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Brian Lehrer: It's the Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. On today's show, are you hitting your streaming service wall? Netflix is losing subscribers by the millions now with so much competition. CNN's new streaming service is already shutting down just after starting up. You need three different subscriptions this year to see all the Mets and Yankees games. We'll take your calls later on how you are hitting your streaming platform wall.
What are you keeping? What are you dropping? What are you signing up for when the shows you want to watch each seem to have their own price of admission? Also today, it's our monthly Call Your Senator Segment, your questions in mind for Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, but our first question today is this, what's in mayor Adams's new budget? You campaign in poetry, you govern in budget lines. Do his well-written verses about being the safety mayor and the justice mayor and the economic equality mayor add up those ways?
In the spending plan he announced yesterday, the mayor released the numbers as he gave a soaring speech yesterday, we'll play some clips, at the King's Theater in Brooklyn. Even though it was on day 116, he delivered it like a grand 100-day speech or an inaugural address. Remember he didn't get to make a speech at exactly 100 days because he had COVID. He didn't get to make an inaugural address on day 1 in January because everyone else had COVID. Now that he finally got the chance, he compared himself to FDR.
Mayor Adams: In the years after the great depression, America faced a cascade of crises not unlike what we are experiencing today. Then, just as now, there was no easy solution or quick fix. FDR like ELA understood that people needed an honest and reckoning of the problems and bold plans to solve them.
Brian Lehrer: FDR like ELA, are we going to come to know Eric Adams by his initials over time? We'll hear some more very interesting clips from the speech and compare some of the numbers to some of the words now with Elizabeth Kim who covers the mayor for WNYC and our local news website Gothamist, and Jeff Coltin, Senior City Hall Bureau Chief for the news organization City & State New York. Hi, Liz and Jeff, welcome back to WNYC.
Elizabeth Kim: Good morning, Brian.
Jeff Coltin: Good morning. Thank you for having me.
Brian Lehrer: Liz, the first item in your article on this on Gothamist is the mayor's proposed budget adds around $200 million to the NYPD budget despite earlier promises to keep it flat. What changed?
Elizabeth Kim: I think, from the very beginning, budget experts were very skeptical that the mayor could keep the NYPD budget flat and that's because of overtime and that has been notoriously difficult for mayors to reign in. The independent budget office which analyzes the budget had initially projected that the city would, in fact, need to add around $200 million alone just to cover the overtime costs.
The other factor is the mayor has also rolled out this new anti-gun unit. Basically, when you roll out new initiatives, they tend to cost money. Even though the mayor had been repeatedly asked, "Are you going to raise the NYPD budget?" and he repeatedly said no, I think that this, in fact, just represented the reality of what goes on with overtime and also what he's doing to grapple with rising crime in the city.
Brian Lehrer: This is more money for police, but no additional officers?
Elizabeth Kim: That's correct, there's no additional uniformed officers, I should say.
Brian Lehrer: What about the justice mayor and the economic equality mayor Eric Adams ELA? He got pressure to be those things too more than he was going to be in this budget. We talked about this on yesterday's show. When leaders of the City Council pre-responded to his speech, that is they spoke the day before the speech, Monday, at a press conference calling for more spending on social services. Here is City Council speaker Adrienne Adams from that press conference.
Adrienne Adams: We have to see expanding opportunity as an investment in our safety. We have to see prioritizing health and mental health as investments in our safety, and we have to see increasing vital programs and services for our young people as investments in our safety. Strong neighborhoods are key to public safety and our city budget must foster them.
Brian Lehrer: Our city budget must foster them, other kinds of investments in our safety. Jeff, she's framing new social services spending as a way of addressing public safety, and here's Mayor Adams before we get a response from you in his speech saying, basically, "I hear you, Adrienne Adams, and other members of the City Council" as he announced a budget line aimed at helping young people get out of prison on parole to integrate back into the mainstream, and also one helping homeless people have incentive to get off the streets and subway trains. Listen.
Mayor Adams: We are ensuring that every youth parolee will now have a mentor.
[applause]
Someone to help guide them back to the right path after they have been incarcerated. Public safety isn't just about bringing down crime rate, it's about helping those who need it most including those experiencing homelessness, many of whom are at risk from violence to themselves. That is why we are investing more than $170 million in 1,400 new beds at safe havens and other facilities of desire to serve those who have the hardest time moving in traditional shelters.
[applause]
Let me tell you something, it's going to be hard for people to hate me because we are listening to those who have been on the ground.
Brian Lehrer: "It's going to be hard for people to hate me because we are listening to those who have been on the ground." Here's another example. He points here to a proposal with support from a very specific progressive member of city government.
Mayor Adams: This budget includes $55 million to expand the B-HEARD Program which stands for Behavior Health Emergency Assistance Response Division. There are teams of EMTs and mental health professionals that respond to 911 calls involving mental health issues. This is not my idea, this is your idea. You told me you needed this and I heard you and we put it in the budget and expanded it.
[applause]
Not every emergency call needs the police. B-HEARD teams deescalate tense situations and connect people in crisis to the care they need. You know I did something right because Jumaane stood up and applauded me.
Brian Lehrer: "Because Jumaane Williams," the City Public Advocate, "stood up and applauded me." He may be known as a relatively conservative democratic mayor, but he was shouting out probably the most progressive of certainly the most progressive of the gubernatorial candidates right now. Jeff from City & State, how much are the mayor and the more social services and crime prevention-oriented leaders of City Council actually on the same page when it comes to where to spend?
Jeff Coltin: Certainly more on the same page now that Adams has released his executive budget than they were just a couple of months ago when Adams released the preliminary budget. That really was the constant narrative of yesterday was Adams repeating, "You should be happy with me, I am giving you what you asked for," speaking to primarily the City Council, but also a lot of the city's progressive activist class out there such as, yes, Jumaaane Williams, one of the more progressive members of city government who I talked to after the speech at King's Theater. Yes, he said he was pretty darn happy.
He really felt like the mayor was listening to activists and to himself who were calling for a little bit less of a carceral approach to police and a little bit more of an "upstream approach" that's what Eric Adams always says, preventing crime before it happens with the money there. Now, Eric, ELA I guess I'll call him, is a former police officer and he really does have that reputation of being a cop and supporting the police, but it was funny that the public advocate Williams yesterday said that yesterday it sounded a little bit more like the old Eric, the Eric Adams that maybe was agitating for criminal justice reform and fighting against stop and frisk 10 years ago as a state senator, a little bit more than the conservative on crime mayor that we've been hearing a lot from on the campaign trail in the past couple of months.
Now, he's not changing. He still has that anti-gun unit, which has already caused some controversy. He's still sweeping the homeless New Yorkers off the streets, but at least the rhetoric yesterday and maybe some of the funding in his executive budget will go pretty far, I think, to appease progressive activists.
Brian Lehrer: Liz, do you want to get in on this because this is maybe the big overarching question of the Adam's administration. Can he be the both and mayor or is one emphasis going to come out with unintended negative consequences in one way or another in another way?
Elizabeth Kim: I think it's still early and I think we still have to wait to see how some of his initiatives pan out like specifically, how does the anti-gun unit go about its job? That's going to be something that I imagine advocates are going to be scrutinizing in the coming months. With respect to the funding, yes he certainly did answer a lot of the council's demands yesterday but I think when we slice and dice it I'm sure there are still going to be other areas where, certain council members, they all have their pet causes and they're going to say, no, it's still not enough.
I still think there's going to be a bit of a budget dance next month and I think this sets the mayor up well, I think, for having maybe better negotiations than if he had been a little stingier.
Brian Lehrer: Interesting. We're going to get to some of whether the rhetoric matches the funding on the issue that so many New Yorkers list as issue number one year after year and that's housing, but let me invite listeners to call in. I don't know if you watched Mayor Adams's address yesterday, his inaugural style address which he finally got to give on day 116 between him having COVID and everybody else having COVID before that, or if you're wonky enough on the budget to have questions about particular things, 212-433-WNYC, questions or comments, 212-433-9692, or tweet @BrianLehrer for Jeff Coltin from City & State and our Elizabeth Kim.
Here's a tweet that just came in, before we move on to housing. A listener writes, Liz, on what we talked about before with a clip in which Adams said that he's devoting money to expand this unit to send more mental health professionals out on emergency calls rather than police, listener tweets a question, "How is 911 going to send police or mental care?"
Meaning, I guess, how are they going to decide whether a situation is potentially dangerous enough for the police or if that particular potential danger is better off without the police. I don't know that he got that far yesterday, but is there any indication of how they're going to assess?
Elizabeth Kim: That I don't know. My understanding is, and maybe Jeff knows, but I think that this is already being piloted in certain neighborhoods that are considered more at risk. I know that the Council, the mayor has offered to give it another $55 million. The Council had said that it really needs $61 million to fully fund the initiative.
Jeff Coltin: That's right, Liz. That's all I know as well, but I believe this is already a pilot program they're just devoting a little more money to it and I don't know the specifics, but yes, it is about having mental health first responders responding to certain cases rather than police.
Brian Lehrer: That's a good thing for us to do a future segment on, have people involved in that world and ask, "How do you know?" Like that horrible shooting in Harlem where the two police officers were hit and killed early in the year, that was a mental health call where the shooter's mother didn't know even that he had arms. If there had only been a mental health response, might he have responded differently rather than being inflamed by the fact that police officers were heading toward his bedroom, or if mental health workers and not armed police officers responded, would his massacre have been even worse because there wouldn't have been anybody to shoot back?
We can't know in that individual case, but such an iconic case that, in a certain way, raises the question of how do they know which to send. We will drill down on that in a future segment. All right, back to the budget and back to housing. In the last clip we played, Adams referred to the previously announced proposal for $170 million for so-called safe haven beds for those living on the streets and in the subways whose encampments he's removing. They've been very reluctant to go to the shelters as they are. These are like higher quality shelter beds and here he speaks about $5 billion for housing.
Mayor Adams: We are committing $5 billion in additional funding for housing over the next decade. $5 billion. This is the biggest housing investment in generations and it will impact many generations to come. This money will help make critical repairs at NYCHA, subsidize those who need help staying in their existing homes and build more deeply affordable housing for the entire city.
Brian Lehrer: Jeff, now we have to get a little math wonky. That's $5 billion over the next decade. Is that in line with what the council called for or Adam's own previous promises?
Jeff Coltin: It's not. Actually, that's an additional $5 billion. If I recall, I think that's adding to the already allocated $17 billion, so we're talking around something like $21 or $22 billion allocated over 10 years to a combination of NYCHA, public housing, and HPD Housing Preservation and Development, which deals with other forms of affordable housing. As you do the math, that's roughly $2 billion a year.
On the campaign trail, I believe Eric Adams promised that he would devote $4 billion a year in that capital budget to affordable housing, HPD and NYCHA. He is coming up short. He was asked about this yesterday at City Hall and he basically said, "This is a historic investment. This is the highest it's ever been and maybe we'll add more to it in the future. Maybe we'll eventually get there."
That's part of this budget dance that we talk about. Yes, this is a historic amount of money. It's the biggest it's ever been. However, advocates are really hoping for more and frankly, I think this is an know where they expected more. Eric Adams did pretty consistently talk on the campaign trail about the need to build more housing. Then also he really has been committed to visiting NYCHA and funding NYCHA complexes throughout his time as an elected official.
I think there's certainly some housing advocates and some public housing advocates that are maybe happy to see this additional funding in the new capital budget, but certainly hoping to see more in the future or push him to maybe even devote more by the time that this budget is actually due before July 1st, two months from now.
Brian Lehrer: What happens now, for people who don't know the process, is the mayor and the City Council continue to negotiate, the Council has to pass the budget. The mayor has to be willing to sign what they pass and the new fiscal year starts on July 1st each year so it has to be done by that date. Liz, you also reported in your Gothamist article on the gap between what the mayor had promised for housing per year and what he actually has in there. Anything you want to add to the analysis that Jeff just gave us?
Elizabeth Kim: I think that there there was some early criticism that the mayor has yet to announce a detailed housing plan. It was interesting that, during his address yesterday, he said that, in the coming weeks, he plans to do exactly that. That's a really big issue in New York city. If you do surveys, it's affordable housing and public safety, those two issues are priorities for city residents across the board.
The $5 billion, I think it's very fair criticism that when you compare it to what he pledged to spend and what he's saying now it's certainly a big difference. I will say, and I credit the independent budget office for highlighting this figure for me, but just as a point of comparison, they told me that, in 2014, de Blasio and his executive budget pledged a $6.7 billion over 10 years. You see some disparity there. Already it's a little drop off from what his predecessor promised in his first executive budget.
Brian Lehrer: All this number [unintelligible 00:20:11] is what we're discussing sufficient to make a dent, Liz, in the larger homeless population of people living on the streets and on the subways because there would be enough safe Haven beds, say, to attract more people to them?
Elizabeth Kim: Right. That's the trap that the mayor needs to avoid, which has-- that other mayors like Mayor De Blasio was accused of succumbing to, which is to look at homelessness and affordable housing as these two separate issues. He needs a very strong, affordable housing plan if he wants to attack homelessness. That is this overarching criticism of, I think, mayors overall.
The question is, can he do it? Can he link it two, and then create two very strong plans? One that commits the temporary shelters that the city needs to house people on a temporary basis and also convince people to stop living off on the streets and come off the streets, but then to also provide them with a pathway to permanent affordable housing?
Brian Lehrer: We'll continue in a minute. Go ahead, Jeff. Go ahead.
Jeff Coltin: Oh, I'd like to add to that, Liz. Yes, you're right. It's not just that the money sounds good, the $5 billion or the $22 billion or however much, but it really is about how you spend it. I want to credit the New York post. They've been reporting about how many empty supportive housing units that the city has right now. They have these housing units that are designated for more difficult cases of people maybe coming in off the street or the formerly homeless and they're empty. There's nobody living in them because they're having trouble or they're not filling them.
Then in addition, for NYCHA funding, yes, a lot of that billions of dollars is going towards the packed program, which is a private management for public housing program that is quite controversial. A lot of people say that's the one way out of underfunded public housing. Other people say that they're just worried about it. Yes, the fact that Adams is devoting unprecedented amounts to housing is notable but, of course, there's so much more that you and I and so many other reporters are going to have to dive into in the coming year about where that money is going.
Brian Lehrer: Those reporters with us diving in are Jeff Coltin, the City Hall bureau chief for the news organization City & State and WNYC, and Gothamist Eric Adams reporter, Elizabeth Kim will get to the news. There is interesting news on composting and on parks in this budget, and then some of your calls and then Senator Gillibrand coming up a little later this hour. Stay with us. Brian Lehrer on WNYC.
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Brian Lehrer on WNYC as we continue for another few minutes before Senator Gillibrand joins us for her monthly Call Your Senator program on which you can call your Senator to talk about Mayor Adams inaugural style address yesterday and specifics of his latest budget proposal for the next fiscal year with Jeff Coltin from City & State and our Elizabeth Kim.
Ranette in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC. Hi, Ranette.
Ranette: Hi, how are you doing?
Brian Lehrer: Good. What you got?
Ranette: My thing is, first of all, thank you, I think it was Elizabeth, for bringing up all the inaccuracies that the mayor spews out. He's the spokesperson for himself. He speaks a lot, but he has not shown any real action. He's sweeping up homeless people with no real homeless plan. My biggest thing is, where is his blueprint to end police violence? The independent budget office has noted that there was no real significant decrease in police funding. They have maintained their almost $11 billion and we're still here.
We still have a gun problem. We still have a crime problem. Over and over again, we've seen that the flooding of police officers are not actually addressing the problem. For me, what is it going to take, in your guest's opinion, beyond policing to help our communities, and what is the actual reality of the mayor doing the things that he's saying he's going to do?
Brian Lehrer: Ranette, thank you very much for that question. Liz, she addressed it to you with some praise or your earlier answers. Do we have a blueprint to end gun violence, as the mayor calls it? Do we have a blueprint to end over-policing or police violence or to create better oversight for the NYPD?
Elizabeth Kim: I think that that's a very fair question because the mayor campaign, not only on the promise of improving public safety, but also reforming police culture. He's argued that he was the one to do it because he, as a police officer, had witnessed get firsthand and spoken out about racist police tactics. The mayor talks about that all the time. He says that he understands it and he certainly wants to hold officers accountable, but we are yet to see that, like the caller said, a blueprint to reform the police culture, the culture of the NYPD.
I think one challenge the mayor has is that he really wants to win over the support of the NYPD. I think he often does a lot of morale-boosting rhetoric saying "I got your back." He calls them "My police." I think he's trying to basically improve their morale because their morale was considered so low under his predecessor.
Actually, I do want to go back because my colleague Matt Katz actually pointed out something out to me about the mental health crisis program that another, I guess it was someone on Twitter, had had a question about, and he actually wrote an article about this program that you can find on Gothamist. It says that the way the program works is that if there is 911 call that involves a threat of violence, it does not initiate the deployment of a mental health worker in lieu of NYPD.
An answer to your question, Brian, of what would've happened in that case involving domestic dispute in Harlem, I'm not sure what the content of that 911 call was but I think that, in that moment, I think there was a fear by the mother that she was somehow in harm, but basically that's the parameter. How they measure it, I'm not sure, but I do recommend that readers go to Gothamist and read Matt's excellent story.
Brian Lehrer: Great tip. Thank you. Jim in the Bronx, you're on WNYC. Hi, Jim.
Jim: Hi. Good morning. Thank you for taking my call. My question is the following. Is there any plan in this budget or among the progressives who want this increased spending or anyone else for that matter as to exactly where the revenues for this is going to come from over time? I'd like to know what are the tax bases for this? What are the long-term revenue plans? What's going to happen when the next recession comes in and tax revenues fall?
I would really like to know how this is going to be paid for over time? Just as background, by the way, just very quickly, I was teaching a class Monday on the Eurozone crisis of 10 years ago and how the Southern European countries went on this big spending spree and didn't have the tax base to sustain it, which nearly caused the collapse of the Euro. I'd like to know exactly where the money is coming from and why you don't hear about that and all these good progressive programs that people are proposing? I'll take my answers off air.
Brian Lehrer: Jim, thank you for your call. Jeff, some budget watchdog groups have questioned whether some of the new spending is sustainable. We're getting an influx of money this year and we did last year from the federal government that was COVID relief money that's going to go away. What about the sustainability of some of the new initiatives?
Jeff Coltin: Yes, it's a great question because the Citizens Budget Commission, a budget watchdog, that's a pro-business group. Every year, they demand that whoever the mayor is at the time puts more money towards the reserves in case of emergency. Of course, we just had one of these in-case-of-emergency moments these past couple years with the COVID-19 pandemic, and in some ways, we're still in it. When you look at the city's revenue projections, there is a baked-in assumptions there by the city wonks that the commercial real estate market is going to stay weak. As much as Adams was touting yesterday, "Oh, hotel demand is on its way back and people are getting back to work, there's still some baked-in assumptions here that the economy is going to stay a little bit weaker than it's been, or at least be different than it's been.
Now that said, it is a balanced budget, this executive budget. The City predicts that $99.7 billion roughly will be coming in revenue, and so therefore they're going to spend roughly $99.7 billion. The interesting thing is that, at his preliminary budget two months ago, the mayor was pretty clear about emphasizing fiscal discipline and efficiency. He had done that program to eliminate the gap by basically asking for roughly 2% cuts from every single agency, and now, the city adjusted the revenue projections a little bit.
There was about $1.2 billion more they expect to come in and Adams is essentially planning to spend all of it and so the CBC, this budget watchdog group, was saying, "Whoa, there, could you please put a little more of that towards the savings?" I'll just say, to close, basically, coming years, the mayor does have budget gaps to make up. Yes, this budget is balanced, but for the future years, he's expecting to carry some debt.
Then also, there's huge question marks about labor contracts. There are a lot of city employees that need to enter a new labor contract. There's going to be more money that has to be devoted to paying them but we still don't know exactly how much. Although there is some extra money baked into the budget to pay for that, I think the experts are saying it's probably not enough.
Yes, although the city is doing pretty well financially overall, there are some real questions here about fiscal discipline that we need to be paying attention to, especially next year, the year after that.
Brian Lehrer: We have Senator Gilland standing by now. Let me touch three other things real quick in the budget and just ask one closing question on this set, one that I think is noteworthy and we should say out loud is making streets safer for pedestrians and bicyclists. One of the really sad losses of progress in the pandemic in addition to crime rates going up and so many lost jobs is the number of traffic-crash deaths is back to where it was before Mayor de Blasio's Vision Zero Program started.
Adams is taking this on in the budget in a way that I see is making groups like transportation alternatives, praise him, so that's significant. I see he did bring back funding for the composting program that the earlier draft of his budget had cut, not as much as advocates of that want, but he's not cutting it in the way that he originally proposed to do. Last thing, the mayor has proposed 1% for parks. That's a campaign by parks advocates. 1% of the city budget should go to parks and he has said yes to that, but here's what he actually announced yesterday.
Mayor Adams: We will also continue to make historic investments in our city's parks and open spaces by adding nearly $500 million dollars in capital funding for our park system, a significant down payment towards ultimate commitment of 1% for parks.
Brian Lehrer: Liz, why only a down payment toward the 1% for parks. If we think of 1% as not that much, why couldn't he just allocate 1% for parks? We have 30 seconds.
Elizabeth Kim: Because he can't pay for everything. I think he's decided that this is one issue that he can take some heat on, even though he promised he would do 1%. He thinks that this point in time, perhaps he can get away with, like he said, just doing the down payment.
Jeff Colton: There's so much to that we didn't get to talk about. This is a huge budget. There's also a subsidized childcare that he's paying for. He wants to have cheaper childcare. Also, we didn't mention about 600 new correction officers that are going to be focused on solitary confinement in city jails, or as he calls it, punitive segregation. So much hidden in this budget.
Brian Lehrer: Yes, the justice reform advocates so unhappy about that. I'm glad you mentioned the childcare because I think that a lot of people are very happy about that. That for families making $55,000 a year or less, their share of subsidized childcare programs will go down from $55 a week, Liz you reported, to just $10 a week, right?
Elizabeth Kim: That's correct and that got a lot of applause when he announced that during his address yesterday, and that has been not just a plan of his, but that has been a promise at a national level as well by Biden, but Biden not able to come through with a bill to provide more childcare support for low-income families.
Brian Lehrer: That's right. The state budget did that in the agreement announced earlier this month and now the city budget is doing some of that so that does seem to be a substantial advance for subsidized childcare for lower-income families. Elizabeth Kim who covers mayoral power for the People and Power team at Gothamist and WNYC, and Jeff Coltin, City Hall bureau chief for City & State New York. Thanks, both of you, for crunching so many numbers.
Elizabeth Kim: Thanks, Brian.
Jeff Colton: Thank you, Brian. Call me JC the new FDR. Thank you.
Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer and WNYC. KG next, stay with us.
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