Transcript: Mayor de Blasio Appears Live on Inside City Hall

February 4, 2020

Errol Louis: Welcome back to Inside City Hall. Over the weekend City health officials confirmed that three people are being tested for the coronavirus. All three had recently visited China. Meanwhile, across the U.S. there are now 11 confirmed cases of the virus. Here now to talk about that and much more is Mayor de Blasio. Welcome, Mr. Mayor, and I understand there is like a 48-hour gestation period. Is there any update on –

Mayor Bill de Blasio: No, actually the – you know, it’s two full weeks between when you might contract it and when it might show symptoms or any time within. But the issue is the testing. Right now the only way we can get testing from the CDC is to send samples to Atlanta and then wait for them to test it and alert us, which is a very cumbersome system. I’ve made a formal request of the CDC to allow New York City to do its own testing literally at the City Health Department lab across the street from Bellevue. Today we got some, hopefully, promising news. The CDC is taking that request very seriously and we hope to have a formal answer soon. But the reality is once you have a confirmation of – or knowledge, I should say, that it is not one of the other identifiable similar diseases then you proceed to test for the coronavirus. That then can take up to two days for just the testing itself.

Louis: Got it. The so-called regular flu – the flu that we’re all supposed to be dealing with – I was looking  at some CDC estimates and they’re saying from last October through January 25th nationwide, 180,000 to 250,000 hospitalizations and between 10,000 and 25,000 deaths. So even the regular flu season is pretty serious–

Mayor: Very serious.

Louis: And this transmission is sort of similar, right?

Mayor: Yeah, first of all, very important point. You know we are all so used to the flu and yet it really does – it sickens a huge number of people and it does kill an extraordinary amount of people. We should not take it lightly which is why getting the flu shot is the right thing to do every flu season. Even now our Health Commissioner has said given the similarity, it is important to get the flu shot even now if you haven’t because at least it will help to differentiate.

But I think what’s happening with coronavirus, Errol, is it is brand new to the medical community, it spread very rapidly obviously, they don’t know enough about it, and there is no cure and there is no vaccine. So, that combination of features I think is why people are so deeply, deeply concerned about where this could go and why we are taking so many precautions to protect New Yorkers. And folks all over the country are really trying to get ahead of this.

But the amazing part, as we find so often in health care, the common sense approach is so important. If you think you may have it, get to a doctor. And the people who would have the reason to think they have it – have those flu-like symptoms and have either been to China, particularly to the Wuhan area, or have been in close contact with people who have come back from there. So, it’s a pretty limited number of folks. But if anyone fits that description they need to get to health care right away.

Louis: Right. And as far as we know, the protocols that are in place are going to sort of alert you to, you said, when not if the virus does arrive in real numbers here in the city.

Mayor: Look, we knew a week ago that based on everything that we have seen about this disease and obviously the intense amount of travel between China and New York City – I mean we’re the largest Chinese population outside of Asia here – that it was likely it would show up here. We’re waiting to see on the three potential cases as early as tonight, tomorrow we may have news on the first one. We’ll see if we have our first case. But I still don’t have any doubt it’s a matter of just days, most likely, before we have our first confirmed case. That is not cause for alarm if people do what they need to do which is get health care quickly. Remember this is a survivor-able disease for a lot of people but we want to make sure, one, they get to care as quickly as possible to maximize the chances of coming through it okay and, two, get them out of circulation. If someone has it, let’s get them away from other people as quickly as possible. That’s how we keep this contained.

Louis: Okay, let me move onto our lead story tonight. There is a letter, I guess, some court papers have been exchanged with ICE saying that the sanctuary city policy is going to be something that they test in court. And I wanted to ask you in particular about cases like the one that we cited, this defendant Mr. Khan, who is being held without bail for the murder and sexual abuse of a 92-year-old woman. At least what’s believed to be the immediate minutes before the attack are caught on video. Why protect this person?

Mayor: This is exactly the case – it’s a horrible, horrible case. It is disgusting what he did and this is exactly the kind of the person under the law of New York City that upon being convicted would be turned over to ICE. Look, it’s an American principal for anybody that there is due process and everyone deserves due process. Even those accused of the most horrible crimes still get due process in America. The reality here is this is the first time he will be tried of any crime and we followed our law and our law has been very, very balanced I think in saying we’re not going to abide by ICE’s very, in my view, divisive political approach which is that anybody who is undocumented anywhere in America could be removed at any time with no notice, and a family torn apart, or someone who – you literally could have a ticket for littering or parking and they could use that as a rationale to tear a family apart and leave kids behind and take a parent away. We don’t believe in that here in New York City. Our law is clear – 177 serious and violent crimes. Once you have your due process, once you’re convicted of one of those, we will absolutely cooperate.

Louis: In this case he’s in New York’s custody. He’s going to be prosecuted by the Queens District Attorney, I imagine. So if they ask you, hey, give us some information about what you know – you know he’s undocumented, you know he’s a suspect in this crime, you know he’s being held without bail – why not just tell them his license plate –

Mayor: Because –

Louis: His license number or whatever it is –

Mayor: Sure. I mean first of all ICE knows enough to know our law and that this is exactly someone who upon conviction would be turned over. But second, we got a request and the wording of it and the approach – and the same thing happened in the City of Denver – is abundantly clear this was not about trying to find pertinent information on someone they knew was already arrested. This was political. It was strategic to try and bring attention to ICE’s approach, the Trump administration’s approach, and try and use that as a negative toward cities that take a different approach.

Louis: Do you worry about losing that fight politically? Because I mean you’re in the position now of defending someone accused of a heinous crime of which there appears to be quite a lot of evidence.

Mayor: No, I don’t feel we’re defending the individual at all. I believe that we are saying that in America there is due process and the second that due process is over is you’re guilty, you’re out of here. I think it’s quite the opposite, Errol. I really do believe that.

Louis: But they haven’t asked you to turn him over. They’re just asking you for [inaudible] –

Mayor: Again, so they asked, in four different cases, and if you look at the four cases we said, you know what, we don’t think this is actually about law enforcement, we don’t think this is about keeping people safe, we think you’re on an expedition to try and get political pressure on cities that don’t agree with the Trump administration. And we went to the U. S. Attorney for the Eastern District and we said to the U. S. Attorney, we’re looking for your guidance to help resolve this. Well lo-and-behold after we did that, ICE backed off two of its own subpoenas. So, I think it’s very telling about the fact that these subpoenas certainly did not appear to us, nor did they appear to the City of Denver, as efforts to actually enforce law and protect Americans, they appeared to be political ploys, and we treated them as such. But our law is clear. After due process if someone is guilty of one of those crimes we are turning them over to ICE.

Louis: Okay. Let me move on. We’re going to take a short break here. I’ll have much more with Mayor de Blasio in just a minute. Stay with us.

[...]

Louis: Welcome back to Inside City Hall. I’m joined once again by Mayor de Blasio. And Mr. Mayor, the property tax commission that you helped set up is issuing some recommendations, giving some broad guidelines about where they want to go, creating new classes, and sort of equalizing things, and most importantly, I think, having a closer tie between the actual market value of property and what we are charged in property taxes. You’re suggesting you like the idea behind it even not having seen the final version of it, even though this would cost you more in taxes.

Mayor: Absolutely. Look, fair is fair, Errol. I live in a community where property values have gone up a lot over the years and people have benefitted from that and yet property taxes in Brownstone Brooklyn and a lot of other places including a lot of Manhattan have not been consistent and fair given the high values of the homes. Meanwhile in other communities people have been paying disproportionately high property tax. And I’ve talked to people all over the city. This is one of the number one topics at town hall meetings I’ve had all over the city, and what folks want is fairness, consistency, transparency.

This commission, I charged them, as did the City Council – I said go get us a system that is a lot fairer and clearer. We can’t lose revenue, we have to pay for Police and Fire and Sanitation and schools and all, but within the revenue we have now, get us a more fair system and look out for people who, a lot – for seniors in particular – a lot of folks who are lower income have a house but don’t have a lot of cash. We have to take account of them as well. So, what’s been proposed by this commission I think is absolutely in the right direction. We’re going to equalize the tax levels across neighborhoods. It will be phased it. It’s not going to be too much of a shock to the system. But if you’re someone who is low income and you still have a home we don’t want to see your property tax go up appreciably. We want to protect your rights and your ability to stay there. So, I think they gave it a really good, fair, balanced approach. Now it will be put – after hearings, after consultations, there will be final recommendations. And I want to be really clear. There’s – it’s not shocking there are some cynics in this town but this is something I want to get done while I’m Mayor. And I think, bluntly, a mayor in their second term is much better positioned to address something like this.

Louis: That’s exactly what I was going to ask you. The last four mayors –

Mayor: Great minds, great minds, Errol.

Louis: The last four mayors were asked to do something on it. I know Dinkins and Koch sort of took some steps in that direction. But you know this is generational. So, if this is going to be a legacy item, yes, it could get done only if you want it to before you leave.

Mayor: I want to get it done and I believe it will be a very, very important opportunity to create more fairness in this city, to address the kind of thing that drives people crazy because they just see the unfairness. When I came here to address inequality – this is another form of inequality. If you’re living in a lower income neighborhood, working class neighborhood, and you’re watching people in a well off neighborhood not pay their fair share in taxes, I don’t believe in that. And I don’t care if I end up personally having to pay more in property taxes.

Louis: You will? Yes?

Mayor: I’m clear. I will work hard to be able to. I think it’s the right thing to do. But I am also clear about the fact, since occasionally politics is discussed on this show, that in your second term, free of electoral burdens and term limits, it’s a great time to fight for this kind of thing. It’s hard, it’s complex. This is a big, tough issue, right, and ultimately it has to be decided in Albany. But we’ve got most of two years to get it done and my view is people are really going to – when they see this proposal they’re going to want it, they’re going to believe in it, and they’re going to let their Senators and Assembly members know it’s important to get done.

Louis: Okay, let me ask you about another legacy item. You’re trying to desegregate the public schools to a certain extent. Your Chancellor has been getting attacked, or protested, by a group of people who follow him to each and every event. They’re calling him a racist and all kinds of other stuff for trying to implement your policy. Do you need to engage these folks more directly?

Mayor: I engage people, as you have seen with town hall meetings and lots of other ways – I’m happy to engage people who may not agree with me. But I do think you said something very important there. There is some real politics going on here. Folks who don’t agree with Richard Carranza or don’t like Richard Carranza because he’s had the audacity to say we’ve got some unfairness we have to address. And he’s come up with real and specific ways of doing that which I support. I don’t want to mistake that – I think it’s a pretty small group of people. I think the vast majority of New Yorkers want us to diversify our classrooms, want to see us create equality in every part of New York City life including our schools.

And I got to tell you, I’ve heard from parents all over the city – Carranza and I did town hall meetings last spring, we’re going to be doing them again – parents telling me how much they found him to be a breath of fresh air because he understood our public school parents and their families. And I think he does an extraordinary job of going out into schools and out into communities and connecting. So, I think the group that is opposing him is small and vocal, and I don’t think they represent the majority in this city.

Louis: Okay. Let me move on to Children’s Community Services. Back in February 2017, the administration was concerned enough about this nonprofit group that was handling a significant portion of portfolio of the homelessness services outreach, that you gave them sort of warning letters, but then they got even more money like hundreds of millions of dollars more, months after that. All told it looks like something over half a billion dollars. And it looks like they mishandled it. In fact that’s what you are alleging now. But why did they get all that money in the first place?

Mayor: Look it’s a very fair question. And I want there to be a full investigation of what happened here. Now, I want to separate the two points, you understand how urgent it is to provide services to the homeless in a right to shelter to situation such as we have. And I always say to people, thank God we have it. Because the alternative is some place like Los Angles with tens of thousands of people living on the streets literally. We do the opposite. We say everyone has the right to shelter. Keeping up that system takes an immense amount of work. There are relatively few providers who do this work. If a provider was doing the work, of course they were going to be able to get a substantial amount of contracts because there is a lot of work to do. But when you see an organization where you think there is problems, it should be reported to DOI for investigation. Until it’s proven, until there’s details, you still got to keep doing the work. But what I want to see is that any money that was mishandled, comes back to the taxpayers. And if there was something here that needs to be done better going forward, I want our social service agencies to learn from that. I know they were dealing with very urgent need, but I want to make sure you know, that every alternative was considered as they were making these decisions.

Louis: Okay, let me talk a little politics with you. We have got State of the City coming up, in which we are going to hear – well, last time you did this you previewed a lot of stuff that we later heard during your run for president, about plenty of money being in the city, but being in the wrong hands, you want to give us a little preview?

Mayor: I will tell you a little bit about what you are going to see and feel. This is going to be a very different kind of State of the City address. It’s going to look different, it’s going to feel different. It’s going to be a different tone really, because I want to have you know, a real conversation with the people of this city about some of the challenges we are facing and the fact that we are going to have to do some things very differently. So after six years, and we have tried a lot of very, you know, strong, forceful approaches. I am going to sort of give a sense of what we see has worked and where we are going to have to go in some very different directions to keep this a city for everyone. And so I think, you know a lot of times, when you see a State of the City, or state of whatever, sometimes it feels a little disconnected from peoples’ lives. This is going to be all about the lives that New Yorkers are living right now. And some of the things that need to change and change quickly.

Louis: Okay. Well we’ll certainly be carrying that live. I’ll be telling the audience about that a little bit later.

Mayor: I thank you for that.

Louis: And then I guess finally Shaun Donovan, the former HPD Commissioner exploring a run for mayor. He’s filed some paper and so forth. Do you know him, I don’t know if you guys overlapped?

Mayor: Yeah, sure. Absolutely.

Louis: You were in the Council when he was commissioner?

Mayor: Yeah and worked with him when he worked for the City. Worked with him when he worked for the Obama administration as well.

Louis: Any thoughts on the slowly developing campaign so far?

Mayor: Shaun is someone I certainly respect. I have a good working relationship with. I mean this is – we see the field changing in just the last week or two right? And I think we will potentially continue to. But I do think this – the fact that we now have the June elections has created a little bit of an interesting dynamic where people are sort of trying to make sense of it now when it’s before its natural time. I think when we had September primaries it kind of put things in order a little bit more. So the whole world is going to paying attention to the presidential race as they should, the congressional races, you know the State races. And I think for all the folks running for mayor, they are going to have to do what they do now but recognize that real attention isn’t going to happen until the second week of November.

Louis: Speaking of presidential races you have organized Iowa caucuses, so you know something about what’s going on in the field tonight.

Mayor: Yes, I have. Yes.

Louis: Let me just ask you this, is that second vote part of – a crucial part of the organizing?

Mayor: Yes-siree.

Louis: Because there will be some people in that gymnasium or you know union hall or whatever it is who are up for grabs after the first round of balloting.

Mayor: I am trying to understand what childhood game I played to best compare it to, whether it’s like Red Rover or Capture the Flag or whatever. It’s very physical, caucuses. You have to gather your group and then literally have to have people defend your group from incursions from other groups. I am not making it up.

Louis: Just snatch people out of your group?

Mayor: Literally, you have to – you get like this is your corner, that’s their corner or whatever. You have to put up a defensive perimeter to keep people from trying to raid. Like your neighbor comes over and says hey, Errol, come join us. So you are trying to keep the people you have and then you send out scouts to go get other people from the – especially the groups, the candidacies that don’t make the 15 percent cut off. But you will see it tonight – you could have people, you know there is four particularly strong candidates. I guarantee you folks will be trying to raid from each of the four to the other.

Louis: Oh man.

Mayor: It’s an action – this is a contact sport in Iowa, let me tell you.

Louis: I wish I was there, we’ll see what happens by tomorrow. Thanks very much. Good to see you. We’ll see you next week.

Mayor: Take care. Absolutely.