Transcript: Mayor de Blasio Appears Live on the Brian Lehrer Show

October 25, 2019

Brian Lehrer: It’s the Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good Friday morning, everyone. And we begin as we usually do on Fridays with our weekly Ask the Mayor segment, my questions and yours for Mayor Bill de Blasio at 2-1-2-4-3-3-WNYC, 2-1-2-4-3-3-9-6-9-2, or you can tweet your question, just use the hashtag #AskTheMayor. Good morning Mr. Mayor, welcome back to WNYC.

Mayor Bill de Blasio: Hello, good morning.

Lehrer: So, early voting begins tomorrow for the first time in New York, exciting. And with not many candidate races this year, but some important ballot questions to vote on in the city, this also means voting on the weekend is available for the first time here, this weekend and next, not just on a Tuesday, thank goodness. Do you know your early voting site and do you plan to vote early yourself?

Mayor: I am voting tomorrow for sure. It’s really exciting, Brian. I just want – you know we often talk about challenges and controversies. Let’s talk about something that actually finally got fixed, and addressed and thank the New York State Legislature for it. And this is – to everyone listening, this is another example of elections do matter. We got a Democratic State Senate, and one of the very first things they did was they reformed our voting laws to bring them into the 21st century. New York had been literally one of the worst states in the nation in terms of how hard it was to vote. We’ve all experienced it. So tomorrow, you are right, early voting begins.

It’s going to revolutionize voting in the busiest place on Earth. It’s going to give people lots of different options including weekend options to go vote. We predict it’s going to fundamentally change the experience on Election Day so folks who do wait until Election Day will not have as long lines and as much hassle because so many people will have voted already. But I urge everyone, get out and vote early. It’s so important to show that this can work. And you know, it’s going to be a really better experience. I just want to emphasize this. It’s going to be an entirely different experience to go on a day that works for you without massive crowds and have choice in when it fits your schedule. This is something we’ve been waiting for a long, long time. So I am very excited about it, Brian.

Lehrer: Let me just do our legal ID here because we didn’t get it in before you came on and we don’t want the FCC to shut us down before next week’s Ask the Mayor. So this is WNYC FM HD AM New York, WNJTFM 88.1 Trenton, WNJP 88.5 Sussex, WNJY 88.9 Netcong, WNJO 90.3 Toms River. We are New York and New Jersey Public Radio. There I did it. You know that –

Mayor: Yeah, Brian, your lawyers are happy now.

Lehrer: That’s right they are definitely happy. You know that some of the public schools that will be early voting sites are unhappy about having their cafeterias and gyms taken over for the next week. And they also complained that they were informed at the last minute, so they are not as well prepared as they could be. Is it too late to assuage those concerns for this election and will you promise to do it any differently for next time?

Mayor: Yeah, look this is a brand new thing. Of course, I was a public school parent the whole time my kids were in school. And so any parent who is concerned I just want say I agree with your concerns that, you know, anything that affects your child’s day in school is important. There have been concerns about safety. First let me allay the safety concerns. Wherever there is early voting, this is only 33 schools. Remember we have 1,800 schools or so, so 33 is a small number. But for those parents the concerns are very real. So first let me remind people that a number of the early voting days are weekend days so it does not affect the school day at all. I think it’s six days that do fall on a school day. And we are going to work immediately – I know the Department of Education is all over this – to try and minimize the disruption but the safety point is, just like with voting on Election Day, there will be a police officer present. Not just normal school safety officers, but a police officer is always present when people are voting.

So there will be safety precautions. We are definitely going to work to minimize the impact because it’s early voting you don’t need as much space. And this is really important for people to recognize, when you are not trying to get everyone to vote in, you know, a 15-hour span, once a year, and you are doing it over multiple days, you can use less space and the technology is also getting better because of the laws passed in Albany. But I want to say two things, anyone who has a concern about their schools, we have set up a specific location for people to bring those concerns and I will give you the websites, earlyvoting@schools.nyc.gov. So again, earlyvoting – one word – @schools.nyc.gov. And anyone who is looking for their site of where they can early vote, you can get that at vote.nyc.ny.us. Again, vote.nyc.ny.gov.

Lehrer: And I want to ask, how you are going to vote on one of the ballot questions, question two, to increase the powers of the Civilian Complaint Review Board which monitors the Police Department. It would give the CCRB Director subpoena power, allow investigations by the CCRB of cops who lie to it, which it can’t do on its own now, and require the Police Commissioner to explain his reasons publically if he rejects a CCRB recommendation to discipline an officer. Criminal justice reformers are for it, I see the main police union launched a campaign against it this week. How are you voting on question two?

Mayor: Yeah and so, Brian, let me say at the beginning, there’s 19 separate questions and I just want to put down a ground rule that I want to respect the work of this commission. I think it was a very smart, thoughtful process. It was run and put together by the City Council but my administration participated fully. Broad statement, I think it’s really – first of all, really important for people to vote on charter revisions. Last year it led to profound reforms with the charter commission I did on improving our public financing of elections and campaign finance reform and greater efforts to get people involved in the democratic process in their communities.

So, last year’s charter revision commission led to a great result. We urged people to vote. They voted overwhelmingly for it. I’m going to, first of all, urge people to vote, whatever your position. Please, this really matters. And take advantage of early voting so it’s easier. On the 19 separate questions, I’m not going to get into parsing what I feel on each one. I can give you a broad answer which is my team, my administration fully participated in this commission. We think it was a good result overall – a lot of good things came of it and I think people, when they look into the details, they’ll see a lot of important issues being addressed.

Lehrer: So, that sounds like a yes down the board for you on all these things.

Mayor: Again, there’s a reason because it’s 19 separate things and I want to be fair, I do not want to get into a parse discussion about my personal views on each and every one and the specifics. But I am comfortable with the overall result of this commission and my main point to people is I think they did good work and I think everyone should vote.

Lehrer: Evelyn in Manhattan, you’re on WNYC with Mayor de Blasio. Hi, Evelyn –

Question: Hi, Mayor – and thank you for having me on. I’m calling from the Upper West Side on West 107th Street. For the past ten years we’ve had a women’s transitional shelter that has been the role model of shelters in Manhattan. We’re very proud of it. Two weeks ago we found out that they were being transferred out so that 120 men will take their place. Now, we have men’s shelters near us. We don’t have any problems with that but these women have been transferred to shelters for mentally ill two hours away from their workplace in very dangerous situations. I’m in touch with them constantly. We have had community rallies trying to stop this from happening. These are women who are from the most vulnerable – they are the most vulnerable people in our society –

Lehrer: I’m so glad you’re asking this question, Evelyn, because most of the controversy that I’ve heard and that we’ve had on the show regarding that location is that another men’s shelter is replacing a women’s shelter and some of the neighbors feel more threatened by the presence of it with men than they did with women. But the question here, Mr. Mayor, obviously is what about the women?

Mayor: First of all, Evelyn, thank you because I agree with Brian’s point – first of all, you’re focused on the women involved but second, thank you for you and other community members who got involved to support these women both when they’re in the shelter there and now in this situation. This is a tough situation that I want to be honest with people about that we have worked very, very hard to create enough shelter for everyone who needs it. And again, reminding all New Yorkers that, today, most people in shelter – the biggest percentage of people in shelter are families whose problems are economic. It is not because of mental health, it is not because of substance misuse. It is not single individuals, it’s families.

And we’ve had to work really, really hard to make sure there’s enough capacity because we do in this city, unlike for example the cities on the West Coast  that are having a horrible, horrible, extraordinary street homeless problem. We guarantee that if someone God forbid, they need shelter they get it and they get it right away. But the problem is what has changed in recent months is more and more we’re seeing single males coming forward who need shelter. As everyone who has followed this knows, there’s been a tremendous desire to see the city stop using as many short-term hotels, stop using cluster sites which are not high-quality housing. We’ve said we’re getting out of all of that. We’re building new shelters all around the city to give a better experience to communities and to folks who need shelter.

But the problem at this exact moment – and this is why we get to West 107th Street – is there are not enough spaces right this minute for all the single men who need shelter. So, we’ve had to make moves to be able to accommodate them and there are certain places you can do that and there’s other places you can’t just the way the facilities are configured. So, that’s what’s going on here. The question – and very fair question – how do we support the women who were there? So the policy we’re using now overall, this is about treating people like human beings, is to make sure that anyone who is in shelter is as close to their original home community as possible, to their schools for their kids, to their support structures, their families, their places of worship.

With these women – I’m going to, based on this conversation, go back again to Homeless Services and push the point of making sure that the individual women are put in a place that’s most conducive to their situation. And if someone has been sent too far away from their job or something like that, that’s something we can fix. So, Evelyn, I want you to please give your information to WNYC. I’ll have people follow-up with you today. And if there’s individual woman that we need to accommodate, we will definitely get the team working on that.

Lehrer: Great, and let’s follow up on that on the show next week as well. Frederick in Brooklyn, you’re on WNYC with the Mayor. Hello.

Question: Good morning. Good morning, gentlemen.

Lehrer: Hi, there.

Question: Years ago on WNYC there was a program about placement of speed bumps in relation to reducing fatalities and collisions. And it appears that in Scandinavia, they had placed speed bumps near but not in intersections and the placement of those speed bumps had significantly reduced fatalities and collisions with both pedestrians and cyclists. So, I’m wondering could that be done here in New York City?

Mayor: It’s a great question, Frederick. In fact, my wife Chirlane was reminding me that when I first ran for City Council in 2001 in Brooklyn that one of the big issues that I talked to people about was speed bumps because a lot of our neighbors were complaining and in fact in a lot of communities you see over the last years more and more speed bumps have been put in. They really work. Now, they don’t work everywhere. This is an important fact for all the listeners who, like me, are concerned about slowing down traffic, which is why we are doing Vision Zero all over the city these last six years and we’re going to be doing a lot more. The whole idea has been to slow down traffic, much sure drivers understand that, you know, their driving, their behavior can affect people’s lives and safety. As we’ve been slowing down the city, lower speed limit, more speed cameras, all sorts of things, it’s making the city safer and, you know, people are getting around and they’re making adjustments – that’s happened with speed bumps too. People learn that they have to – going down a street with a speed bump you have to slow down. If you don’t want to, you know, there’s other streets.

But the thing to know, Frederick that is the limitation is where speed bumps don’t work so well is on bus routes, and that includes with school buses, and with truck routes, so there’s certain areas and certain streets just the way they’re designed that don’t work for them. So the answer to me is yeah, we can definitely have more of them and there’s places where they would fit really well and be another tool. In other places it wouldn’t be a speed bump that would work, but there are other things where we see any other location, and one of the things you’re seeing a lot more of, and you will see, is streets being redesigned, and bike lanes which are also traffic calming, a lot of different pieces, but speed bumps are an important piece of the set of tools we have.

Lehrer: Let me follow up on that with another question about street safety and then one about another kind of transportation, helicopters. I gather you are changing the traffic light flow on some streets so they’ll fall to green at the average pace of bicycle riders – 15 miles per hour – rather than of cars, which is 25 miles per hour. Drivers will certainly recognize this, you know, certain streets that usually they’re one-way streets and you can time if you go at the right speed, you’ll just hit green light, green light, green light, green light. Some drivers say “15 miles an hour, that’s too slow,” but is that the plan?

Mayor: Well, the plan is in some places, we’re doing this and we want to see how it works. I get, and I want to say this to everyone, I understand that everyone is – you know, so many things in this city, and obviously anything that involves health and safety there’s a sense of tremendous urgency and I feel it too.  What we are also constantly trying to make clear is when we’re trying something new, we want to make sure it works, we have to be careful for unintended consequences, we have to be careful for things that we think are going to work and then it turns out they create their own different problems. So this is, to me, an important option, and we’re trying it now, to see if changing the signal timing will allow cyclists to be safer and still allow traffic to flow overall. And we’re hopeful, because this is something that is being tried around the world in different ways and we see some really promising results but we want to see how it works here.

So this is definitely something that’s now – you know, we’re really, really hopeful that this could be a big change in the reality, but I think the point about Vision Zero is it never ends. This is a constant effort, every year there will be literally more because there will be more streets redesigned, there will be more enforcement, and enforcement keeps growing, and I want to remind anyone who’s a driver, speed limit, speed cameras, we’re really serious about this, you’re going to be seeing more cameras around schools in particular, and the two things that the NYPD has made an increasing priority in terms of day-to-day driving, speeding and failure to yield to pedestrians who are crossing the street. You’re going to see more NYPD enforcement of those, those are serious tickets, serious fines, people need to really obey the law on that. And then also bike lanes, clearing out the bike lanes which NYPD is putting more and more resources into, people obviously should not park in bike lanes or in front of, you know, bus stops or hydrants. I mean it’s time for everyone to understand this stuff is going to be enforced more and more.

Lehrer: Helicopters. I read that three New York City members of Congress, Maloney, Velasquez, and Nadler, have a bill they’ll promote in the city tomorrow to ban all tourist and ridesharing helicopters flying in New York City airspace because of fatal crashes recently. And I guess that would include the tourist flights, and the Uber and other company copters from Manhattan to JFK. Do you support such a ban?

Mayor: So I haven’t seen the specific bill, and I want to be careful on that because I’ve heard different, you know, interpretations of it, but here’s what I think. One, there should be no non-essential flights over Manhattan. We had that horrible incident some months ago with the helicopter crashing on the top of the building. The only helicopters that should be going over Manhattan should be if it is public service, uniformed services, things that are essential.

Two, we have in my administration greatly reduced tourist flights, I have no use for them personally, I think they – you know, there’s too much noise in this city, helicopters are very disruptive, people are worried about the safety issues. I’m very interested in what we can do to reduce or phase out tourist flights. And then, in terms of rideshare, you know, again, I don’t think it’s particularly important to have rideshare helicopters. I think the most important thing to me is to get helicopters away from the airspace over Manhattan, but again I want to reduce overall helicopter activity in New York City. There are, in addition to public service, there are some private uses of helicopters that are pertinent, that are appropriate, that we still need to leave space for. But I think the goal here is to just greatly reduce the amount of helicopter activity around this city.

Lehrer: Last thing for today. I read that two-thirds of New York City Councilmembers signed a letter calling on the federal government to allow for non-citizens to be hired as census takers for 2020. That was allowed in 2000 and 2010. They had to be here legally, and allowed to work legally as immigrants, but did not have to be citizens as you do with other federal government jobs, and there’s concern that Trump being Trump, the feds won’t allow non-citizen census takers this year and that would make it harder, probably by design, to get a full count of immigrants. I’m sure you agree with Council on this but could you get an accurate count in immigrant-rich New York if non-citizen census takers are banned?

Mayor: Yeah, I mean, I want – this is – I’ll give you the quick version but your question, you’ve kind of raised a bigger point. The Trump administration is trying to create a census that won’t work, right? That’s been their whole game plan, it’s a politicized approach to the census, it is something Republicans have been doing, to be fair, for a long time. Trump has made it worse, but this has been a Republican game plan for a long time to undercount urban America, to undercount people of color, to undercount blue states, it’s just like the cynical attacks on voting rights laws, it’s the cynical redistricting and gerrymandering. I mean this is all of a piece, it’s been going from the 1960s until now. I mean it’s just disgusting and we should see it as one big negative continuum that we have to destroy eventually and create and actual democratic approach to our democracy.

But the fact is we are committed to making the census work and the federal government be damned. You know, we are not going to let – we obviously, you know, New York was one of the cities that took the lead in fighting in court to strike down the question on immigration status. We succeeded. That question will not be in the census, thank God, and we and the City Council has been great on this, we have committed a whole lot of resources to non-profits and community groups to go out and play an active role in the census beyond anything that federal government is doing. So I am going to remain hopeful that we are going to have a better, more accurate, bigger census count this year than we had 10 years ago. But of course it would be better to have, since one of the crucial things, and our founding fathers by the way never said only count the people who are living in this country who are full citizens – the idea of the census is count everyone, including the almost 12 million people who are part of our lives and our communities and this is the greatest “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” in American history, where we’re still fighting over a fact that’s an absolute fact on the ground, these 12 million people are not going anywhere so we’re going to count people, and we’re going to make it a better count. If we could use non-citizen folks as census takers, of course they would be able to help us reach deeper into communities but even if we can’t we’re going to find people from communities who can communicate with their neighbors effectively and get this count as strong as it can be.

Lehrer: Thanks as always, Mr. Mayor. Talk to you next week.

Mayor: Thank you, Brian.