Meet the Candidates: Kathryn Garcia

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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC and as November 3rd falls further away in our rearview mirror, another date approaches up ahead, June 22nd. That's the date of New York City's mayoral primary. There are now nearly a dozen democratic candidates competing to be the next mayor to take control of the city in the wake of this historic pandemic and recession. It's a thankless job as Mayor de Blasio has been more likely to say in recent months, but someone's got to do it.

We will be interviewing many of the candidates here on the show. We've already begun. We've had Maya Wiley and Scott Stringer and who am I forgetting? A whole bunch of others. Today it's former Sanitation Commissioner, Kathryn Garcia. Now, unlike some of the other candidates running, who you may know from cable news or doing photo ops, Kathryn Garcia has led a life of service largely behind the scenes in mayoral administrations but has a reputation as uber competent.

She served under Bloomberg as a top official at the Department of Environmental Protection. In 2018 Mayor de Blasio named Kathryn Garcia the city's lead poisonings tsar, a position where she led the city's effort to abate lead exposure among children. Then in 2019, de Blasio gave her another role to tackle interim chair and CEO of NYCHA. How's that for a thankless job after the led scandal got exposed there.

Then, just this year, she was appointed the city's emergency foods are to ensure that hungry New Yorkers are being fed during the coronavirus pandemic and the economic and hunger shocks that have resulted from it. This is all while she continued to lead the sanitation department, by the way. That's a bit of a resume and let's get to the interview. Kathryn Garcia, welcome back to WNYC.

Kathryn Garcia: Thank you for having me. Thrilled to be here.

Brian: Why do you want to be mayor?

Kathryn: I want to be mayor because I love this city. I'm a lifelong New Yorker and I see us confronting the biggest challenges of my lifetime. I have the experience to make sure that we come out of it in a way where we get to grow and enjoy culture again and really rebuild in a way that's equitable and forward-thinking.

Brian: Do you have a sort of-- I was going to say back of the envelope, but that would be the wrong expression. I'd say top of the page one, two, three top policies you would want to enact like the Blasio ran on universal pre-K, paid childcare leave and one or two other things in 2013, do you have a little list like that?

Kathryn: I do. We have to get the basics right on quality of life, which is cleanliness, ensuring that everyone feels safe in their communities, and getting at least the little kids back to school. The second piece of it is around economic mobility. How do we leverage all of the assets and resources of our city to ensure that people are going into good-paying jobs? We've done a very poor job of creating a pipeline to tech or to finance or to whatever it is you want to do in the city of New York and we've got everything. Then, we need to be focused on climate.

This is an area that I've been working on for years. It's not going away with a pandemic, but we need to have policies in place to make sure we are both protected from the impact, but also are doing our part to reduce greenhouse gases and all that goes with it.

Brian: You said cleanliness as the first word. Then you said getting at least little kids back in school. Let me follow up on both of those. You are the sanitation commissioner, so when you say cleanliness, what are you referring to?

Kathryn: I left in September in part because I knew what going to happen.

Brian: I think I misspoke. You were the sanitation commissioner you have now left in order to mount this campaign for mayor, correct?

Kathryn: That's correct. Too many conflicts, if you are actually a commissioner to raise money a little bit different than some of the other people who are running and still serving in their roles. I knew that when I left what had happened to sanitation's budget, $100 million cut what the implications of that would be instantaneously. The first time we stopped collecting litter baskets, I got phone calls from literally every elected official, and I knew that that was going to happen.

The mayor had not even met with me about what the impacts of those changes were going to be, and I lived through the seventies. I know that if you do across the board cuts in things like sanitation or police or schools, it takes us longer to recover. Not that we won't recover, but it does take longer there'll be more pain because we won't have the investment and the growth we need to ensure that people have income.

Brian: Listeners, we can take a few questions for Kathryn Garcia running for mayor of the city of New York, 646-435-7280, 646-435-7280. Since you mentioned getting at least the little kids back in school, should I take it that you disagree with Mayor de Blasio's decision to close all the public schools at that 3% Coronavirus positivity threshold?

Kathryn: I did disagree with that. There was clearly evidence that the virus was not being transmitted in schools. It makes a huge difference for particularly little kids or kids with special needs to have in-person instruction. We're losing perhaps a whole generation of children who are missing their education. I've got a five-year-old niece. I was like, "How was Zoom school?" She said, "I don't learn anything on Zoom school."

I don't think that's probably totally true, but clearly it's having a real impact on those small children. Besides their education, it's also socialization. They're at the stage where they need to learn things like how to share, how to take turns that you learn from peers, but it also is having a tremendous impact on families, and to be quite honest with you, on women. Women are really starting to say that they have to back away from jobs because they can't manage everything that's been thrown at them.

Brian: NYPD, defund the police. React to that phrase.

Kathryn: Defund the police is a statement that does not make sense to me. We need to have a just and effective police force. Black Lives Matter, my brother is black Matthew's life matters to me, but we have to have faith in our communities and PD needs to be a part of that. It is about working with them and with communities to ensure that our residents, everyone feels that they can go on the subway, that they can go to the store, that they can go to school.

Brian: Would you take some money out of the police department and move it to other things as a measure of criminal justice reform? De-emphasizing the police in certain kinds of interactions with the public? Would you add more money for more police officers on the beat? Some people considered that a progressive position only a couple of years ago so that there could be more community relationship building and not just responding to 911 calls in squad cars. Where are you on that spectrum?

Kathryn: We absolutely have to have community policing where there's a relationship between the community and the people who protect them. We need to hold people rigidly accountable for their actions. I did that at the department of sanitation, very clear discipline and if it's not appropriate for you to be a cop, you shouldn't be a cop if you can't handle wearing a badge and being protective of folks. There are also a couple of other things that I would like to implement. One is increasing the age when they start or asking very young adults to take on the human condition, requiring them the new recruits to live within the city.

Our community is their community. Then also working in tandem with other agencies, one of the things, and particularly as you saw overnight with the issue of domestic violence, yes, we should have nurses or someone else who have degrees in psychology participate with police, but they need to do it hand in hand in partnership. It's not one or the other. It's how we cross over and make sure that they are working together where they can deescalate but are also protecting someone, as we think about criminal justice reform which I absolutely support. We have to also make sure that we're still protecting people who are victims.

Brian: Let's take a phone call. Tom in Queens, you're on WNYC with former sanitation commissioner among other things, Kathryn Garcia, who wants to be the next mayor of the city of New York. Hi, Tom.

Tom: Hey, how are you? I had a quick question about Ms. Garcia's stance on EMT salary. As we know this pandemic has been pretty much an apocalypse for the EMS world and they're starting pays around 28, topping off at like 50. The EMS unions have been fighting to be on par with fire, sanitation, police department. What is your stance on their salaries and expanding civil service within EMS?

Kathryn: That's a great question, Tom. EMS has been amazing throughout the pandemic. One of the hopefully better sung everyday heroes that we have. I'm supportive of expanding EMS salaries. I do think they actually start around the same as a sanitation worker, but really looking at that and making sure that we have a pipeline of people who want to take that job because we want them to show up if something happens to us and we call 911.

Brian: That's not a particular commitment to a particular raise. How do you come up with a pecking order on that? Should it be the same as the sanitation workers? Some people might say, well, with all respect to the hard work and frankly the risks, the health risks that sanitation workers take every day, it's not the same as being trained to be an emergency medical technician and EMT should be paid more. How would you respond to that?

Kathryn: Sanitation is a critical force for the city. If you take them away, it makes it to the city is unlivable. I am not going to take anything away from the sanitation workers that I led. I don't think that we say one is necessarily more important. They are both critical to public health. It's why sanitation was originally created within the department of health more than 130 years ago.

Brian: Liz in Manhattan, you're on WNYC with Kathryn Garcia. Hello, Liz.

Liz: Hi, thank you for taking my call. I'm an infectious disease physician and so I completely buy into the notion that sanitation is integral to public health. I was dismayed over the summer when I saw the perfusion of food garbage up Inwood Park, which is the one, the Hudson River. They were already wrapping Inwood Park, but it was an even more desirable place for the rats. With a perfusion of pizza cartons and leftover food. I've recently seen signage from sanitation suggesting that people carry in and carry out.

I think the sanitation department can play a key role in educating the public as to their responsibility to maintain a safe environment. Government is there to help us, but we have to play our part and I look forward to more signage and more education from sanitation. Maybe if people had to clean up all their waste, maybe they'd start using more things that don't require recycling, like bring apples rather than a pizza container. Thank you for letting me make my comment and my question.

Brian: Liz, thank you very much, commissioner.

Kathryn: Liz, that's great. It is particularly during the pandemic when parks were the lungs that we all needed to be able to breathe again. The parks department also suffered a serious, serious cut in their budget which made it so that we were creating feeding grounds for vermin. We definitely need to continue to advocate for folks to do the right thing. It is always challenging to me. I'm pretty sure people know they're not supposed to litter, but there's still bins every day, but we need to take care of the city that we love.

Everyone has a role to play, but this is an area where cleanliness is equitable to public health, and making sure that we are focused on getting those quality of life basics right is imperative. That is what I'm committed to do.

Brian: There was an article in the Post the other day, "Giant rats taking over Central Park in the upper Westside." Would you say that's a real thing or is that just the Post on its constant refrain of the city has gone to hell under a liberal mayor?

Kathryn: Well, rats have been with us under Democrats and Republicans, but rats thrive when there is food and to the extent that we leave food around, they follow us. To the extent people are really making sure that they are not leaving food for rats, they will not be able to thrive, but you got to stay on top of it and ensure that we're using all the tools that we can to keep rats from thriving in areas that we really need to be recreating at this point in time. I did see the picture was a pretty big rat that they managed to get a photo of.

Brian: Yes, one rat picture does not a trend make, however, and so that's why I was trying to fact check it. I've gotten calls from listeners complaining about the outdoor dining as well and even though that's been a lifesaver, people say that's creating noise and garbage problems on some blocks that didn't exist before. Does that register with you as a problem and could something be done about it if so?

Kathryn: I think outdoor dining has been amazing. Not only for the fact that we've all been able to partake in it, but also to support people's livelihoods and to support those small businesses. There should not be additional waste created than would have come out of the restaurant. If there is, then that needs to be dealt with from an enforcement perspective. If they had garbage when they were indoor, it should be the same garbage as outdoor.

Brian: We're almost out of time. Actually, let me do my legal ID and then I can ask you a decent closing question or two. This is WNYC FM HD and AM New York, WNJ TFM 88.1, Trenton WN, JP 88.5 Sussex WNJY 89.3 Netcong, and WNJO 90.3 Toms River. We are in New York and New Jersey public radio, finishing up with former New York city sanitation commissioner among other things, Kathryn Garcia, who now is running to be mayor. de Blasio got elected largely on the idea of fighting inequality.

Some of the other people who are running who labeled themselves progressives are saying, "He took some steps down that road, but we need to do a lot more with respect to fighting income inequality." What would you say about that?

Kathryn: Income inequality is one of the challenges I actually would say nationally even more than locally, but here are things that we can do to ensure that we are giving everybody the opportunity for economic mobility. That is really thinking through, how are we doing early childhood literacy? It's one of the challenges going forward. How are we leveraging our CUNY system? How are we leveraging our trade school? Because getting people into good jobs is absolutely the fight against income inequality.

I'm very supportive of progressive taxation, so I think it's most effective at the federal level as we move forward. This is really one of the ongoing challenges. I think this morning there's articles about how billionaires are doing even better to the point where you can't even fathom how many zeros that is. That's bad for the country as a whole and it's bad for New York City.

Brian: One more call for you, Usama in the Bronx, you're on WNYC with Kathryn Garcia. Hello, Usama.

Usama: Hi, thanks for having me. You're probably aware of the growing gap between landlords and tenants. Everyone is pointing fingers at the other person. Obviously, it's gotten a lot worse with the pandemic. I was wondering what your plan would be to bridge that gap and to ensure that the right people are taking responsibility for the living conditions and what regulations you have put in place to ensure that everyone gets their fair share of the agreements and leases?

Kathryn: That's a really great question and definitely the pandemic has exacerbated many issues, but that doesn't relieve the city from doing enforcement and from ensuring that the building code is adhered to and whether or not that's lead paint-related or that some sort of structural problem or repair issue. Those things need to still be happening. All of that is considered essential, tenants shouldn't be suffering because the government's not doing their job.

Brian: What about NYCHA in that respect since you were appointed by the mayor to help fix some of the problems at NYCHA? The plan now as I understand it is to use various federal programs to end the use of public housing financing as it has existed and turned the whole system over to vouchers in effect, involving state authorities and private finance. Is NYCHA getting what it needs and what can you promise NYCHA residents right now, if you become mayor?

Kathryn: NYCHA is absolutely one of our biggest assets for affordable housing for permanent affordable housing over the long-term. We have to be really invested in the future of NYCHA. I am very supportive of what Greg Ross is trying to do with creating a funding stream, so that as quickly as possible, we are repairing people's bathrooms. We are fixing their kitchens. We are remediating their leaks, that their elevators work. Just on a very practical political note, many of the cities around the country have moved from what is the public housing subsidy by the federal government to the section eight.

One of the things is more senators vote to make sure section eight is fully funded because they have it and to the extent that we are the only ones left standing with traditional financing, there's less opportunity. There's less reason for everyone across the country to vote to support that.

Brian: Maybe going to more of a voucher system would be good, you're saying?

Kathryn: It would be good. The voucher system is almost always fully or very close to fully funded. The public housing section of the code is almost never fully funded by the federal government. To have long-term stability, we're better off in the section eight world.

Brian: Very interesting. Last question, I have to throw this in rank choice voting. A lot of the listeners know, a lot of listeners don't know. New York city voters will be choosing a mayor on a whole different basis. Next year, rank choice voting where you're not just voting for one person. You're saying, well, this is my first choice. This is my second choice. This is my third choice, et cetera. Somebody like you who's not that well known, but who might do well in the televised debates and things like that.

You could run on a second place strategy and say, "You may not know me that well, but you see how competent I appear to be put me as your second choice in case your first choice doesn't get in." A person could actually win that way, but it's now coming under fire from some of the mayoral candidates who say the public hasn't been educated on it enough and so this would actually wind up being discriminatory, especially against people of color because the public education is not taking place. Do you have a position on whether rank choice voting should go forward in 2021?

Kathryn: We absolutely need to do education on rank choice voting. It is complicated but it's not that complicated. This is an area where New York city voters came out overwhelmingly for rank choice voting. We should be moving forward with it.

Brian: We will leave it there for today with mayoral hopeful and former sanitation commissioner among other things, Kathryn Garcia. Thank you so much and we look forward to continuing to talk to you as the campaign goes on.

Kathryn: Thank you so much for having me in. A happy Thanksgiving to everyone across the city. You can follow the campaign@kgfornyc.com.

Brian: Happy Thanksgiving to you.

 

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