that everyone went through with COVID. We have successfully shut down one of the buildings now on Rikers recently that’s allowing the staffing, we have to go farther and get us away from the need for so much overtime, but we've also got a lot of officers calling in sick and that's a real problem. And unfortunately, some of them did not appear to actually be sick. So, that's a real issue. A lot of work has to be done to address that. A lot of moving parts here, but the bottom line is we want to address the very valid issues that exist. I'm not going to comment on the lawsuit. I'm going to say we've been constantly trying to improve what is a tough situation made tougher by COVID and we're going to stay at it. 

Louis: On a good day, on a regular day, I know just from talking with corrections officers over the years, somebody, somewhere in the Department of Corrections is going to be hit with, you know, feces or urine or vomit or physically attacked, that it is just part of the daily chaos that goes on. And we don't ask any other city workers to put up with that kind of stuff. 

Mayor: I think correction workers have a very important job and a very tough job. I think a lot of other city workers also have important and tough jobs. I don't want to take away from some of the dangers and challenges that some of our other city workers face, but I would say to you, we need to change the entire reality and entire culture, and to do that, we got to get out of Rikers. This is something I'm adamant about, and I believe history is going to prove it was the right thing to do because we've got a broken physical reality where that the building built, you know, the buildings there 85 years ago in some cases, we're built to punish not to rehabilitate, and we need a much more humane approach for everyone, officer, and inmate alike. So, truly if we want to get to a different culture, a different reality, we have got to go to the root cause and the actual physical plan is part of the problem. But I also think, you know, we intend to - this is something we've seen some good evidence on, to continue to drive down incarceration in this city. We made huge strides. It used to be over 20,000 people a day on any given day in Rikers, back in the 1980’s. We've been under 5,000 a lot of the time in recent years. So, you know, continue to drive down - end the era of mass incarceration. We've changed a lot of our policing policies to discourage incarceration in the right way, for minor offenses, for example, and do more of the rehabilitative work. One of the things I put in place, I'm very proud of, you know, under my predecessor folks who are in Rikers got one day a week of training, we made that five-days-a-week of education training. Re-Entry planning. A guaranteed transitional job when you came out to give people a chance to get on their feet and go to a more productive life and not end up back in a jail cell. You do enough of that, and we change the overall reality.  

Louis: Okay. Let me move on. There were some essential health care workers, including members of DC37 now asking the City to provide hazard pay or some kind of extra compensation due to their workloads over the past year. This came up around the time of the ticker tape parade earlier this month, which has held in their honor. There's stimulus funding. There's a budget that seems to have some extras in it. What is your response to those workers? 

Mayor: I think they did amazing work in a time when this city was going through hell, and I give them a lot of credit and we want to be good to them in a lot of ways. The magnitude of what's being talked about with that proposal, even though I think I understand the proposal, I understand why anyone would want extra help. The magnitude of that is something we can't reach under our current situation, but we could reach if there's additional help that comes in either from the federal or the state level. A lot of really powerful things are happening in Washington right now. If any of that leads us to have the opportunity to do more, we're always going to be open to that. The State is actually now doing pretty well fiscally. We would welcome their help, but when you look at this budget, this is a recovery budget, the city budget, it’s a recovery budget. What are we focused on? We're focusing on public safety. We're focused on bringing back our schools, helping our kids deal with the trauma they've been through, getting sanitation back where it was, a lot of really basic stuff in this budget.  

Louis: Okay. Let me move to another topic, congestion pricing. You are urging the State to move quicker at implementing congestion pricing. You've got an appointment on the board that's deciding to particulars of the plan. But otherwise, do you have any further input? Are you kind of waiting like the rest of us as we try and see if this is going to be a reality?  

Mayor: Errol, I have a pretty good batting average when I raise something publicly in terms of getting the State to finally move, this is strange to me. You saw the coverage the last few days. They are obligated, the State of New York is obligated to have a dialogue with the State of New Jersey. They haven't even done that. They haven't had a single meeting, apparently. They're supposed to call this traffic mobility board together. Haven't called a single meeting. Haven't named the members of the board. I mean, this is how charade, come on. You know, what is it? The fool me once, fool me twice, right? I mean, at this point, the State of New York, they got guidance back in March for the federal government. Go ahead with the environmental review. Let's get moving. Trump has gone. He was holding it up. Biden says, let's go, you know, Pete Buttigieg says let's go. I spoke to him. He's like, let's go. Polly Trottenberg, our former as Transportation Commissioner, now Deputy Secretary, let's go. State of New York is slow walking this, when you're talking about billions of dollars, and you saw the flooding a few days ago, you've heard about the, you know, thousands of trips per week that are being delayed, and they saying they can't hire enough people, what's going on here? So, I think there needs to be a human cry, get congestion pricing going now, if they get in gear, there could be shovels in the ground next year to get this up and running. And when I call for action, I named Commissioner Sherif Solomon to the board. I mean, the elected officials, the advocates who joined with me, all with one voice saying it's time, and it's outrageous that this isn't happening.  

Louis: In our last minute, City Limits is reporting that with seven weeks to go before state eviction protections expire, the ERAP, the Emergency Rental Assistance Program has yet to cut a single check and that the organizations that are supposed to be helping the tenants are saying it's riddled with inefficiencies, and one of the main problems seems to be that the process is digital. It's mostly online, making it hard for people who don't have a good digital setup. Is there some way though to cut through that? 

Mayor: Of course, there is. My message to the State of New York is let he who is without sin throw, you know, the first stone and the State of New York, they love to criticize localities. But look at this, you know, they haven't moved congestion pricing, they haven't called a meeting, and then when it comes to helping renters, their system is one of the worst in the country. It's apparently when you compare it to the other states in the nation, this is one of the slowest rollouts of this rental assistance anywhere in America. The form is a very, very difficult to fill out online, from everything I'm hearing is discouraging people from getting the help they need and not a single check's been cut. So, the State needs to get its act together. We're talking about people who have suffered through COVID and need help now. Of course, there's a different way to do things. We learned – sometimes look, cities learn sometimes by making mistakes that you got to move quickly and fix something and come up with an easier approach, come up with a simpler approach. When we've seen something wasn't right, we come up with a better approach. We listen to what people need and we do it. That's what the state needs to do so these renters can get the help they need.  

Louis: Is the Governor distracted, do you think? We know that he had to sit through a deposition all day over the weekend. 

Mayor: Yeah, that would be distracting.  

Louis: Okay, we're going to say good night now. Thanks so much for spending some time with us. We'll see you again next week. Mr. Mayor.   

Mayor: Take care, Errol.  

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