Transcript: Mayor de Blasio Delivers Remarks at Conflicts of Interest Board (COIB) Annual

May 20, 2014

Video available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=93CU22DBieA

Mayor Bill de Blasio: Well thank you so much Richard, and thank you everyone who is here today. This is an important session and an important opportunity to think about the work we do in government and how to do it right. And I want to thank Richard for his leadership. I want to thank all the members of the Conflicts of Interest Board and your honorees today, Rose Gil Hearn and Burton Lehman. Congratulations to them for their extraordinary service to our city. The topic today, to me, is one that by definition suffuses all the work we do. How do we do this work appropriately? How do we always remain mindful of our ethical requirements and obligations? How do we help others to be mindful? Let’s face it, in the work of government – the always complicated, ever-shifting environment we’re in – this is a topic that needs, in effect, endless consideration. It needs to be talked about and thought about and reviewed. And our colleagues – all of our colleagues – need to think about these issues together with us.

It’s an ongoing conversation to help people always be mindful and vigilant. But it’s what we have to do to do our work well, to follow the dictates of the law. To also, very importantly, keep the faith of the public. And that’s what I want to dwell on for just a couple of minutes with you, because I happen to be someone who’s watched the trajectory over the years of how the public regards all of us in government and in public service, and what we’ve done right and what we’ve done wrong. And there’s a lot to learn from it, so I want to reflect on that for just a moment. But I also – I want to take a moment to thank our wonderful host, Dean Anthony Crowell of New York Law School, and everyone here at the law school for making this beautiful facility available to us. And again, I mentioned the members of the Conflicts of Interest Board and thank them for their work. I also want to thank the Executive Director Mark Davies and the whole staff of the Conflicts of Interest Board. And all of the city officials who are here, thank you for being a part of this.

The point I want to get to is that I think we’ve lived in a very interesting time. I often am asked what motivated me to get involved in public service, and some of it was the family environment I grew up in, but some of it was being a child of the Watergate era. And I don’t know how many people in this room had the experience I had, but in the summer of 1973, when I wasn’t out in the park playing ball I was glued to the Watergate hearings. And there was nothing quite like it, before then or since then, nothing quite like it. If you wanted to see all that could go wrong and all that could be right in government, it was on display that summer. And of course, the nation has been very different since then. Sadly, that was a defining moment and a beginning of a deeper cynicism, a deeper questioning about everyone in public service. But by the same token, it was a moment of triumph because the system did work on so many levels. The checks and balances functioned, so many people who were in a position to challenge authority and question did so. And even junior members of the Congress suddenly stood up in the face of a corrupt president and did their jobs effectively. And the media played a crucial role as well.

So it’s impossible not to feel that all of us in public service haven’t been under a certain cloud, literally since that summer. But on the other hand, there’s so many reminders of what happened at that moment, of what should be in government, about how people should comport themselves, should handle a crisis, should address corruption. And I still see the glass as half-full because we learned from that experience that there are people who do the right thing and they can prevail.

Now the cynicism we face unfortunately has been reinforced many times since then by any number of scandals and missteps by people in public office. And it puts an additional burden on us, and in a sense it becomes cumulative. With each passing year, it’s not surprising that the trust levels go down a little bit. That means for all of us in our time, we have a double job to do. We have the everyday work of managing government effectively and always in an ethical fashion, but we’re also digging out of a hole, in effect. We have to be that much better to start to restore public trust, and I don’t say that as a burden. I don’t say that because I think it’s an insurmountable challenge. I think it’s what we are called upon to do in our times. I have seen endless positive examples of when a public servant does the right thing, public servant does their job effectively, a public servant calls out corruption. A whistleblower brings to the surface something that needed to become public. I’ve seen many times when the public faith starts to grow a little bit again, where people start to believe that their government can be all they want it to be. And so in a sense, there is a bit of a cyclical dynamic, where there’s some good times and bad. But I think the fact that you can see the regrowth of trust, the fact that it is possible to show people over time that we can get it right. And I think certainly that’s been particularly true in New York City government. That gives us some inspiration to keep digging deeper, to keep finding new ways to do better at enforcing the ethical standards we should live by.

I just want to give you a little perspective, because again I am a glass half-full kind of guy by nature. So when you look at the example of New York City government, there is a lot to like in the broad sweep of history. You’ll remember if you want to come with me one day and visit the Tweed Building. It is a living example of all that went wrong, all that was bad. I believe to this day it is per capita still the greatest cost overrun in the history of government, but it was all about graft, it was all about corruption. It’s kind of interesting, we still call it the Tweed building, but let’s move off that. I think we’re supposed to name buildings after good people, but let’s work on that.

But if you think about what New York City government was like, sadly, for decades – the dominance of Tammany Hall, the assumption of corruption. And how it came undone because of some very extraordinary efforts by reformers, how what was a commonplace dynamic where there were no meaningful ethical standards was overturned and began a march towards what is ultimately one of the most ethically correct governments anywhere in the country. In the heyday of Tammany Hall, everything was controlled through a political process – contracts, jobs, you name it, everything.

And we’ve got to remember just how overt it was. A great quote from the famous George W. Plunkitt, who very proudly said that he promoted what he called ‘honest graft’. And had one of the great summaries of what that era was about. He said at the career, ‘I’ve seen my opportunities, and I took them.’

So that was the New York City of the past. I think one of the seminal moments was the election of a person who is a hero to me, Fiorello La Guardia. And La Guardia, as you know, ran against the Tammany machine and won and was arguably the most popular mayor in the history of this city. And changed the tone for good.

And there’s a couple of quotes I just want to bring to – because it’s, again, a reminder of how quickly things can start to get better. The New York Times said after La Guardia’s first day in office, said, ‘Perhaps never before did a mayor of New York begin his term with such an air of getting down to business and enforcing industry and honesty on the part of every city employee.’ So the Times was very laudatory after the first day. A few days later, they were even more struck, and they observed with amazement that commissioners who are actually ‘spending a full day at their desk’.

[Laughter]

So La Guardia did so much to turn the tide, to start us on the path that we’re on today, always getting better at creating a more efficient and clean government. We know we are far from perfect, we know there have been problems and scandals, even in recent years. But I do think the historical perspective brings us a lot here. It reminds us of that fundamental challenge. Not only are we here to follow the law and enforce the law, but we’re here to uphold the public trust, which in many ways is a higher standard. We’re here to show by our actions, by our deeds, that the public can believe in their government and it actually speaks for them, acts for them. That’s the standard we have to hold ourselves to. We want every citizen we come across to come away from the interaction more convinced that the government is actually on their side.

And at the same time, we recognize how far we’ve come in dealing with corruption, in dealing with unethical behavior. And we know it always lurks out there. It never is done away with. It’s something we have to remain vigilant about at all times. But I think the whole sweep of history tells us we’ve been moving in the right direction, and as we move in the right direction, we do always have that chance to restore some public trust, to bring people back to a little more comfort that things are being done right. That’s what everyone in this room is charged with. That’s what I feel a responsibility to do every day.

So I just want to thank you. I want to thank you first and foremost for the work you do as public servants. I want to express my personal gratitude for that. But I also want to thank you for being a part of this gathering today, thinking about how we can do better, thinking about how we can hold ourselves to the highest standards and how we can show the people that we honor the trust they’ve put in us. Thank you so much.