Transcript: Mayor de Blasio Appears Live on WNYC

December 23, 2016

Brian Lehrer: It’s the Brian Lehrer show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. And we begin today with our weekly Ask the Mayor segment with Mayor Bill de Blasio. Mr. Mayor, welcome back to WNYC. Merry Christmas.

Mayor Bill de Blasio: Merry Christmas, Brian, and Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to all of your listeners as well.

Lehrer: Do you have any favorite personal Christmas traditions for yourself or your family?

Mayor: We have a lovely time on Christmas morning and just a kind of classic everyone wakes up, gathers around the tree, opens up the presents together. We’re big into Christmas stockings filled with little idiosyncratic gifts and kind of seeing who can come up with the most creative thing each year, so it’s a very sweet family moment.

Lehrer: I’ll let you give one example if you dare reveal that part of your private life.

Mayor: I – you know – I have to think about what is the right, you know, part of private life to reveal.

[Laughter]

But a lot of it emphasizing irreverent humor. I’ll try to get you a good example.

Lehrer: Okay, and listeners our Ask the Mayor segment means our lines are open for anything you want to ask the Mayor today – 212-433-WNYC, 433-9692, and on to business. After the Berlin Christmas market attack, is the NYPD doing anything different to protect shoppers, and should the public do anything different?

Mayor: The answer is yes and yes. We take this situation very seriously. This time of year, Brian, we are on intensive alert to being with because we’ve seen a lot of threats – you know general threats – from ISIS all over the world and other terrorist groups from the time basically Thanksgiving all the way to New Year’s. So we are very alert this time of year. Specifically NYPD has reinforced different holiday markets around the city, so you’re going to see a lot of presence from our expanded anti-terrorism forces – our Critical Response Command and our Strategic Response Group. That’s the additional officers we’ve added over the last few years particularly to prevent terrorism, and also the common phrase we use – “if you see something, say something” – it really needs to take life for people. It’s not just if you see an unattended package on the subway. It also is if you see someone acting in a manner that makes you concerned, tell a police officer. If you see a package, if you see anything that worries you, it’s better to tell a police officer.

Lehrer: Before we move off this topic, I see one of our callers wants to ask about one of the ways that the Chelsea bombing was handled this year, so let’s let Camille in Manhattan ask that question.

Hello, Camille, you’re on WNYC.

Question: Good morning. I was driving on the West Side Highway as a passenger in a car on the night that Chelsea was bombed. I was going from the Upper West Side to Greenwich Village on the West Side Highway. The traffic was stopped bluntly at around 29th street or something. And then the cars were just forced to go down 24th street towards 6th avenue and then turn further South on like 7th or something like that. I just can’t understand why. It would’ve been so much safer to keep people going south, flowing in that traffic towards Brooklyn instead of putting everybody into harm’s way. I have written several e-mails through 3-1-1 to all the people involved in this. I never got an answer. I still have a tracking number for three of those e-mails. Nobody ever got back to me, and I’m really upset.  I don’t understand why the traffic was put right in harm’s way.

Lehrer: Mr. Mayor, are you familiar with that detail of what happened that night?

Mayor: No, Brian, I’m not, and Camille, I’m certainly going to look into this because it concerns me, but I also think it was a very intense moment for the city. I think the NYPD handled it extremely well overall. I don’t know about this specific situation, but I give the NYPD and our partners at the FBI and our other partners tremendous credit for how they handled that crisis and thank god no one was ultimately harmed because of anything involving traffic certainly. So I’ll look into it, but I would just say if you look at the overall situation, I think it was an extraordinary example of what the NYPD was capable of in a very, very tough moment for this city.

Lehrer: With all of the back and forth on what to do to prevent terrorism, I see President Obama will dismantle the so called NSEERS program, a kind of registry of people from many Muslim majority countries considered to have a lot of terrorists that President Bush used during the Iraq War, but which hasn’t been used since 2010. The Trump administration is considering a similar registry maybe within the NSEERS framework as something that already exists that they can just plug into and says they’re not launching anything new. The Obama folks say it created a lot of paperwork by registering so many people, but it never stopped a terrorist attack. And I see you’ve commented on this. Did NSEERS affect New York one way or another?

Mayor: You know, I’m not an expert on the history of it, but I do know plenty about the notion of any kind of “special registry” quote-unquote. We have found a number of the steps taken in the past to treat people all as a group, particularly to treat Muslims in a discriminatory fashion as totally counter-productive. The goal here – and this is something I’ve talked to the head of the FBI about, I’ve talked to the Homeland Security secretary about. The goal is to create a real unity between our government – national, state, local – and our Muslim communities, so that we are all working together respectfully to fight crime and to fight terrorism. When you single people out and you treat a whole class of people as if they’re suspect it’s very similar to the overuse of stop and frisk in this city. When you treat people like suspects when they haven’t done anything wrong and are loyal citizens it alienates people. So I think the Department of Homeland Security did the right thing here to finish this program off once and forever. It should not be brought back, and the way forwards is to create respect and unity with the Muslim communities of this city and of this country. That’s how we actually stay safe.

Lehrer: Also in response to Trump I see you’ve been encouraging people to sign up for Obamacare health insurance. Are you aiming for strength in numbers?

Mayor: Absolutely. Look there’s several reasons why it’s so important, and we have this new initiative called GetCoveredNYC and anyone who needs health insurance and doesn’t have it – there’s almost half a million New Yorkers who qualify under the Affordable Care Act and don’t have insurance. A lot of them don’t realize how easy it is to sign up and how inexpensive the policies can be, and what an incredible sense of peace of mind to have health insurance rather than not. I got to meet people earlier this week who were signing up New Yorkers on the spot. It literally takes minutes to find out if someone is eligible and then start the sign up process, but it is about, Brian – one, we just want as many as possible to have health insurance. That’s morally right. Two, it’s very important for this city. Our public hospitals are going to serve anyone and everyone regardless of their ability to pay, but the more people who have insurance the better it is for the health and wellbeing of our public hospital system which serves everyone. And three – we’re going to have a big fight in this country over Obamacare. I think what’s going to happen if a lot of people, including people who supported Donald Trump, are going to say ‘wait a minute, I don’t want my health insurance taken away. I don’t want to lose the opportunity for health insurance when I have a pre-existing medical condition. I don’t want to lose the ability to have my kids on my health insurance up until 26.’ They’re going to want to keep those things. And the more people who are enrolled under Obamacare the harder it is to take away. That’s just basic political common sense. The more popular and the more involved - the more people involved in the program, the more popular it is, the harder it is to take away.

Lehrer: You know how Trump can get more oppositional when there’s a challenge in his face, right? Like this morning he said on Russia and nuclear weapons, “Let it be an arms race, we will outmatch them at every pass,” according to MSNBC. And I don’t even think Putin was trying to bait him. That’s going to be our next topic after you. But, could you be encouraging him to get even more determined to dismantle the ACA, because you kind of represent something.

Mayor: You know, Brian, I don’t see it that way. First of all – again, it is our moral responsibility to sign as many people up for health insurance as possible and [inaudible] good for the City of New York and our Health and Hospitals Corporation, our public hospitals. But no - it doesn’t make sense to me to say we shouldn’t challenge him because he might lash back. He says all sorts of things. We will see how many of them come true. We will see how many of them he doesn’t flip flop on. The bottom line is people have to stand up. If we are going to protect the Affordable Care Act, we have to stand up for it, we have to fight for it, we have to show how much it means in people’s lives. So I don’t care about this notion of he’s going to take offense. That’s like we are talking about an emperor. I don’t think of it that way. This is a democratic reality [inaudible] democratic reality. The more people who demand that we keep the Affordable Care Act, the greater the chance that it will survive.

Lehrer: Jane in Bell Harbor, you are on WNYC with the Mayor. Hi Jane.       

Question: Hi, how are you? Hi- Mayor de Blasio, I have a major complaint here. I live in Rockaway Bell Harbor and there two establishments, main establishments. There’s lots of them that serve minors and I repeatedly called to the precinct to try to make it – as a matter of fact I’ve been on the phone since 9 o’clock this morning. And I repeatedly try to call the precinct to get nowhere. They tell me they dispatch cars. I have a videotape of some of the police cars outside of the establishment not doing anything. So I then tried to call the liquor authority, which they kept putting me back into the tree and around – whatever, to make a complaint then they told me I have to go up to Harlem to the State Liquor Authority on Lennox Avenue to make a complaint. There’s nobody – there’s nobody that’s doing anything. Hello –

Lehrer: Jane is that you? Is the noise on your end Jane?  

Question:  No there is no noise now.

Lehrer: Mr. Mayor tell those security people to leave you alone. I’m just kidding.

[Laughter]

So Mr. Mayor, you hear Jane’s problem. There is a bar in her neighborhood that is serving to minors – two bars, and she can’t get anybody to do anything about it.

Mayor: Jane I hear you loud and clear. I’m concerned because we absolutely want to crack down on any establishment that’s serving to minors so I am going to personally follow up and find out what the precinct is doing. I am very glad you are reporting this and we are going to let the precinct commander know that this has to be handled.

Lehrer: And as we do when these kinds of calls come in Jane, if you want, we will take your contact number off the air.

Question: What I’d like to leave is the two names of the establishment because I know that they go into liquor stores and I know that they do like a sting operation and they give them a fine. So I don’t understand why these establishments, they are 15, 16, 17 year olds and there’s no fine being given and they repeatedly continue to serve to minors.

Mayor: What are the names?

Question: The names are the Jameson’s Pub on 129 Street and the other name is the Community House and I believe that’s on Rockaway Beach Boulevard and 108 Street or what is that street over there? 101 Rockaway Beach Boulevard –    

Lehrer: We’ll take that off the air and obviously you know we can’t verify that any establishment is doing something wrong that an individual says just because she said. But, there are the names that she says and so Mr. Mayor you have it and I guess your people will follow up and see what’s going on. And Jane if you want to leave your contact information you can and we’ll make sure that there’s a response. 

Let’s go to Sharice in Manhattan. You’re on WNYC. Hello Sharice.   

Question: Yes, good morning. So my [inaudible] received subsidy from the government, which is [inaudible]. I’m living in a studio apartment with two kids and I tried to move out. First of all, there is smoke coming in under the door of the people smoking. The second thing, my kids they have a breathing problem right now. I’m seeing a specialist. And most of the time there is no heat. I tried to move with [Inaudible]. I have to have an emergency whether domestic abuse or life endangered. I’m stuck. It’s like I have to put my kids in the apartment building.

Lehrer: This is conditions that your landlord is foisting upon you and not doing anything about it sounds like, yes?

Question: Definitely, definitely and the other thing is we grew out of the apartment. It’s a studio apartment with two kids.

Mayor: Okay. Sharice I’m concerned obviously about this. I’m glad you’re raising it. We don’t want anyone in situations that aren’t appropriate. We do have a huge problem with finding appropriate space for people who need it. So sometimes people are in more cramped space that they wanted to be in but the most important thing is get a room over your head and good conditions. So Sharice, leave your information please with WNYC and I’m going to have our folks in our Department of Social Services follow up with you.

Lehrer: Yes this is another one where we should follow up with individual contact information. Sharice we’ll put you on hold and you can give the details to our producer thank you.

Mr. Mayor, let’s talk re-election politics for a few minutes. You now have your first challenger in the Democratic primary for mayor in 2017, as you know. State Senator Tony Avella of Queens – we had him on the show this week – and he called Vision Zero a failure and backed up his claim by tweeting us a number of newspaper articles afterwards. For example, as of November, there were more pedestrian deaths this year than last – 126 compared to 120 last year. Vision 126? Why has it stalled?

Mayor: It hasn’t stalled. I think that’s absolutely a misunderstanding of what’s going on here. Vision Zero is a long-term plan. It is a very ambitious tough mission – to go out there and fundamentally change the safety dynamics of this city. You know a few years ago, before I took office, the number of traffic deaths in this city each year was approaching the number of deaths by homicide. And we took that down immediately when we started Vision Zero. We got to in 2014; we had the lowest number of pedestrian fatalities in 100-plus years. In 2015, we surpassed it. We’re continuing that this year. And that’s just something that people have to understand. We’re going to keep building, and building, and building. There will be more and more situations where you’ll have safer streets because of protected bike lanes; because we’re re-designing intersections; because we’re enforcing – and this is crucial – NYPD is enforcing the law on speeding, on failure to yield to pedestrians, much more aggressively, and the numbers show it – many more summonses given for those dangerous behaviors, more checkpoints, particularly around the holidays to stop drunk driving. This is all continuing to build. And every year we’ve shown progress.

Lehrer: Every year you’ve shown progress, but – and I don’t have the numbers from the last month. But as of November, according to the newspaper reports, 126 pedestrian deaths compared to 120 last year. So can you say that’s progress and continuing to build?

Mayor: Brian, respectfully, you know I have immense respect for you, but when you say according to newspapers, and you quote information from November, I would really be cautious about that, respectfully. Deaths are down this year. NYPD has been reporting this regularly. A new approach was put into place late in October to focus on the late afternoon, early evening hours where we identified a specific problem, and they put precision policing tactics to work. We did a whole press conference with Commissioner O’Neill. I would urge your researchers to check that out. Deaths are down again. And this is an initiative that is growing. It’s not static. It is growing and it will produce greater results.

Lehrer: Here’s a clip of Avella this week on aspects of it that he thinks could be better.

[State Senator Tony Avella: “And I’ve said this to the Mayor’s people time and time again, it’s not just about putting a bike lane, and again, without community input. It’s not putting in a pedestrian plaza, against – in a lot of cases – against community input. What about trying to get an always stop, or a traffic light in a neighborhood? It takes almost like an act of God to get those controls. And the City keeps relying on federal guidelines. And it’s – if you really want to increase pedestrian safety and improve safety in neighborhoods, why are we not doing more to involve local communities in – hey, I’ve got a dangerous intersection here; I want an always stop? Okay, let’s take it seriously; let’s do it.”]

How would you respond to that, Mr. Mayor?

Mayor: First of all, we work very closely with communities to determine what will make things safer. This is part of why we’re doing so many redesigns of intersections. We listen to communities all the time, and we take that input, and we also have to bring to bear what we know factually works to keep people safe. Something like a speed camera around a school for example, may not always win the popularity contest, but it sure protects kids. And so we’re going to keep doing that. There are definitely places where we need more traffic lights and stop signs. And I talk to my fellow New Yorkers all the time who make those requests. Some of them make a lot of sense. And sometimes, Department of Transportation needs to work quicker to get them done. Others don’t necessarily make so much sense. But it’s part of the bigger puzzle. What really works – we’ve reduced the speed limit in many parts of the city, we’ve put in the speed cameras around schools, we’re changing the traffic designs in intersections, and putting in a lot of traffic calming measures, and especially that intensive NYPD enforcement – that’s what really changes the situation in terms of safety. And again, we have three years of data to prove it, Brian.

Lehrer: And there’s also Comptroller Scott Stringer, considered another possible challenger, who has released figures on the deaths of children who had been under the watch of the Administration for Children’s Services. His report said in the three months before the death that’s been in the news – six-year-old Zymere Perkins – in the prior three months, ten other kids died who had been in households with at least four other previous cases of abuse or neglect on file with the ACS. I know you dispute some of the numbers in his report but what about the main thrust about deaths on repeated instances where kids are on the radar?

Mayor: I care very deeply about this matter and I feel that as a parent, I feel that as a public servant. I spent eight years as the chairman of the committee that works to reduce child abuse in New York City. And a very important thing for your listeners to know is that over the last five years – that’s the Bloomberg administration and mine – the number of cases that have been substantiated as potential child abuse has gone done steadily in this city because a lot of reforms were put in place previously and we’d added additional reforms, additional personnel, additional training.

But here’s what’s wrong with Scott Stringer’s letter. It is blatantly inaccurate – blatantly inaccurate. What he did – Scott Stringer teamed up with the New York Post to create fake news. We’ve been talking about fake news a lot lately. Here’s a real example. I’m holding the New York Post from yesterday and it has this screaming headline. And if you look at the first paragraph, it says these things happened “in the weeks leading up to the slaying of little Zymere Perkins.” Zymere Perkins was an absolute tragedy and many people who played a role in terms of not doing their jobs effectively have been either disciplined or fired or demoted. And we will be relentless about changing anything we need to change in that agency.

But here’s the problem with the decision by Scott Stringer to work with the New York Post, which is a very conscious decision, to create what is a false understanding of what happened here. He is literally denigrating the work of all the people at ACS who protect children. They have between 50,000 and 60,000 cases a year – the vast majority of them, they do a great job protecting kids. None of that is discussed in his letter.

But here’s four cases of the ten he raises, Brian, where he says these cases were “opened” in the weeks of this last summer. Well, one was of death tragically from 2008, one was a death from 2011, another was from 2011, yet another was from 2013. His facts are entirely wrong. He’s got two deaths in here which were because parents, unfortunately, were in an unsafe sleeping position with their children. It had nothing to do with ACS whatsoever. You have two where kids died in a tragic fire where there was no indication that ACS had any warning of anything like that happening. You had one where there was a child abuse fatality – a family not known to ACS to begin with.

This is just blatantly false and it’s not appropriate and it doesn’t a service to anyone. It denigrates the work of the hardworking people at ACS who save lives every day and it misinforms the public. It’s not appropriate.

Lehrer: Well, we will follow up with Comptroller Stringer and get his response to that response. But on this topic, we have a caller – Janet in Flushing, you’re on WNYC. Hello, Janet.

Question: Hello, I’m calling because I’m a retired school social worker and it occurred to me throughout my education – not really the education so much as the practice of having been a teacher and then a social worker – it occurred to me that very often, we’re not really accessing information from the children who are the point of contact of abuse, and also who do not have, many, many times, have absolutely no ideas of what their rights are as the children of the parents who are caring for them. I don’t see the parents as loving to hurt their children and I don’t, at all, see children as liking to be abused. But I really think that we’re not utilizing the point of contact daily in the school system well enough – to join up with the ACS workers in a way that would make a much better safety net –

Lehrer: How, for example, could they, Janet? Because aren’t already school personnel mandatory reporters if they see something that indicates child abuse? They have to report it to the City?

Question: Yes, absolutely. But I do also remember in my practice of social work in the school system that everybody – the teachers and everybody who works in the school is very busy with a lot of different things and not everybody pays so much attention to looking for abuse. I remember as a social worker up in Washington Heights, that I was given a paper that showed children with a black eye or a broken arm or something like that. It was a tiny little picture of what might happen to children. It made me also remember that as a beginning teacher in South Jamaica, I have a picture of a boy who had a black eye on picture taking day, it didn’t occur to me that somebody at home had possibly done or most likely done it –

Lehrer: So, what’s your question for the Mayor? What can the City do better?

Question: Well, I would like to see some kind of a – in attempting to broaden the picture of what goes on in schools because so much is going on every day, not everybody sees or is looking into this problem every day. Okay. So, then the attendance workers collection information on how many days a kid is absent and that’s very valuable in detecting – when you’re taking a look at abuse. I know that teachers and everybody in the school system can’t be following kids around trying to find out if they’re abused but we could have a much better educational program within that is not isolated from the problem –

Lehrer: Janet, thank you, let me get a response from the Mayor. Mr. Mayor –

Mayor: Well, I appreciate Janet’s point and I appreciate the work she did. Look, one of the areas – I think Janet is onto something here but I do believe it’s being addressed more and more. First, the big picture. The big picture is, again, ACS has between 50,000 and 60,000 cases a year it works on. And thank God, the vast majority of the situations, the kids are safe in the end including in many situations where ACS wants to remove a child from the family and a judge may not agree. And that has to be – we talked about on this on your last show – that’s a really important part of this equation that ACS often wants to be more aggressive then a judge will allow it to be.

But in terms of the schools – this goes back to Nixzmary Brown in 2006 when I was Chair of the General Welfare Committee in the City Council. And one of the missing links there was that the murderer, in fact, was at a meeting in the school before the murder occurred and there was a chance there – and this is why it was such a gripping and horrible case for the City – there was a chance to stop that right then if the communication between the school, the police, and ACS had been stronger –

Lehrer: And wasn’t lack of attention to Zymere Perkins – repeated absences –

Mayor: That’s where I’m going next, yes. After 2006, real reforms were made and I worked on them with the Bloomberg administration. They were important to connect ACS and schools and police more tightly. There’s been progress. But what we found in the Zymere Perkins case – and this is now leading to an additional set of reforms that are already being implemented – is that the attendance point, the point that Janet made, attendance has to be watched much more carefully and there need to be much more stringent signals that were sent if there was a dip or change in attendance depending on the situation of the family. That DOE and ACS had to have a much tighter communication. Those changes have been made in made in many cases. Others are about to be made because I want more early [inaudible] warning of these situations.

So, I think Janet’s right. A lot is going on in schools but I also think one of the problems in the past was we didn’t have the kind of tight communication between the schools and ACS. This new set of reforms, I think, is going to substantially fix that.

Lehrer: We had a guest yesterday who said they need more social workers in ACS not just caseworkers who aren’t nearly as well trained.

Mayor: Look, I won’t comment specifically because I feel that we have added a lot to ACS in terms of both the number of employees and the amount of training. So, I don’t – and the reason I’m not commenting is I don’t want to go out of my depth. I think it’s a fair question. I think what we are still responding to here is a reality where there was real disinvestment in ACS for years and there wasn’t the kind of training that caseworkers and others needed to be as effective as possible. Those reforms are now in place and that’s going to make a difference. But I think it’s a fair question which I’m happy to look into – whether additional social workers would help as well.

Lehrer: Shari in Chelsea, you’re on WNYC with the Mayor. Hello, Shari.

Question: Good morning, nice to speak with you – and Happy Holidays.

Lehrer: You too.

Lehrer: My problem right now is with City bureaucracy. We are having some difficulties – my employers and I, as their representative – getting in touch with the proper City employees and agencies to accomplish things. And to give you an example, I actually received a notice in the mail from the City yesterday. It was dated December 20th for a payment that was due November 22nd which is a little odd – time warped there. And I was unable to contact any City agency to ask a question about that. I call 3-1-1 four times. Nobody could give me a working number to the Department of Finance to ask a question about it –

Mayor: So, let me ask you this – because I want to understand – when you call 3-1-1 and said here’s my problem because what you’re saying is a totally logical problem – “I got a bill that’s already passed the due date,” what did the folks at 3-1-1 say to you.

Question: They looked and looked and looked and could not find a phone number for – one 3-1-1 representative gave me a phone number that was supposed to be for the Department of Finance. When I called it, no one answered.

Mayor: But did they offer to do anything more to try and address the issue for you rather than just give you a phone number?

Question: No, because there’s really nothing they could do about it.

Mayor: Okay. That’s not the way it’s supposed to go. So, I’m glad you’re calling. We’re supposed to – and I will go deal with the folks who are on 3-1-1 – they’re supposed to help you get resolution on your issue not just pass you a number to nowhere. So, you’re right, that there is still real bureaucratic issues we’re trying to work through in every agency. It’s the history of bureaucracy going back to the Roman Empire. But I will say 3-1-1 in many cases has helped to cut through that and a lot of the other things we’re doing now where we provide, you know, much more user-friendly, customer-friendly approaches. We did this with pre-K and we’re doing it our GetCovered initiative around health insurance where we get a real human being to help you settle your problem rather than be sent out into the ether.

So, let me found out – if you’ll give the information to WNYC – let me find out why this happened. And it should not have happened. First, let’s fix your specific issue. Let’s get it resolved. But second we will work to get 3-1-1 to recognize they can’t leave people hanging like that.

Lehrer: Alright, Shari, thank you. We’ll take your contact information off the air and some of those details. And we are out of time for today and this week’s Ask the Mayor. Mr. Mayor, as always, thanks a lot. And again, Merry Christmas.

Mayor: Merry Christmas, Brian. Be well.