Sen. Liu's Take on the 2021 City Election

[music]

Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC and this is day two of the week that early voting starts in the New York primary. This Saturday to be specific is early voting day one, and you can early vote in person. As far as early voting by mail, we reminded you yesterday. We'll remind you again today, you can mail in your absentee ballot anytime if you've already made up your mind for mayor and other offices, and you can also still apply for an absentee ballot if you would rather vote that way but haven't done that yet. Just go to nycabsentee.com. It takes about one minute to fill it out online. You basically just have to know your name and address. Nycabsentee.com, if you want to have an absentee ballot, sent to you, which you can return to get postmarked anytime, right up to primary day 2022.

While we talk mostly on the show about the mayoral race, there is one other city-wide office that has a competitive primary. The race to succeeds Scott Stringer as the New York City comptroller, as Stringer is term-limited out. Now, as we mentioned yesterday, comptroller is a really important job, but one that most people don't understand all that well. We talked to one former comptroller yesterday, Liz Holtzman. We'll talk to another one now, John Liu, now a state Senator from Northeast Queens to help you decide how to choose in that city-wide race. We also have a WNYC, New York One, and the news organization, the city comptroller's debate coming up Thursday night at seven o'clock. Richard Burgon will be our questioner in that debate, then I'll be here at 8:30 when it ends for a little post-debate calling to see how you reacted.

Recovering the comptrollers' race as well, important city-wide office and John Liu is also relevant now because he was one of the mayoral primary candidates in 2013. Many of you will remember, the race that de Blasio won. We are also in the final days of the state legislature session where Liu serves. If we have time, we'll touch on a few major bills, still in the works up there, including maybe on parole reform, holding gun manufacturers, liable for certain crimes committed with their products, allowing restaurants to make permanent the takeout alcohol sales that have been allowed during the pandemic. These things are all in play I gather as they finish up the legislative session in the next few days in Albany. Senator Liu, always good to have you welcome back to WNYC.

John Liu: Good morning, Brian. Good to be on.

Brian Lehrer: What does a comptroller do?

John Liu: That's a good question. As you noted, the New York City comptroller is one of the city-wide offices that our voters will be going to vote on beginning next Tuesday, I'm sorry, this coming Saturday and then Tuesday, June 22nd. The comptroller is essentially the chief financial officer of New York City. The comptroller is responsible for paying the city's bills, auditing the city's agencies to make sure that the money's being properly and efficiently spent. Approving contracts that the city takes out with the private sector, both companies, as well as nonprofit organizations, and also investing the $200 billion worth of pension assets that the city holds onto for the protection of its retirees and retirement income, and also underwrites the bond offerings when the city borrows money for capital projects. There are a few other miscellaneous functions such as settling lawsuits against the city and things like that.

Brian Lehrer: All of that makes it sound like the city's accountant, or as you said, CFO, which might make people's eyes glaze over a little bit and think, "Well, okay, as long as there's a competent person then that's okay for a comptroller rather than like a belief system or anything." You know the famous line from Mayor LaGuardia that there's no Democratic or Republican way to pick up the garbage. Do you think there is as a self-identified progressive as you are, do you think that there's a more progressive way and a more conservative way to be a comptroller?

John Liu: Yes, I absolutely do think so, the comptroller is an elected office. It is not an appointment or civil service position, not that anything's wrong with those but as an elected official, the comptroller is really the city-wide counterbalance to the mayor and sometimes to the city council. For 200 years, the people of New York City have deemed in its collective wisdom to have an independently elected comptroller. That's important because unlike the chief financial officers of say, large corporations where they're often handpicked by the chief executive officer, the comptroller, the CFO is completely independent of the CEO of the city, which happens to be the mayor. That's a situation you want to have because if a comptroller's beholden to the mayor, is appointed by the mayor, could be fired by the mayor, then really, it's impossible to be independent.

You need that kind of independence when you're essentially a watchdog for the people's money, as well as on mayoral agencies that are doing the work on behalf of the people. You mentioned accountant, accountancy is part of the function of the comptroller. Again, I said earlier before the comptroller pays bills for the city, the comptroller audits city agencies but there's the investment management portion that's not typically by accountants. Going out there to sell and pitch New York city bonds, which have been very successful again for 200 years, that's not typically an accountant, but it does have a lot to do with money, but more importantly, the way the comptroller defines how best to spend money it has to do with the belief system that the comptroller brings to the table.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners your questions about being a New York city comptroller or how to evaluate one or on the end of the state legislature, seasoned bills in Albany right now, we mentioned a few in play, maybe you know of others or anything related for a state Senator and former comptroller. John Liu, (646) 435-7280, (646) 435-7280. If you--

John Liu: I will note Brian, that the comptroller out of all the city-wide offices, probably this is the position that you want to let somebody with at least some kind of financial background. They don't have to be an expert in anything financial but at least to have some kind of financial background experience. That's the kind of experience that will allow somebody to hit the ground running in this position.

Brian Lehrer: If you were writing questions for a comptroller's debate like we have coming up Thursday night, what might you ask the candidates that could enlighten listeners and viewers trying to compare them?

John Liu: You really want to get questions from me? Are you going to ask them, or you're going to ask me to answer them?

Brian Lehrer: I will pass a law. There's a non-binding suggestion, but I will definitely pass them along.

John Liu: Let's see, off the top of my head, I would ask the comptroller candidates to define their concept of the independence principle, what that means, how it's achieved and why it's important?

Brian Lehrer: What does it mean?

John Liu: Another-- Well, you want me to give the answer away right now?

Brian Lehrer: You want to go on to that other--

John Liu: The principle of independence. I kind of alluded to it before, which is that you want to have a situation where the watchdog is not in any way under the control, whether it be hiring, firing, promotions, salary increases under the control of the entity that's being watched, i.e, the mayor and sometimes the city council. Another question would be, what is the meaning of the capital asset pricing model and does that apply in today's investment world?

Brian Lehrer: What does that mean?

John Liu: Well, it's a way to earn excess alpha or to maximize alpha in investment performance. That basically looks at not just that rates of return, which is generally viewed by the public and the media but risk-adjusted rates of return. That's important because, with $200 billion, you have to know where to place different portions of the asset portfolio.

Brian Lehrer: Where does social investing come into that? We've certainly seen examples of New York City pension funds divesting from certain kinds of products and saying, "We have a lot of clout as a pension fund with so many billions of dollars to invest, and we're not going to put them into tobacco companies anymore." I think Stringer--

John Liu: Or gun companies.

Brian Lehrer: Gun companies, fossil fuels in the last few years. Where does that come in for you as comptroller to the extent that you make those decisions, versus the maximum return for the people of the City of New York if those companies are very profitable?

John Liu: That's a great question to ask the comptroller candidates. I will opine that long-term investment is the goal of the Comptroller's Office and the New York City pension funds. There is a concept of sustainability that should be included in long-term investments. The time horizon for pension funds is 40 years and increasing. You want to make sure that you're not looking at the next quarters' investment results, or even the next year or five or even 10 years results. You want to invest for the long term. The New York City pension funds are not day traders. We don't turn the assets.

It's generally a buy-and-hold strategy. That buy and hold strategy requires the comptroller to take a long view. For example, you take gun manufacturers, just not even thinking about the societal harm that these companies place on our people, especially people of color. The business model itself is problematic. Number one, there's legal and political risk. That's a real risk that investment managers have to account for. Does the business model of these gun manufacturers and ammo manufacturers have a good long-term prospect? My personal opinion, I don't think so. You can ask the comptrollers candidates.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, if you're just joining us, my guest is former New York City comptroller, John Liu, as we help inform you about how to choose comptroller candidates on your rank choice ballot in the New York City primary with WNYC and other news organizations' debate coming up Thursday night at seven o'clock. We'll also get some other things with John Liu, who's a former mayoral candidate, and he's in the state legislature, which has a number of bills that are very interesting and important before them in these final days of the legislative session. 646-435-7280 if you want to get in on this or a tweet, a question @BrianLehrer. Before we rotate off, comptroller to some other things, a comptroller can also audit the books of city agencies. I gather it's not just--

John Liu: Is required to, actually.

Brian Lehrer: Required to of course, but when Liz Holtzman was here yesterday, she was talking about that not just being a random thing in every case to find ways and corruption where it might appear. It can also be a way to influence policy based on your values and where you think the mayor and city council should focus more of their attention based on who you choose to audit and what you choose to audit for. Did you do that, in your experience?

John Liu: Absolutely. There are dozens of city agencies that have to be audited once every four years. There are areas of concern and priority that the comptroller as a city-wide elected official it can place priority on. For example, during my tenure, the Department of Education was a big audit target mainly because they had gone undetected or unchecked for many years under the first iteration or first incarnation of mayoral control. The NYPD was also a big area of concern. These two happened to be two of the largest city agencies, spend the most amount of city money so it's natural to place more priority, conduct audits in these agencies far more than the once per four years required.

The comptroller does set the priorities. Some of it is based on internally what the auditors are saying that there's a risk of. You do want to have more auditing effort and resources placed on areas of risk as identified by your own internal auditors. These comptroller auditors know what they're doing. Then, in addition, you also see what's emerging. Sometimes it's Fourth Estate, which is you Brian, the media. They uncover certain things that require attention. Then we also have hotlines where average citizens can call in or email in confidentially to indicate that they think there's a problem with something. There's a lot of different ways the comptroller as an elected official chooses, or prioritizes the dozens of audits that happen every single year.

Brian Lehrer: Kate in Queens here on WNYC with State Senator former comptroller, John Liu. Hi Kate.

Kate: Hey, Brian. Senator John Liu, what does the comptroller ever say no to? We are constantly reading about wasteful spending in New York City. I'd love to know if the buck ever stops in the Comptroller's office.

John Liu: Absolutely. I've not been comptroller for the last eight years already. We have another comptroller in place. I don't necessarily want to comment on his tenure. I will say for example, in the years that I was comptroller, there was a big scandal called City Time where the city by the time I took office as comptroller had spent over $700 million on basically this consulting contract, where the city had originally budgeted $70 million.

I put a stop to all of that and stopped any more money from being spent. Ultimately, it led to a $500 million refund from the company called SAIC that really had built our city and our taxpayers. There's another example with the 911 emergency system. I don't want to spend too much time on there, Brian, because we only have a few minutes left.

Brian Lehrer: That was a big deal at the time. Remind people of that. You can do it in a [unintelligible 00:16:21].

John Liu: Literally my first week as comptroller in January 2010, Mayor Bloomberg sent me an extension of the City Time contract with SAIC for another $30 million for another three months. I looked at it and again, it was something that was supposed to have cost the city $70 million, and the city had already paid more than 10 times the amount of the original contract.

We said no, rejected the contract and ultimately, over the next several months, the contractor finally agreed to come back, finish the project for no additional money. Not only that. If they didn't finish it I think it was by June of 2010, we would actually start calling back some of the money from the contractor. That was a combination of both using the audit powers of the Comptroller's office as well as the contract review.

Brian Lehrer: Don in Harlem, you're on WNYC. Hi, Don.

Don: Hi, Brian. I'm good. Senator Liu, I wish you were running for comptroller again. Anyhow, the question is the state legislature finally putting money into the state answering the campaign for fiscal equity for the school system. Does the comptroller have anything to do with where that money will go for coming from the state?

John Liu: Thank you very much for highlighting that point. I'm very proud that the legislature has finally put in a solid plan to fund the remaining $4 billion a year of school funding as required by the campaign for fiscal equity many years ago. The comptroller's office does have a direct role in that. First of all, the money is going to come from the state government, it's going to go into city coffers and will be designated for Department of Education spending.

The comptroller can then verify by auditing the Department of Education to see how in fact it is using this money that comes from the state. The thing to keep in mind is that this money, which is called Foundation Aid, comes with essentially no restrictions from the state government. It is up to the Department of Education to use the money for teaching our kids, spending it on public schools, the teachers, the classrooms, the kids. The comptroller just has to make sure that that money is being spent appropriately for those reasons.

Brian Lehrer: You must be happy about this because you were the chair of the New York City Education Committee in the State Senate, right?

Interviewee: That is correct. We have close to 1,000 school districts all across the state of New York. The New York City schools, we think of it as 32 school districts that's within the city. From the state perspective, it's one district, obviously the largest district by far not only in New York State but the entire country. The city's stance is to get about another $1.2, $1.3 billion a year once the entire three-year phase is complete.

Brian Lehrer: However, the comptroller just to round out the point that the caller asked about the comptroller doesn't really decide how that money gets spent, but the comptroller can audit it.

John Liu: That's right. That is a very clear answer and I should have been clearer. The comptroller in the official capacity does not have any decision-making authority over how to spend money. That is up to the legislature and the executive whether it be at the state level or the mayor and the city council, they determine how to allocate the budget. The comptroller cannot decide how to spend the money. The comptroller simply makes sure that the money is spent in accordance with the law and the budget. The budget is an annual law that is passed by the city council signed by the mayor.

Brian Lehrer: Let's talk about the end of the state legislative session just days away. What's on your agenda to still get passed? What would you like the public to know about that might come from Albany or that they might even weigh in on to push it through or try to stop?

John Liu: Well, we've got a number of bills that are pending in the next three days, including today. You mentioned a couple of them. The first one has already passed the Senate and that is a bill that would begin to impose accountability on the part of gun and ammo manufacturers who are producing large amounts of weapons setting that the States were clearly the people of that state would not have any need for that quantity.

The company seeming to be oblivious to the fact that those guns are going to end up in the iron pipeline, much of which leads directly to the state of New York. Senator Zellnor Myrie has put that legislation in. I was proud to support it, and I hope it will begin to cut down the amount of gun killings that we have in New York. We see lots of headlines of mass shootings, but the reality is a lot more people get killed on a daily basis in gun violence.

We need to stop that, put an end to that, that iron pipeline.

Another set of bills that we're talking about are environmental bills. That will, again, every year in for the last couple of years that I've been in the state legislature, we have passed important landmark environmental protection legislation led by Todd Kaminsky from Long Island. This legislation started with the 2019 climate protection and community-- I'm sorry, climate leadership and community protection act. We are continuing with what I hope can be passed the community, the CCIA which is the climate community investment act. It's a lot of acronyms here.

Beyond environmental protection, we're also looking to strengthen the laws that deter and prevent sexual harassment and workplace lead by Senator Alessandra Biaggi very important legislation and something that I would like to see. I don't know if it can be passed this year, but a reduction in the blood alcohol content level deemed to be driving while intoxicated right now in New York state, it's essentially 0.08. I'd like to see us get in line with much of the rest of the world and bring it down to 0.05 to cut down on the drunk driving that unfortunately still kills people on the streets.

Brian Lehrer: That restaurant bill for making permanent take-out alcoholic drinks, which you couldn't do in the past. They allowed it in the pandemic because obviously take out was the lifeline and is the legislature on the verge of passing that and you support it?

John Liu: I'm not sure that we're on the verge of passing that. There are literally hundreds of pending bills that we are still discussing here in Albany and we'll see what happens in the next three days.

Brian Lehrer: This is WNYC FM HD and AM New York. WNJT FM, 88.1, Trenton. WNJP 88.5 Sussex. WNJY 89.3 Net Kong, and WNJO 90.3 Times River. We are New York and New Jersey public radio as we have just a few minutes left with state Senator and former New York city controller, John Liu. Before you go, I do want to ask about your endorsement in the mayoral race. It was one of those endorsements that was newsworthy because it raised eyebrows because your candidate doesn't necessarily line up with some of your own important views. You endorsed Andrew Yang, despite saying basically that you're further to the left than him, especially on policing issues. You want to walk us through that very briefly.

John Liu: There's a lot of reasons to make an endorsement. I was very clear why I support Andrew. He's got a lifetime of real-world experience right here in New York, made the best of his time. That's the kind of real person you want in the mayor's office. He's also shown his grit and metal dealing with the glare of the media in New York City and he's held his own. Also, I don't discount the fact that he's a fellow Asian American and given what the Asian American community has been suffering through this past year and change, I think it would be a very good thing not only in New York City but nationally to have Andrew as the mayor of New York City.

Brian Lehrer: You know that critics say he's not just inexperienced, he's unqualified because of the gaps in his knowledge. He recently didn't know what 50A is the much-debated law that shields many police disciplinary records from public view and he didn't know, the city already has shelters for domestic violence victims, something he presented as his own innovative idea. Why wouldn't things like that be disqualifying at an intense time like this?

John Liu: I think if you look at any candidates for pretty much any office there are going to be things that they either don't know about or aren't able to recall off the top of their head at the moment. I think we have seen mayoral candidates think that the median price of homes in Brooklyn is like $200,000. There are plenty of other examples. I think what you want to do, this is not about winning a trivia contest or a contest about exactly what facts you know about New York City and New York City government on the spur of the moment. It's about the whole package that a candidate brings, the real-world experience that they have, and how their character has shown through in periods of difficult questioning, and how they hold up to that.

Brian Lehrer: State Senator John Liu, also the former New York city controller, thanks for the controller lesson today. That was very informative and your views on--

John Liu: You did ask me who I endorse for comptroller. Brian Benjamin.

Brian Lehrer: You could say. Okay, thank you very much. Thanks, Senator Liu. Always good to have you on.

 

Copyright © 2021 New York Public Radio. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use at www.wnyc.org for further information.

New York Public Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline, often by contractors. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of New York Public Radio’s programming is the audio record.