Transcript: Mayor de Blasio Appears Live on Inside City Hall

February 18, 2020

Bobby Cuza: Welcome back to Inside City Hall. As we told you before the break, Mayor de Blasio has been out on the campaign trail in Nevada in support of presidential candidate Bernie Sanders. Mayor de Blasio joins me now from Las Vegas to talk more about his trip and much more. Welcome back to the program, Mr. Mayor. It looks like you’re in front of a hotel pool, I hear some rushing water, but I hope we can both hear each other clearly.

Mayor Bill de Blasio: Yeah, I can hear you, Bobby. I hope you have a very scenic backdrop here.

Cuza: For those of our viewers who are unaware of your whereabouts this weekend, explain what exactly it is that finds the Mayor of New York in Las Vegas and what any of this has to do with New York.

Mayor: Bobby, it has everything to do with New York City. Look, for six years I’ve been doing everything that we had, in the power of New York City, to address the fundamental issues we face. I talked about this at my State of the City address a few days ago. We have a profound affordability crisis in New York City. We have so many problems that can only be addressed not only with us doing everything possible but we need help from Albany, we need help from Washington. If we don’t change the federal government, we’ll never be able to address global warming, we’ll never be able to address our infrastructure problems, mass transit. There are so many things – obviously public housing – where we have a huge absence of a federal role and it’s hurting us.

So I think it’s absolutely imperative that we get Donald Trump out of the White House, get a progressive Democrat in, and I believe Bernie Sanders is the person who has the best chance of beating Donald Trump and changing the country, but especially doing the things that will help New York City. The Nevada caucuses are coming up – absolutely crucial moment in this election – and I made the decision to support Bernie and his campaign asked me to come out here. It’s a crucial contest and they thought I could be helpful. Nevada has got a lot of similarities to New York in terms of it’s a very diverse state, very pro-labor state, a progressive state. It’s a place where there’s an opportunity for a big win for Bernie, and they asked me to come out and help and I wanted to do that because I think it’s important for our country and for our city.

Cuza: I wonder about the timing of this. I presume you’ve known you were going to support Bernie Sanders for at least some time now. Why do this now after the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary, at a time when Bernie Sanders seems to be, if not the front runner, as close as you can get to a front runner in this race. But did you want to wait and see how things shook out after those first two contests?

Mayor: No, Bobby, what’s most important to me actually – to deal with what I had to as Mayor, to get the State of the City address done, to get the preliminary budget done, to get my testimony in Albany done. I’ve been talking to the Sanders campaign for weeks, talking about what would be the right timing particularly in terms of what I had to accomplish immediately in New York. But they also thought I could contribute in particular in a state like Nevada. So those pieces came together pretty naturally.

Cuza: Why Nevada though? I was going to ask you when you’re out there in Carson City or Reno, I wonder if people recognize you, do they know your record as mayor? I mean, what kind of weight does a Bill de Blasio endorsement carry in Nevada?

Mayor: I never want to overstate it, but I would simply say, first of all, there’s a huge number of New Yorkers out here. You know a lot of people in Nevada don’t originally come from Nevada, they’ve moved out here. A lot of New Yorkers who feel an affinity and they care about what the Mayor of New York City feels, for sure. A lot of progressives, a lot of labor people who know that I’ve been a champion of labor and progressive causes. So I think endorsements are helpful. I don’t think they’re decisive. I think they’re helpful and this is a point in the campaign where Bernie Sanders has really been gaining momentum but every piece helps. We obviously see a lot of races are very close. You always want everything that gives you every little boost. So I think it was the right place to come out and lend a hand.

Cuza: And Mr. Mayor, we’ve seen a lot of sniping back and forth today from the Bernie Sanders camp and the Michael Bloomberg camp over some of this vitriol that we’re seeing online from Sanders supporters being directed at supporters of other candidates and also at the culinary union which is a big labor group in Nevada that has come out against Bernie Sanders. There seems to be at least a perception out there that supporters of Bernie Sanders are sort of prone to more abusive behavior, more threatening behavior online than maybe supporters of some of the other candidates. Do you see that?

Mayor: I think – I want to be really clear. I’m someone who believes in Bernie and his movement, and anyone who would attack people particularly those who attack in a racist or sexist manner, that’s unacceptable. It has no place in this movement. What happened here – the culinary union actually has stayed neutral, Bobby. They’re an amazing union I have tremendous respect for but some of the attacks were directed at their women-of-color leaders not their white male leaders and that really said something. It’s not acceptable. It’s not – look, let’s be very clear, Bernie is someone who believes in a respectful and inclusive society. His campaign reflects it, his campaign team reflects it. This is not coming from him or from his team or his surrogates. This is coming from some people who say they are Bernie supporters. They need to stop what they’re doing right now or they should get out of this movement, that’s the bottom line.

Cuza: Now, as it regards Michael Bloomberg, you have not been shy in your criticism of him and his record and in particular the stop-and-frisk policy that the NYPD really focused on while he was mayor. As I’m sure you know last week there was this audio that surfaced of Bloomberg defending stop-and-frisk in really stark, racial terms. It didn’t seem to really do that much damage to his candidacy, though. He seems to be picking up support from the black community, from black leaders. And I wonder how you explain that, and somebody even like Greg Meeks here in New York City representing Southeast Queens, his endorsement of Mayor Bloomberg last week.

Mayor: I think when all voters hear the whole truth about Michael Bloomberg, they’re going to think differently. I think black voters, in particular, when they hear about the trauma that was created by stop-and-frisk for young men of color, how much division was created, how much Michael Bloomberg refused to listen to community leaders who constantly told him it was the wrong thing to do. That’s only one thing. I think you’re going to hear conversations about a lot of other things. The rich got richer when Michael Bloomberg was mayor, and I fear he would do the same thing as president.

So, I’ve spent six years undoing so many of the things that Michael Bloomberg did wrong and when you look across the board, homelessness – what was the explosion in homelessness that occurred while Michael Bloomberg was mayor, the fact that he would not require developers to create affordable housing, the fact that time after time he favored developers over communities. This is all going to come out and I think it’s going to alienate not just black voters but many, many democratic voters.

Cuza: Alright, stay put, Mayor de Blasio. It’s time for a quick break. We will have much more straight ahead, stay with us.

[...]

Cuza: Welcome back to Inside City Hall. I am joined once again by Mayor de Blasio. And Mr. Mayor I wanted to ask you about a development in the Tessa Majors case. She was the college student at Barnard who was stabbed to death back in December at Morningside Park. There has been an arrest in the case, a 14-year-old boy. I wonder what you can tell us, how you feel about the way that the investigation was handled, and the fact that he will be tried as an adult.

Mayor: Bobby, this is just a horrible, tragic situation and it’s two young people. One, whose life is lost forever, the other who will end up probably in jail the rest of his life. It’s just horrible. The NYPD has been very, very careful to get this right and we’re following obviously the law for how a case like this is handled. Even with a minor it’s still a murder case. But it really speaks, Bobby, to the point that the NYPD realizes today in a way that wasn’t true as much in the past that we’ve got to stop these crimes before they happen. We’ve got to reach young people who might go on the wrong path and help them. That’s why Commissioner Shea has made a real commitment to re-orienting a lot of the work of the NYPD to intervening in young people’s lives because we just have to stop these tragedies. And I think we have strategies that will allow us to do that going forward.

Cuza: Mr. Mayor, let me ask you about a move by the Trump administration last week to sort of escalate this ongoing war with sanctuary cities like New York City. As you know they announced they will be redeploying some immigration enforcement officers from the southern border – these are tactical units. In some cases they are trained to deal with violent encounters. They are now being placed in cities like New York on the streets to assist in immigration arrests. I wonder what your thoughts are on this and whether places like New York City are powerless to stop it.

Mayor: Bobby, I think it’s dangerous. This was not done with any effort to ensure it would protect safety. Everything ICE is doing is not about safety anymore, it’s political. ICE functions essentially as a wing of the Donald Trump campaign at this point. It’s not about our safety. The fact is these officers are trained for combat-like situations, SWAT team, rural areas. They were not trained to be in densely populated urban areas and I’m very, very worried that you could see violence that’s absolutely necessary. So this is not motivated by the right kind of thing to say the least. We will do everything we can to deal with it. I think it’s the kind of thing that will prove to be both ineffective and potentially dangerous, and that may be the reason that it stops. That’s the truth.

Cuza: And is there any recourse that New York City has or, short of that, at least any sort of counsel that you can provide to people in the community who may be confronted with this sort of stepped up enforcement?

Mayor: Yeah, first of all anyone who is fearful – and there are many people fearful right now – can call 3-1-1 to get to the truth and get the facts. We’re examining if there is any recourse. In the past we’ve been able to [inaudible] and stop some of the administration’s actions. I’m not sure in this case that’s possible. But my hope is that this is something that will be very short lived. We’ve seen grandiose pronouncements from the Trump administration on immigration before that then they suddenly walk away from. So, I’m praying this is something that they will think better of.

Cuza: Mr. Mayor, one of the big stories in the city last week regarded brokers’ fees. This was good news for renters, this sort of stunning ruling that in fact those brokers’ fees would no longer be charged to renters, prospective tenants. Then there’s sort of this whiplash. It was blocked in court and I wonder where you stand on this. It seems like this is in keeping with your affordable housing agenda.

Mayor: Yeah, we were all a little surprised, Bobby, when it happened but I think it’s the right direction. I don’t know where it’s going to go legally. But for so many New Yorkers, working class people, even middle class people, certainly low income people, brokers’ fees make it impossible to get housing, security deposits, too. One of the things that I announced in the State of the City was a plan to end security deposits as we’ve known them. There’s a new approach that allows people to pay only a little bit a month. We’re going to try and get that bill passed because when you have to come up with thousands and thousands of dollars, for a lot of people, that’s impossible or it takes up all the savings they have.

So, I think the affordability issue is causing a lot of change and a lot of rethinking and certainly in my State of the City I talked about a vision of how to save our city, keep it a city for everyone and ending the kinds of security deposits we have now is part of that. There’s a lot of other things that we want to do. We want to turn – there’s almost 100,000 basement apartments in New York City that I think could be made safe and legal and a lot of them could be affordable housing. We want to pass a law in Albany to protect renters. There’s over two million renters who right now have no protections against rent gouging. Their rent could be shot up as high as a landlord wants. I think that’s wrong. We need a law to protect against it. And we need to have community land trust, just take public land and ensure that it’s going to be affordable housing for the long term and can never be privatized. These are all strategies that I want to put in place in my next two years.

Cuza: Separately a judge has made a ruling on the case of this luxury tower on Amsterdam Avenue on the Upper West Side. Fifty-plus stories, the building has already topped out, but now a judge has ruled that it sort of took advantage of a loophole in New York City zoning laws that the City should now revoke its permits. And it looks like it may actually have to take down some of the top floors of that building. What do you know about this and the fact that they seem to have procured the City building permits that they needed in the first place?

Mayor: Yeah, Bobby, I don’t have all the facts on this case. I will say if a developer violates our laws and our zoning, there have been times that they have been required to literally take down floors that they had already built, and it’s not something I ever wish to see but if someone has done the wrong thing there has to be consequences. So, we’ll assess this case and figure out what we have to do but you know what, we have to make very clear the law is the law.

Cuza: Mr. Mayor, in our last minute I wanted to ask you about a case we learned about last week where the NYPD subpoenaed some records regarding a New York Post reporter, a longtime police reporter, subpoenaing her records regarding her Twitter account and some photos that were posted from a crime scene in Brooklyn. The idea was to find out who on the police force may have leaked some of these photos but once we learned about this the NYPD apparently revoked that subpoena. Did you have a problem with the way that was handled?

Mayor: Yeah, I think it was a mistake, Bobby. I think the effort to ensure that information that is not public is kept confidential, that’s fair, but subpoenaing a reporter in that fashion, I’m not comfortable with that. Freedom of the press really matters. And I think the NYPD should not have done it and I’m glad they dropped that.

Cuza: Alright, Mr. Mayor, we are going to leave it there. Safe travels back to New York – and I hear that your voice is better. I know you were dealing with some laryngitis these last couple of days.

Mayor: Yeah, I’m still not 100 percent but I’ll be back tonight and hopefully by tomorrow, Bobby.

Cuza: Alright. Thanks again, Mr. Mayor.