Transcript: Mayor de Blasio Appears on Inside City Hall

August 16, 2021

Bobby Cuza: Welcome back to Inside City Hall, turning back to the fight against COVID. The City has been pushing its vaccination effort as COVID cases steadily rise due to the Delta variant just a month before schools open. And starting tomorrow, indoor businesses like entertainment venues, restaurants, and gyms will require proof of vaccination. Here now to talk about all this and more is Mayor de Blasio, who joins us now from the Blue Room inside City Hall. Welcome back to the show, Mr. Mayor.  

Mayor Bill de Blasio: Thank you, Bobby. How are you doing tonight?  

Cuza: I'm doing all right. So, let's talk about the Key to NYC vaccine mandate. Walk us through a little bit of what New Yorkers can expect, because this is not just indoor dining, this is almost any kind of indoor activity you can think of – concerts, bars, cafes, bowling alleys. And the rollout is kind of a soft rollout. We're not going to see enforcement for about a month. So, what can New Yorkers expect to see starting tomorrow? 

Mayor: Yeah, I would just hone, a little bit, your definition there, Bobby. It's indoor entertainment. It is indoor dining and bars, obviously, and indoor fitness. Those are the three big categories and within entertainment we're including, you're right, everything from a bowling alley to a movie theater to a museum and concerts, obviously. Look, indoors as we all know is a particular issue when it comes to COVID. So, it's a real simple rule. If you want to go to one of these wonderful things that’s a great part of life in New York City, all you have to do is get vaccinated. Just get that first dose for now. Obviously, go back later, get the second dose. But just proof of a first dose and you're fine. You can work there. You can go and enjoy all these great places. I think it's going to be a really clear incentive for hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers that, you know, this is going to be a clear moment to say, this is the time to get vaccinated. And talk about incentives, we're offering $100 per person on top of that, just a direct cash incentive for everyone who comes forward. And a lot of people are taking us up on that. We've had over 50,000 New Yorkers already go for that $100 cash incentive since we announced it. So, I think it's going to work. It's going to have an impact. In terms of what it's going to feel like – it's not really that hard, you go up, you show your vaccination card and an ID, and you're done. And I really urge people to get the COVID Safe app, the NYC app, which is really easy to use. It's not connected to the internet. You just store a picture of an ID and a picture of your valid vaccination card, takes a few seconds to show it, and you're done. 

Cuza: I guess one tricky part of this though is that the onus is on the staff at a restaurant or a bar or a museum to check and sort of confirm the legitimacy of the vaccination card. I thought it was interesting at your news briefing this morning, your Technology Commissioner, Jessica Tisch, said there's actually going to be a webinar on de-escalation training for small businesses. De-escalation training, that sounds like people should be prepared for some kind of confrontation. 

Mayor: Yeah, look, I can understand why you'd hear it that way. It really just means, explain to people how it works if someone has a concern, helping to understand why it's happening, it's not the restaurant’s particular choice, it's a citywide policy to address COVID. And look, the vast majority of people I think are going to get it. You're seeing various mandates now all over the country, United States military, you're seeing a lot of private businesses, obviously universities. This is really the shape of things to come, Bobby. I think the vast majority of people get that. In terms of, you know, checking to see something, look, right now, restaurants and bars check IDs for age obviously, before serving liquor. It's not really that different. So, I am the first to say, we want this to go well for restaurants and bars and all the indoor entertainment, everything, fitness, so we are providing training. We're providing support. We're going to do a huge advertising campaign to educate New Yorkers, how it's going to work. We're going to send City experts door-to-door to businesses to answer their questions, hear their concerns, help them work it through. And you're right, it's a soft launch to give people essentially a month to get used to it before any penalties would be applied. 

Cuza: Governor Cuomo today announced a vaccination mandate for health care workers including those at hospitals and nursing homes anywhere in New York State. If I'm understanding it right, that actually sort of goes further and supersedes some of the mandates that you put in place for City health care workers. Were you surprised by that announcement and do you support it?  

Mayor: I think it's a good announcement. None of us was sure what was going to happen in his last days in office, but specifically I think it's a good announcement and it's something we can work with. The active date for that announcement, September 27th, certainly gives us time to address it well. We, as you know, already are requiring our City health workers, our frontline health care workers to either be vaccinated or be tested weekly. The next obvious step forward is to go to a full vaccine mandate. So, I think the State did something that makes sense. And look, we got to stop this Delta variant. This is the bottom line. Every – literally, Bobby, every single additional New Yorker who gets vaccinated helps us stop the Delta variant. When we stop the Delta variant, we protect our recovery, we help to bring this city back. I mean, it really is so simple, stopping Delta equals recovery, and that's the direction we all have to move in. 

Cuza: I wanted to ask you about COVID cases among children. This is something we've seen increasing across the country. This is very anecdotal, but in my own life, I have a four-year-old daughter who in the last couple of weeks has had a couple of exposures to other kids in that same age range who have tested positive. Are we seeing an increase in cases among kids here in the city? And does that affect planning for the school year? I know you're resistant to the idea of implementing a remote option. But how does that factor into school opening? 

Mayor: Bobby, look, I was a public school parent. Both my kids went all the way through New York City public schools. When you're a parent, you know it, you think about your child's health and safety all day long. We will make sure our kids are safe. Our doctors feel strongly, our medical leadership, that the most important thing is for kids to be back in school. We saw last school year, kids who went to school were a lot safer than kids out of school. Out of school, there are not necessarily all the protections in school. In school you've got everyone wearing a mask, the constant cleaning, the ventilation, a high percentage of, now, both kids and adults who are vaccinated in school communities. We need to keep our kids safe, but actually the best way to do it is to get them into school. But we’ve seen more cases across the board of all ages. Thankfully, young people are affected less by COVID. We've known that for a long time. And anyone who is vaccinated has much less of a negative impact overwhelmingly. And that means anybody 12 years old and up now. And I'll just give you the numbers because it's pretty striking that with that group – I thought I had them here – with that group of, I think it's 58 percent now of our 12 to 17 year olds are already vaccinated. And that's – remember that vaccine has only been available fairly recently, much less of a time span than the vaccine for adults. So, we're seeing a great uptake by parents getting their 12 to 17 year-olds vaccinated. We're going to be doing a huge vaccination effort for schools for the next four weeks non-stop, make it really easy for parents to get their kids vaccinated. I think parents are going to respond just the way I would have certainly, and, you know, they're going to focus on it. They're going to get their kids vaccinated. And then we predict before we get out of this calendar year, we should be able to be vaccinating the five to 11 year olds as well. That's the expectation of our health leadership that that vaccine will be available before this year is out. 

Cuza: Do you know whether we are seeing, though, an uptick in cases among kids, whether it's the raw numbers or as a share of overall cases? 

Mayor: We'll get you the specifics, what we – we're obviously seeing an uptick across the board because of the new cases from the Delta variant. What I'm not seeing – and I've asked the health leadership about this number of times – we're not seeing worse outcomes with young people. We're seeing – meaning that, you know, school aged kids – we're seeing a lot of cases across all age ranges, but still there seems to be a really big skew between the impact that COVID has on kids, particularly the youngest kids versus the impact on adults, particularly the oldest adults. 

Cuza: Mr. Mayor, want to shift gears, talk about the tragedy in Haiti. This devastating earthquake, something like 1,300 dead at this point. For New Yorkers who want to contribute to the relief effort, what can you tell them? 

Mayor: We need all the help we can get for Haiti. I announced this morning, the Mayor's Fund is already in action gathering resources to get to Haiti. Anyone who wants to donate can go to nyc.gov/fund and donate to the Haiti relief effort. Look, this is so personal. I was at a vigil in Brooklyn. People are really feeling this, Bobby. So many New Yorkers have family in Haiti, and family in many cases they don't even know if they're alive or they're dead or what's going to happen. And there's such uncertainty, and people are having really traumatic flashbacks to what happened over ten years ago with the last earthquake. We got to be there for the people of Haiti. We also have to be there for Haitian Americans. So, we announced mental health services today in the Haitian-American community. And I remind everyone if you're ever having trauma or mental health challenges, particularly related to something like this, a horrible tragedy, you can call 8-8-8 NYC-Well, 24 hours a day. It's free, trained counselors, multiple languages, including Haitian Creole. We need people who are feeling a lot right now to know there is some place to turn.  

Cuza: All right, Mr. Mayor, hold it right there. We've got to take a quick break. I will have more with Mayor de Blasio when we return. 

[...] 
  
Cuza: Welcome back to Inside City Hall. I'm once again joined by Mayor de Blasio from the Blue Room inside City Hall. Mr. Mayor, I want to ask you about Governor Cuomo. A lot of airtime and newsprint has been spilled over the years about the so-called feud between you and the Governor – although I have often thought the antagonism was sort of one directional. But I want to ask you, do you think, looking back, whether there was a cost to New Yorkers here in the city as a result of the Governor being sort of unwilling to work with you on issues? I'm wondering particularly about COVID, whether there was any harm done to the city as a result of the state's unwillingness to work with you?  

Mayor: Unquestionably, unquestionably, Bobby. I will never forget, at a moment of the biggest crisis in our history as a city and I looked at what was happening – a very good examples set by San Francisco. I talked to experts, and I said we'd have to prepare to move to shelter-in-place in New York City. And rather than the Governor saying, “hey, you know what, that's an idea that we need to look at right away, act on right away,” he attacked it and said, “that would be imprisoning New Yorkers.” Those days we lost when he wouldn't even entertain the idea because it came from someone else, which is just tragically immature on top of everything else. You know, that was a horrible, horrible impact. I'm not even going to go into the mistakes around the nursing homes and the cover-up. There's so many issues here, but did his approach to people and his unwillingness to work with others – did that have a negative impact on New Yorkers? Of course it did.  

Cuza: Well, and you mentioned shelter-in-place if I'm remembering right. He criticized your comments and then turned around, I think maybe a day later and announced the very same policy.   

Mayor: Well, it was several days later. You're absolutely right about the flip-flop, but it was several days later, three or four of my memory serves and that's time we didn't have to waste. So many examples like this. I mean, I remember on freedom to vaccinate, you know, we understood why he wanted to focus first on health care personnel. But when our health care leadership said, “wait a minute, the folks who are in greatest danger are the seniors,” and we had a huge number of first responders, you know, EMTs, paramedics, Police, Fire, who really needed to get vaccinated. They weren't even allowed, even when we had available supply for them. I mean, it made no sense, but rather than respecting mayors, county executives, around the state and recognizing that people were trying to figure out what works best for their communities, there was just no dialogue and the results - clearly, you know, a lot went wrong because of that.  

Cuza: I know you spoke with incoming Governor Kathy Hochul last week on Tuesday, the day that Governor Cuomo announced his resignation. I don't know if you've spoken to her since then, but over the weekend she said in choosing her own Lieutenant Governor, she would choose someone from New York City. I wonder if there's anyone in particular that you favor for that pick or failing that, whether you're looking for any type of lawmaker, whether it's a woman or a Black or Latino candidate?  

Mayor: Look, I'm not going to get in the middle of the selection process. I respect the Lieutenant Governor, and it certainly makes sense to have someone from New York City as her Lieutenant Governor, when she becomes Governor. I'm looking forward to working with her. I'm looking forward to working with her successor as Lieutenant Governor. We got a lot to do, and I certainly believe that Kathy Hochul and I can talk like reasonable people and get things done to help New Yorkers. I think it's going to be refreshing.  

Cuza: Did you have a chance to speak with her again since last Tuesday?  

Mayor: No, we spoke on Tuesday and we're going to be meeting in the coming days. And certainly, we'll talk about that when the time comes, but you know, again, what I've said, I used the example the other day, I've had a lot of conversations with Phil Murphy, Governor of New Jersey. I've had some conversations with Ned Lamont, the Governor of Connecticut. Obviously talk to US senators, you name it. There's just – the difference is so striking what it's like to have a normal, respectful, calm, professional conversation between people in government versus the just strange, dynastic kind of bullying reality that emerged in this state with our current Governor. And I really think the big point here, I said it the other day and I believe it, no one should get that much power and we should never let it happen again. This is an amazing city and amazing state full of lots of great people. It's a place that deserves better than to have one person dominate it in that fashion. And I hope this is kind of a moment where we’ll say, we're just not going to let that happen in the future.  

Cuza: Governor Cuomo is going to be without a permanent address pretty soon, and it has been remarked upon he doesn't really have a home to go to. I wonder if you have any home-seeking advice for the Governor, would you like to see him move back here to New York City?  

Mayor: I'm going to decline to offer an opinion just want to see him move on with his life. He does not belong in government, I can tell you that much and hopefully he will go and deal with his issues.  

Cuza: What do you think about the Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie, deciding on Friday, not to move forward with the impeachment proceedings, although he will now release some of the findings of the Assembly.  

Mayor: Well, the findings are so important, Bobby. We need accountability. Now, it's not just the Governor. Remember this, it's a whole host of other people around him who, in some cases, might have broken the law. In other cases, did things that were very, very damaging for political reasons. We need a full accounting. We need to make sure we know exactly who did what, that they are punished appropriately, that they are not allowed other opportunities, you know, to get away with the same kind of things. We need to know what we need to fix because in each one of these cases, just the nursing homes alone, there's still a lot of issues that have not been addressed that we need to understand, we need to make sure they don't happen again. There needs to be a full accounting, full investigation. That information from the Assembly, we absolutely need that to be made public, but we need accountability. And whether that comes from prosecutors or in the future from the legislature or whatever combination of pieces, we need accountability here.  

Cuza: Your name, of course, has been floated among those who could potentially be in the mix for running for governor for a full-term next year. That would, of course, require primarying Kathy Hochul, who said she intends to run for a full term. What is your thinking as it stands now? You're not ruling that out, right?  

Mayor: No, I've never ruled anything out. I mean, I'm obviously focused as we were talking in the first part of this conversation, I'm focused on fighting the Delta variant and bringing the city back. I'm also someone who has devoted my entire life to public service, and there's a lot of issues I care about. Everyone knows how much I care about, you know, Pre-K, early childhood education and so many other issues. Affordable housing, so many things, and I'm going to keep working on these issues one way or another. And that's the bottom line.  

Cuza: And Mr. Mayor, just a few seconds left. You mentioned today, the new census numbers, 8.8 million New Yorkers is the latest count. Do you think we got an accurate count this time?  

Mayor: Well, first of all, amazing effort by the Census team, kudos to Julie Menin, who's going to be in the city council soon and a great team of people and all the grassroots organizations. That number is striking. It's stunning in the midst of COVID, that census effort was so strong. It got to the truth. I, for a long time, Bobby, thought New York City was bigger than the census was giving it credit for. I think a lot of people felt that who focused on demography. This is now a better picture of what the truth is in New York City. All those naysayers said something was wrong and New York City was declining. Guess what? We're bigger than ever, in many ways, stronger than ever. And we're going to have an amazing comeback after COVID. I am absolutely certain of that.  

Cuza: All right, Mr. Mayor, thank you as always for joining us. We will see you next week.   

Mayor: Thank you, Bobby.  

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