Transcript: Mayor de Blasio Appears on 1010 WINS

November 4, 2015

Larry Kanter: Joining us now on the live line is Mayor Bill de Blasio. Good afternoon, Mayor. 

Mayor Bill de Blasio: How you doing, Larry?

Kanter: Doing very well. And I know you want to talk about a couple of initiatives that you’ve been working on. One has to do with manufacturing [inaudible] – something called an advanced manufacturing center. What’s that?

Mayor: Well, Larry, it’s a very exciting thing. You know, what’s happened is once upon a time, New York City was a huge industrial center, and then the world changed and we lost a lot of those jobs. But we still have over half-a-million New Yorkers in manufacturing and industrial jobs. There’s 530,000 of those jobs. We want to add 20,000 more over the next ten years. So we announced yesterday a $115-million-dollar investment so that we can have the right locations all over the city for the kind of manufacturing that we need today – it’s 3-D printing, it’s lots of specialized metal work. I was in Greenpoint, Brooklyn yesterday, saw some specialized wood work that there’s a big market for in the New York metropolitan area. And the great thing is these kind of modern manufacturing facilities, they have a lot of jobs and they’re good jobs – typical salary is over $50,000 dollars, which is the kind of salary that people can actually, you know, live on. So the good news here is there’s a new kind of manufacturing sector in this city. We’re going to support it, we’re going to invest in it – make sure they have the space they need to keep growing, make sure it’s the kind of places that businesses can afford – and it’s going to pay off for New Yorkers with 20,000 new jobs over the next ten years. 

Kanter: Again, specifically, though, what is this advanced manufacturing center? What’s that going to do?

Mayor: Well, the idea is that people who – companies that are investing in things like 3-D printing and other types of new manufacturing forms need particular spaces. So we’re literally creating physical space to encourage those businesses to start up. What you’re going to find is – in one of these centers, you’re going to find a lot of smaller businesses that need, you know, a certain kind of physical layout, want to be near a workforce – so that, for example, Brooklyn Navy Yard’s a great example, Brooklyn Army Terminal in Sunset Park – where you have the right physical layout, the access to transportation, and the access to a workforce. That’s what we’re creating that’ll allow for the new types of manufacturing to be based there, and gives those businesses a place to come to. 

Kanter: Another issue is criminal justice reform, and I know you’re – you’re going to start something called a Bail Lab. What’s that?

Mayor: Well, it says that we want to make sure that we – at the same time as we go after those who clearly belong in jail, there’s other people who don’t, and we have to do a better job of sorting that out. Now, look, after the horrible death of Officer Holder, what I said and what I know the District Attorney of Manhattan, Cy Vance, has been saying, and our chief judge in the state, Judge Lippman, has been saying, is we need to fix the bail process, because the guy who killed Officer Holder should’ve been in prison and the judges involved were not allowed to consider how dangerous he was in the bail process. So one part of this is tightening up those rules so judges are allowed to consider how dangerous someone is before any bail determination. The same should be true for any decision before putting anyone into a diversion program. If someone’s a dangerous, consistent, hardened criminal, and they’ve violated parole and probation before, they don’t belong in diversion, they certainly should get no bail or a very stringent bail. But on the other hand, we’ve got people who had very low-level offenses, non-violent offenses, who end up in Rikers Island, sometimes for very long periods of time, for reasons including they just couldn’t afford even a modest bail of a few hundred dollars. That doesn’t make sense either. That’s not fair to those people, it’s not going to help us to reform or redeem them, costs the taxpayers a lot of money. So we need to change the approach to bail on both the sort of high end and low end. And what we’re going to do in terms of the Bail Lab is figure out the kinds of reforms that’ll actually get bail to be right for each kind of person. 

Kanter: And I have to ask you just about this recent Marist poll that came out – says that your lowest job approval rating yet – how can you explain that? What are the New Yorkers missing?

Mayor: Look, I – I learned a long time ago not to pay too much attention to polls. The bottom line is this – we are – we’re getting things done. The 20,000 new jobs I mentioned we’re very proud of – that’s coming along. We’ve had almost 170,000 new jobs created since I took office, which is a huge amount for the people of this city. 65,000 kids in full-day pre-k compared to 20,000 when I came in. Crime continues to go down thanks to Commissioner Bratton and the NYPD. These are the things that matter to people – the bread and butter, the real quality-of-life issues. And look, we have to do a better job of showing people the kind of progress that’s being made. But, you know, there’s a long time ahead and we have big plans for how to improve the quality of life of people of this city. 

Kanter: Mayor Bill de Blasio, thank you for being with us on 1010WINS. 

Mayor: Thank you, Larry.