Speaker 1: I'm Alec Baldwin, and you're listening to Here's the thing.
Speaker 1: This pandemic continues to affect not just New York City's health,
Speaker 1: but its economy. Almost one hundred thousand New York City
Speaker 1: residents filed for unemployment benefits the week of May fourth alone.
Speaker 1: Total claims in the age of coronavirus are now at
Speaker 1: one million. That's one out of every eight New Yorkers.
Speaker 1: Is this a blip or is at the beginning of
Speaker 1: a fundamental change? A couple of weeks ago, via zoom
Speaker 1: from my home on Long Island, I spoke to the
Speaker 1: two people perhaps best able to answer these questions. Tom
Speaker 1: Wright has both the perspective and the influence to shape
Speaker 1: New York's future. He's the head of the century old
Speaker 1: Regional Plan Association. Many New York fixtures that we take
Speaker 1: for granted, from a pedestrian Times Square to the George
Speaker 1: Washington Bridge, came from the minds at the r p A.
Speaker 1: Every twenty years, they put out their plan, thinking about
Speaker 1: how the demographics and economy of the tri state area
Speaker 1: are changing and what policies will best meet these new challenges.
Speaker 1: The last one came out in two thousand seventeen into
Speaker 1: a very different world than the one we inhabit now.
Speaker 1: Katherine Wilde is the head of the Partnership for New
Speaker 1: York City. She's on every Most Powerful New Yorker's list
Speaker 1: every year. That's because the Partnership is the main condudate
Speaker 1: for communication, lobbying, and philanthropy for New York City's major
Speaker 1: corporations JP, Morgan, Jet, Blue, IBM, Google, Deloitte, Bloomberg, Blackstone.
Speaker 1: The list goes on and on. Anytime they want to
Speaker 1: speak with one voice, it's Kathy they go through. Her
Speaker 1: career began in nineteen seventies Brooklyn, during what had been
Speaker 1: the worst of the city's then fiscal crisis. Despite crime,
Speaker 1: crumbling transit, and terrible city services, wild helped lead public
Speaker 1: private efforts that revitalized the neighborhood of Sunset Park. She
Speaker 1: sees foreboding parallels between New York's current crisis and the
Speaker 1: last time industry fled the city well in the nineteen seventies,
Speaker 1: we saw the industrial waterfront literally disappear in the matter
Speaker 1: of five years. American Can, American Machine and Foundery, Bethlehem Steel,
Speaker 1: Rhinold Brewery, uh Domino, Sugar, Revere sugar. They were gone
Speaker 1: in five years between seventy and seventy five, and Brooklyn
Speaker 1: shrunk by four hundred thousand people. The city shrunk by
Speaker 1: a million people, lost half its fortune, five hundred companies,
Speaker 1: and there was a ripple effect both in the economy
Speaker 1: in terms of unemployment and at the same time in
Speaker 1: the city fiscal situation. As you know in v New
Speaker 1: York's city went to bankrupt. They were saved by a
Speaker 1: bailout by the banks and the pension funds, the labor unions,
Speaker 1: and we got out of that crisis very slowly. It
Speaker 1: took forty years in vent Brooklyn's population was two point
Speaker 1: six million people. It did not reach that again until
Speaker 1: last year, so it took more than forty years to
Speaker 1: come back. That's more what we're looking like if we
Speaker 1: don't really get our act together quickly in New York
Speaker 1: City and the greater metropolitan area and figure out how
Speaker 1: to recoup what this pandemic is doing to us. We
Speaker 1: have almost a million people lost jobs, so we are
Speaker 1: really facing a crisis that's very similar loss of GDP.
Speaker 1: It's is of our growth city product of our economic
Speaker 1: output is what's projected. So we're gonna look very much
Speaker 1: like we did at the end of the seventies when
Speaker 1: the city was totally broke and people were out of
Speaker 1: work and leaving the city in droves. Yeah. Yeah. The
Speaker 1: only thing I'd add to what Kathy said earlier was
Speaker 1: that the million person loss actually would have been twice
Speaker 1: as much but for the one really successful policy during
Speaker 1: that time, which was that we were open to immigrants,
Speaker 1: and essentially for every two people who left the city,
Speaker 1: one rejoined from somewhere around the world, and it would
Speaker 1: have taken us even longer to recover if we hadn't
Speaker 1: been an open society. Good point in Under current immigration policy,
Speaker 1: we won't have that luxury exactly now Um described for
Speaker 1: people you go first time, who you represent, and what
Speaker 1: they exactly do. Sure Regional Plan Association is a private
Speaker 1: civic group. We've been around, uh next weekend it will
Speaker 1: be ninety eight years. And what we've done for almost
Speaker 1: a century is look at not just New York City
Speaker 1: and it's five boroughs, but the entire metropolitan region, all
Speaker 1: of Long Island, southwestern Connecticut, the Hudson Valley, northern New Jersey,
Speaker 1: and think about the long term health, wealth, prosperity, growth
Speaker 1: sustainability UM of that entire region. There is no public
Speaker 1: sector entity that thinks about that. At the federal state levels,
Speaker 1: we have a couple of things like the m t
Speaker 1: A and the Port Authority that work on portions of it,
Speaker 1: but there's nobody kind of thinking about the entire region.
Speaker 1: So our p A is an independent voice has UM
Speaker 1: once every generation created a long range plan saying here
Speaker 1: are the major transportation investments, the economic development investments, the
Speaker 1: kinds of policies that we're going to need, and then
Speaker 1: we advocate for them. And we've been around since things
Speaker 1: like nine eleven and two thousand and eight Superstorm Sandy,
Speaker 1: and we played a role in the rebuilding and each
Speaker 1: of those. What is the regional plan that your regional
Speaker 1: plans are based on a certain level of economic growth,
Speaker 1: and the bottom seems to have fallen out of there.
Speaker 1: What are you guys talking about? Yeah, no, you know,
Speaker 1: that's absolutely correct. I mean when we released the plan
Speaker 1: three years ago, it was about how to deal with
Speaker 1: the kind of catastrophic growth we were facing at the time,
Speaker 1: and nowadays it's going to be much more about what
Speaker 1: do we do to get back on the path to growth?
Speaker 1: The way I think about what's happening right now is
Speaker 1: that certain parts of life in our economy and society
Speaker 1: have been on pause, and so nobody's going to restaurants,
Speaker 1: we're all staying home and things. But other parts of
Speaker 1: our lives, changes that we're coming slowly have been accelerated.
Speaker 1: Um using zoom to do a podcast, distant remote learning, telemedicine,
Speaker 1: and so things that we're going to happen over time
Speaker 1: but we're happening fairly slowly have suddenly happened in just
Speaker 1: a couple of weeks instead, and they're not going to
Speaker 1: snap back to how they were before. And so we're
Speaker 1: going to be doing a kind of planned four point
Speaker 1: two after this to take a fresh look at that
Speaker 1: some of the things, I mean, the two most controversial
Speaker 1: things we proposed three years ago. We're charging people to
Speaker 1: drive into Manhattan and shutting the subways down in the
Speaker 1: middle of the night for maintenance. Um, we're now doing
Speaker 1: the shutting, and we're going to need congestion pricing even
Speaker 1: sooner then next year, because I worry that as businesses
Speaker 1: start to open and people avoid mass transit, we will,
Speaker 1: like cities in Asia already have see unbelievable traffic congestion.
Speaker 1: Were there discussions ever along the way about what we're
Speaker 1: dealing with now? No, I honestly, we look at we
Speaker 1: looked at climate change, we looked at energy policy, we
Speaker 1: looked at economic policy and things, and we've even talked
Speaker 1: about public health in terms of social determinants and the
Speaker 1: built environment. But no, honestly, we never did see something
Speaker 1: like this coming. And I wish we had obviously now
Speaker 1: Katherine wild to tell us what group you're working with
Speaker 1: now and what's their mission so to speak. Well, for
Speaker 1: many years, I've worked with the Partnership for New York City,
Speaker 1: and it's an organization that was created at the end
Speaker 1: of the seventies by David Rockefeller and the other bankers
Speaker 1: that worked with organized labor and with Governor Hugh Carey
Speaker 1: to restructure the city these finances and Rockefeller felt that
Speaker 1: the city had gone into a tailspin. Business had paid
Speaker 1: no attention, and as a result, he felt that we
Speaker 1: should make sure that New York City never have that
Speaker 1: situation again where no one was paying attention. So he
Speaker 1: organized the Partnership to work with government, with labor, with
Speaker 1: civic groups like Tom's to bring the business leadership, the
Speaker 1: CEOs of the city to the table with their resources
Speaker 1: so that we could solve these kind of challenges. Like Tom,
Speaker 1: we didn't anticipate a pandemic would be the biggest challenge
Speaker 1: the city would ever face in the twenty one century.
Speaker 1: But here we are. When did you become involved with
Speaker 1: the Partnership for New York. Originally I went to work
Speaker 1: for the Partnership as a volunteer in one when David
Speaker 1: Rockefeller announced that he thought it was the responsibility of
Speaker 1: the business community to rebuild the neighborhoods that had burned
Speaker 1: down in the nineteen seventies. You were raised in Madison, Wisconsin.
Speaker 1: I were brought you to New York. They said, people
Speaker 1: moved to New York because they don't fit in where
Speaker 1: they grew up. That's I'm not a chiefe head. I'm
Speaker 1: not a chiefe head, but but I've been at the Partnership.
Speaker 1: I went there to rebuild neighborhoods. We did over forty
Speaker 1: units of affordable housing ownership housing. So if you go
Speaker 1: to any of the communities of the city that are
Speaker 1: thriving today but burned down in the seventies and eighties,
Speaker 1: they're full of owner occupied homes where people moved out
Speaker 1: of public housing, bought a home at a very low
Speaker 1: cost on free city land, private bank financing, UH, combination
Speaker 1: of resources, limited developer profit. That's the kind of solution
Speaker 1: that we're going to need again today, where everybody's pitching
Speaker 1: in the banks, the builders, the community, the home buyers
Speaker 1: put down their savings as the down payment for the
Speaker 1: equity before the houses were built. UM, and it's repopulated
Speaker 1: the city with UH, with middle class families that had
Speaker 1: fled in the previous decade. It says here that you
Speaker 1: played a role in the incredible story of New York
Speaker 1: City's pushed to make its own ventilators. How did you
Speaker 1: get involved with that? We have an investment fund at
Speaker 1: the Partnership that invests in sort of what comes next,
Speaker 1: And we had invested in a company in the Brooklyn
Speaker 1: Navy Yard, which is probably the most exciting economic development
Speaker 1: project in the twenty one century. And so one of
Speaker 1: the companies, their new lab that we had supported, got
Speaker 1: the idea when we had not enough ventilators in the
Speaker 1: city for the number of people coming into the I
Speaker 1: c U. They said, let's invent a ventilator. And in
Speaker 1: four weeks. It was actually built in a factory in
Speaker 1: Long Island City, and my role in that was simply
Speaker 1: when they needed a part, to get to the CEO
Speaker 1: of that company and say we need a part now,
Speaker 1: and we know there's a long line for this, but uh,
Speaker 1: let's get it first. You know, there's a lot of
Speaker 1: uh neurosis and a lot of anxiety uh out there
Speaker 1: right now. So there's a lot of speculation of what's
Speaker 1: going to happen. And I thought people say to me
Speaker 1: that they anticipated over the next two to three years
Speaker 1: about a half a million people will leave New York City,
Speaker 1: maybe even more. Many people feel that that New York
Speaker 1: in particular is a feted Petrie dish of viralogical threats
Speaker 1: to them. Now they're very, very scared. We live on
Speaker 1: eastern Long Island for our weekend slash summer home, and
Speaker 1: we're out here now, living out here since March twelveth.
Speaker 1: We're gonna stay out here through the summer. And we
Speaker 1: have friends of ours who are here who said told
Speaker 1: us they're not going back. They're going to stay in
Speaker 1: their houses here and enroll their kids in school here
Speaker 1: or do an online thing. Are you worried about that ton.
Speaker 1: I'm worried about it, but but I think it's very addressable.
Speaker 1: I mean, we did see after nine eleven there were
Speaker 1: concerns that New York was going to see continued terrorist attacks,
Speaker 1: and we managed to make the city safe again. Um,
Speaker 1: the barometer of the city, a lot of it is
Speaker 1: around the transit system. If people feel safe getting on
Speaker 1: the subway and busses again, then they'll generally feel safe
Speaker 1: in New York. They'll feel safe going to a restaurant,
Speaker 1: and they'll feel safe going to school or an office.
Speaker 1: And so we've been looking at this through the lens
Speaker 1: of what's it gonna take to make it not just
Speaker 1: feel safe but be safe. Do we shift resources towards
Speaker 1: the transit police and have a lot of transit cops
Speaker 1: down They're saying, if you don't get a mask on,
Speaker 1: you ain't getting on the subway. That's it. In London,
Speaker 1: when the Tube before they invested and it would get overcrowded,
Speaker 1: they would during rush hour in the morning, they would
Speaker 1: close the gates and say nobody's able to get onto
Speaker 1: the system until some people get off because of the
Speaker 1: overcrowding conditions, and they were worried about people I think
Speaker 1: literally falling into the tracks. I think that we're going
Speaker 1: to have to start to actively manage these systems much
Speaker 1: more than we've been doing it. And by the way,
Speaker 1: earlier today, about twelve hours ago, the New York City
Speaker 1: subway shut down for the first time in its history
Speaker 1: so that in the wee hours they could do cleaning
Speaker 1: and maintenance of the system. It's something we posed about
Speaker 1: three years ago, and I took a lot of heat
Speaker 1: for it, um but I think that to make it
Speaker 1: safe for the the people who use it between five
Speaker 1: am and one am, uh, you have to shut it
Speaker 1: for a couple of hours just to just to do
Speaker 1: that maintenance. So we've already taken that first very dramatic step,
Speaker 1: and I think more of those things are going to
Speaker 1: be coming online. I think the m t A is
Speaker 1: going to be learning from other global cities about best
Speaker 1: practices and what they're doing to make the system safe.
Speaker 1: And I think that wearing masks, more frequent cleaning of
Speaker 1: the system, making sure that it's not overcrowded. You can't
Speaker 1: just leave it up to bus drivers to tell people
Speaker 1: they can't get on a bus. You've got to come
Speaker 1: up with better ways to do it, and so I
Speaker 1: think all of that's on the table. Well, he's brought
Speaker 1: the governor has brought in Mayor Bloomberg, who's going to
Speaker 1: set up a contact tracing system, which will be important
Speaker 1: for transit because if you do come in contact with
Speaker 1: someone who comes down with the virus, you'll be informed,
Speaker 1: you'll be tracked. There's going to be a whole new
Speaker 1: public how regime, and New York will probably do that
Speaker 1: better than any place else in the world and throw
Speaker 1: more resources at it than any place else in the world.
Speaker 1: So that's what we've got to sell now. On the
Speaker 1: other hand, I heard about creating space for private officers,
Speaker 1: for folks to work from their Long Island area if
Speaker 1: they don't want to be at home with their four kids. Um.
Speaker 1: I heard the same thing today about Palm Beach, Florida,
Speaker 1: that they're looking at developing similar kind of facilities, and
Speaker 1: we're going to hear more and more of that. And
Speaker 1: what we've got to start thinking about, which is something
Speaker 1: the Regional Plan has been thinking about for a while,
Speaker 1: is thinking about our region from northern New Jersey to Fairfield,
Speaker 1: Connecticut to Long Island and saying, okay, if third of
Speaker 1: the people that come into the city want to work
Speaker 1: from home. How do we make sure that the region
Speaker 1: as a whole benefits from that, How do we replan
Speaker 1: our transportation system to work for those people? And what
Speaker 1: are we going to do, most importantly within New York
Speaker 1: City to develop the next generation of jobs, whether it's
Speaker 1: the folks to wing, public health tracing, or or the
Speaker 1: other things that we're going to have to develop to
Speaker 1: reinvent the city. The only other thing I wanted to
Speaker 1: mention on this note that I'm really worried about that
Speaker 1: you don't hear much about, is our universities. So much
Speaker 1: of our leadership in the innovation economy and of the
Speaker 1: kids that the talent that stays to New York and
Speaker 1: grows here comes from overseas to go to our great universities.
Speaker 1: They're having a terrible time. They had to close down
Speaker 1: in March, uh complete the semester, complete the year, and
Speaker 1: summer school online. They've got people suing them to get
Speaker 1: their tuition back. They've got horrible time lining up, especially
Speaker 1: international students for next year, who really pay the freight.
Speaker 1: So all these are issues that we have to figure out.
Speaker 1: I think the university situation is something we should be
Speaker 1: paying a lot of attention to. One thing I was
Speaker 1: also curious about, is what do you think is going
Speaker 1: to happen to city, state income taxes and sales taxes
Speaker 1: in the immediate sense in New York About the state's
Speaker 1: projecting thirteen billion over the next year um of lost. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the city's about UM seven point four billion. Yeah, reduced revenues,
Speaker 1: So that's what or some substantial yeah. Catherine Wild of
Speaker 1: the Partnership for New York City with Tom Wright of
Speaker 1: the Regional Plan Association. Tom has the distinction of being
Speaker 1: here's the things only two time guest. Hello Tom, How
Speaker 1: are you good to see you? Tom? I always assumed that,
Speaker 1: like Paul McCartney, Billy Joel or Barbara streisand would be
Speaker 1: our person. We've decided to have pandemic to do it virus.
Speaker 1: Tom could book you twice. Last year, Tom fiscal watchdog
Speaker 1: Nicole Julys and two thousand twenty one Marrow front runner
Speaker 1: Corey Johnson came on the show. The discussion was about
Speaker 1: how to fix the city's troubled transportation agency, the m
Speaker 1: t A, which is largely controlled from Albany. Long before
Speaker 1: the crisis of COVID nineteen, Johnson had strong feelings about
Speaker 1: Albany's type grip. The m t A is set up
Speaker 1: to deflect any level of accountability. So we can talk
Speaker 1: about all these super important issues on repairing, contracting, and
Speaker 1: on negotiating with unions and expanding the subway system. But
Speaker 1: until you get down to the fundamental issue of singular
Speaker 1: accountability and responsibility, everyone is always going to be able
Speaker 1: to point fingers, which is why I called for municipal control.
Speaker 1: For our full conversation text m t A to seven
Speaker 1: zero one zero one. That's m T A to seven
Speaker 1: zero one zero one. This is Alec Baldwin and you're
Speaker 1: listening to here's the thing now. More on the post
Speaker 1: COVID future with Kathy Wilde and Tom Wright. The New
Speaker 1: York region's transit agencies, the Port Authority, the mt A,
Speaker 1: New Jersey Transit, and the Long Island Railroad have received
Speaker 1: some money from the federal Cares Act, but it's not
Speaker 1: nearly enough. They are facing a devastating operating deficit. Um
Speaker 1: they are seeing, you know, roughly their ridership decline. And
Speaker 1: we are more reliant in New York on transit fares
Speaker 1: paying for operations than anywhere else in the country. In
Speaker 1: Los Angeles they subsidize that. They don't they don't charge
Speaker 1: people that much and and so it doesn't make as
Speaker 1: big a difference. Um So, the m t A is
Speaker 1: losing about two hundred million dollars a week right now
Speaker 1: because of the loss of ridership on the subways, bus,
Speaker 1: is Long Island Railroad, Metro North. Uh. They got some
Speaker 1: money from the federal government, but it's not enough and
Speaker 1: they're gonna need They've gone back and asked for another
Speaker 1: three point nine billion dollars and if they don't get that,
Speaker 1: the only option for them is essentially to raid their
Speaker 1: capital budgets and to take They had just approved a
Speaker 1: fifty one billion dollar mt A five year capital plan.
Speaker 1: It was the largest and historic plan, funded by congestion
Speaker 1: pricing and other things. And if they have to raid
Speaker 1: that for the operations, it means that the system will
Speaker 1: start to decline in what all the things we talked
Speaker 1: about on the show exactly, signals and and everything like that.
Speaker 1: And so it's really important to protect that capital budget.
Speaker 1: At the same time, the capital plans were created in
Speaker 1: a different environment. Um I was talking to ahead of
Speaker 1: the Port Authority the other day, and you know they're
Speaker 1: going to have to take a fresh look and think
Speaker 1: about whether they can spend the kind of money on
Speaker 1: on the airports and the Lincoln Tunnel and the tolls
Speaker 1: and others that they expected. And all of those capital
Speaker 1: plans were driven by projections of future growth that may
Speaker 1: not materialize either. So I think a kind of reassessment
Speaker 1: of the capital plans is going to come. There's going
Speaker 1: to be a reduction in them. The key is to
Speaker 1: make sure that we don't raid them too much for
Speaker 1: the operating and that we think about what are the
Speaker 1: new demands that the system is going to have again,
Speaker 1: making sure that the subway is safe, making sure that
Speaker 1: we can um collect tolls efficiently and and things like that. Well,
Speaker 1: the other piece of this is, though, if we can
Speaker 1: get the federal government to come up with a rational
Speaker 1: response in terms of helping us close the gaps not
Speaker 1: just on the transit system, but the loss of city
Speaker 1: and state revenues and the expenses that have been incurred
Speaker 1: by the city and state to get us out of
Speaker 1: the hole. Our tax structure is already uncompetitive, but the
Speaker 1: inertia of loving New York, loving its call cultural activities,
Speaker 1: its public gatherings, Broadway, all the things that are now gone.
Speaker 1: At least for the moment, there was, there was a
Speaker 1: stickiness to New York that kept us all here paying
Speaker 1: high taxes, putting up with the longest commute in the country.
Speaker 1: That that is threatened right now, and to the extent
Speaker 1: our local government solution is to raise taxes more. That's
Speaker 1: going to actually have the exact opposite effect, will end
Speaker 1: up further gutting the city. We've got to figure out
Speaker 1: how to come together with plans Number one. We should
Speaker 1: be fighting together to make sure that Washington comes through
Speaker 1: with at least half a trillion dollars for cities and
Speaker 1: states across the country, and then make sure that that
Speaker 1: money is allocated on the basis of the harm done,
Speaker 1: the injury done. It doesn't bother you that we're just
Speaker 1: ladling on more debt for the federal government. Well, since
Speaker 1: these cities are our city is a response sable for
Speaker 1: a big chunk of the federal economy. That and we
Speaker 1: send twenty one billion dollars more in taxes to the
Speaker 1: federal government than we get back every year up to now.
Speaker 1: Their vested interest is in making sure that our cities
Speaker 1: are functional, that we can keep the police going to
Speaker 1: great point. I don't want to say as goes New York,
Speaker 1: so goes the country, but it's true. It's true in
Speaker 1: that giver taker thing. I mean, you sit there and
Speaker 1: see you want to say that, McConnell. You want to say, Hey, Kentucky,
Speaker 1: you guys just live off of all the money you make.
Speaker 1: Absolutely so Cole and you guys just live off of
Speaker 1: all the money that you collect. Him of it, and
Speaker 1: we'll keep all of our money. I'll give you another number.
Speaker 1: In the two and a half trillion that's been allocated
Speaker 1: so far under the Federal Cares Act, new York got
Speaker 1: five hundred dollars per COVID case. Montana, which had a
Speaker 1: total of four hundred and fifty seven cases, received two
Speaker 1: point seven million per case. That's how the politics have worked.
Speaker 1: And when New York was doing great as an economy,
Speaker 1: that was okay, we subsidized the rest of the country.
Speaker 1: That situation is reversed. We are the hardest hit city
Speaker 1: in the world. We're twenty percent of the deaths in
Speaker 1: this country. We're in our city. We have to reverse
Speaker 1: that conversation and make our case is four more years
Speaker 1: of Trump and his attitude towards cities and those he
Speaker 1: used as his political non supporters. Does that terrify you
Speaker 1: for the future of New York. Well, in the case
Speaker 1: of cities, Trump's bark is a little worse than his bite.
Speaker 1: I think he's going to support the city's getting this money.
Speaker 1: I really do, because because it's in his interests. Even
Speaker 1: of export imports come through the port of New York
Speaker 1: and New Jersey. We are the entry point to the
Speaker 1: global marketplace. We are the financial services capital of the world.
Speaker 1: There's no way that they can write us off. So
Speaker 1: I believe that it is um in Trump's interest to
Speaker 1: support New York City, and I think he'll He usually
Speaker 1: acts on his interests. Um Now, tom My question for
Speaker 1: you is it seems like moments ago that de Blasio
Speaker 1: was running for president. Now, of course Deplasio is in
Speaker 1: a lot of hot water and people with a lot
Speaker 1: of criticism. But I want to give him the benefit
Speaker 1: of the debt, even though my attitude abo about him
Speaker 1: as evolved. What was he thinking Do you have a
Speaker 1: little bit more of an understanding from your position? What
Speaker 1: was he thinking that he decided to keep things open
Speaker 1: that way. Look, there's been an enormous amount of frustration,
Speaker 1: to put it mildly, from in our communities with with
Speaker 1: a lot of the decisions that he's made, um not
Speaker 1: moving more quickly on on protections, and just kind of
Speaker 1: not seeming to understand even to this day as he
Speaker 1: kind of drives around back to Brooklyn to to walk
Speaker 1: through his his favorite park, without realizing that that when
Speaker 1: you're sending a message that everybody is supposed to be
Speaker 1: hunkering down and staying at home, that maybe he should be.
Speaker 1: He should be demonstrating that himself personally. Um uh, de
Speaker 1: Blancio is God. I don't know exactly how to answer this, Alec.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's you want me to rescue you, you
Speaker 1: jump in, Cathy. You'll do it more politically than I will,
Speaker 1: because this is a first time experience for all of us.
Speaker 1: And I really think that the governor and mayor have
Speaker 1: done as much as they possibly could on this balancing
Speaker 1: act between seeing nine hundred thousand people out of work,
Speaker 1: children out of school and not getting an education, kids
Speaker 1: not graduating, closing it. This was a terribly painful decision
Speaker 1: to make, and I will give them both credit, both
Speaker 1: of them, have consulted with the health community number one,
Speaker 1: with the business community and employers number two, with the
Speaker 1: educators number three. They've both worked their tails off to
Speaker 1: get computers to kids who didn't have them. China for
Speaker 1: a while cut us off from supplies, the masks and
Speaker 1: the gallons, et cetera. De Blasio set up a whole system.
Speaker 1: We're making those in the Navy yard. We've delivered as
Speaker 1: of today, a million face shields to our hospitals out
Speaker 1: of the Brooklyn Navy Yard. They're feeding hundreds of thousands
Speaker 1: of people. The city is under Katherine Garcia, the Sanitation commissioner,
Speaker 1: was anointed foods Are and she's taken over. They're doing
Speaker 1: a terrific job of feeding the healthcare workers, of feeding
Speaker 1: the kids that are no longer getting school lunches. The
Speaker 1: dimensions of this crisis, and for you know, government often
Speaker 1: can't walk into gum. At the same time, this has
Speaker 1: been a crisis on every front. I've been on the
Speaker 1: phone with them twenty four seven and they're all working
Speaker 1: their tails off. What would you like to see Cuomo
Speaker 1: do in the short term and the long term? The state? Well,
Speaker 1: Number one is the city and state have to be
Speaker 1: have to be speaking with one voice. Obviously, I guess
Speaker 1: you just made my point, which is a very difficult
Speaker 1: thing between the bassio and Cuomo, so I'm told well,
Speaker 1: And it was between Rudy and Potechi, and it's all
Speaker 1: between Lindsay and Rockefell. It's always been there. There's a
Speaker 1: tension there. Um. New York City is the economic heavyweight,
Speaker 1: and the upstate has always felt we screwed around with
Speaker 1: their politics. That doesn't go away, and there's a natural
Speaker 1: tension there. But but so far, so good. We had
Speaker 1: them together announcing the closure of the subway from one
Speaker 1: to five in the morning. They both had to sell it.
Speaker 1: It was particularly controversial because it meant getting the homeless
Speaker 1: out of the subway, and that's a very politically charged issue,
Speaker 1: and they stuck together on that. Sharing the responsibilities between
Speaker 1: the city's public health system and the larger voluntary system
Speaker 1: that the state regulates. They understand the importance of working together,
Speaker 1: particularly as we start to re open the economy and
Speaker 1: bring people back. We have to sell confidence. That will
Speaker 1: not happen if we're a house divided, if we're a
Speaker 1: city in state competing with each other. New York historically
Speaker 1: has been resilient because we were pragmatic. During Occupy Wall Street,
Speaker 1: the Washington A f l c I O. TRUMPA tried
Speaker 1: to get the unions to march with Occupy Wall Street,
Speaker 1: to march Don Broadway in protest and create a giant outpouring.
Speaker 1: Organized labor leaders refused to do it. They said, we
Speaker 1: need the financial industry in New York. We need them
Speaker 1: to come back. And they rose above the ideological to
Speaker 1: come down on the side of New York. And that's
Speaker 1: the moral, the lesson that we have to take forward.
Speaker 1: We've got to stick together. I was thinking as you
Speaker 1: were talking, Kathy. In the seventies, Um, to help the
Speaker 1: city get out of its financial crisis, the Rooten family
Speaker 1: and members of the real estate community started prepaying taxes
Speaker 1: because they knew that the city needed the seats immediately. Correct, correct,
Speaker 1: And you know right now, Um, the big companies Bloomberg
Speaker 1: announced this, some the banks have announced at MasterCard they're
Speaker 1: paying their vendors within one or two days as soon
Speaker 1: as they can for the very same reason, just to
Speaker 1: keep the money in the system and to keep businesses going. Yeah,
Speaker 1: which makes a lot of sense. I'll also just say
Speaker 1: on the to take the regional perspective, Cathie will be shocked.
Speaker 1: Governor Cuomo has also been instrumental in pulling together the
Speaker 1: neighboring states and maybe laying the groundwork for creating more
Speaker 1: of an ongoing coordination between these states on investment policies
Speaker 1: and other things. Because if all the things come to
Speaker 1: pass where some people start to say, let's let's leave
Speaker 1: accounts payable outside Manhattan, well what we like is for
Speaker 1: them to stay in the metropolitan region. For for the
Speaker 1: businesses to see themselves as regionally based, distributing their their
Speaker 1: workforce across the region as needs and costs make the
Speaker 1: most sense. And that's beneficial for all of us. And
Speaker 1: I and I think that we're I think it's been
Speaker 1: two remendous leadership on the part of the governors up
Speaker 1: and down the Northeast working together. One question I had
Speaker 1: for you, Kathy. You spoke out forcefully against the city's
Speaker 1: workers Bill of Rights granting sickly even hazard pay for
Speaker 1: essential workers, which of course put you at odds with
Speaker 1: the Corey Johnson and so for people like that, why
Speaker 1: why was that the case? Well, I testified yesterday that
Speaker 1: it's not a matter of lack of compassion. We all
Speaker 1: share that, but the burden of some of these um
Speaker 1: of some of these requirements, and this is focused on
Speaker 1: essential industries. Well, essential industries is everything from the securities
Speaker 1: industry Wall Street, to the healthcare workers to the grocery
Speaker 1: store workers, etcetera. And there's a lot of difference in those.
Speaker 1: And at the federal level we have done a lot
Speaker 1: to get money to workers with the enriched unemployment. There
Speaker 1: are issues of resources. Do we have the resources the
Speaker 1: businesses that they're asking to pay essential workers and the hospitals,
Speaker 1: by the way, they are all stretched very thin financially.
Speaker 1: So it's not that you can just pass a law
Speaker 1: like you could do in the last twelve years when
Speaker 1: we had prosperity. These businesses have profit margins of five
Speaker 1: cent or less and a lot of those are gone.
Speaker 1: Our consumer spending year over year is down thirty in
Speaker 1: New York City since a year ago, so that money
Speaker 1: has disappeared from our economy. There's a tendency to think, well,
Speaker 1: we can make a law and fix this. A law
Speaker 1: will not fix this. We have compassion for these workers,
Speaker 1: we all want to reward them, but you're not going
Speaker 1: to do that with a law, you have to figure
Speaker 1: out another way to do that. And in the case
Speaker 1: of the nineteen seventies crisis, the unions, the workers sacrifice,
Speaker 1: They sacrifice, their salary increases the public service workers. I
Speaker 1: think we can count on that. Again. That's what was
Speaker 1: my next question, which was do you think that New
Speaker 1: York unions, which are pretty tough union can be relied
Speaker 1: upon to sacrifice? Again, I absolutely do, I absolutely do.
Speaker 1: I think they care about New York. They've got a
Speaker 1: huge stake in the future of the city. Just as
Speaker 1: I think everybody has to sacrifice. People have to see
Speaker 1: that business is sacrificing. People have to see funds that
Speaker 1: are being raised by the one percent to support the
Speaker 1: undocumented workers who don't qualify for the Trump unemployment insurance.
Speaker 1: That's the kind of thing that's going on in New York,
Speaker 1: top end restaurants that are delivering meals to poor communities
Speaker 1: and to healthcare workers. I absolutely believe that everyone is
Speaker 1: going to make a sacrifice for the city because we
Speaker 1: all love it. We've got to get that back. The
Speaker 1: question is timing and how much suffering is between now
Speaker 1: and then. Yeah, if I can, if I can agree
Speaker 1: with that and and one of the things that we
Speaker 1: do have as an advantage in New York, frankly, is
Speaker 1: that we went through these tough times over the last
Speaker 1: twenty years. Between nine eleven two thousand and eight Sandy,
Speaker 1: the city came together after each of those communities started
Speaker 1: looking out for each other, started to realize how how
Speaker 1: important those connections were. Because I talked to my counterparts
Speaker 1: around the country, and I don't think other cities and
Speaker 1: metro regions have that kind of resiliency that New York
Speaker 1: does because they haven't been tested over the last generation
Speaker 1: the way we have. I'm trying to focus myself on
Speaker 1: what we can control, what we have the power to change.
Speaker 1: You know, one thing we're all very concerned about is
Speaker 1: Broadway because Broadway is maybe not a big cylinder in
Speaker 1: the city's ecind of was one of them. And I've
Speaker 1: been on the line and talking to people a lot
Speaker 1: about what we're going to do. You know who I
Speaker 1: suggest you talk to, Henry Tims, who's president of Lincoln Center.
Speaker 1: That's a very good point, Todd Haimes from the Roundabout Theater,
Speaker 1: which I'm on the board of. Not to end on
Speaker 1: a downer, but the arts and culture even more so
Speaker 1: than restaurants. I it's really hard to see what it's
Speaker 1: going to take for Lincoln Center and and and Broadway
Speaker 1: to come back. That's going to be really hard. Some
Speaker 1: of the big ones which have we listen to Philharmonic
Speaker 1: that I'm on the board of, had reserves that they
Speaker 1: were piling up in order to do the renovation of
Speaker 1: David Geffen Hall. And I mean, I think they're gonna
Speaker 1: be okay in terms of they're going to survive. It's
Speaker 1: just that they're gonna have to dip into that money
Speaker 1: that was capital improvement money as operating cash, and that
Speaker 1: we're gonna we're gonna have to go back several spaces
Speaker 1: on the game board in terms of raising money. Listen,
Speaker 1: I'm very grateful not only for you doing the podcast,
Speaker 1: but for the work that you do on behalf of
Speaker 1: the people of the city of New York. Thank you
Speaker 1: so much, Thank you, thank you. It's always a pleasure.
Speaker 1: Stay safe, and I'm gonna be sending you my proposal
Speaker 1: for the funding for therapy for sixty two year old
Speaker 1: out of work. I'll add it in the fifth Plan.
Speaker 1: But you also have an important role as that champion
Speaker 1: for the city that everybody would enjoy hearing from al
Speaker 1: Thank you, Kathy Wilde and Tom Wright. At least the
Speaker 1: private sector effort to bring the city back from this
Speaker 1: pandemic will be in good hands. This is Alec Baldwin
Speaker 1: and you're listening to here's the thing. Oh,