Speaker 1: This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the
Speaker 1: Thing from my Heart Radio. Today we're exploring issues here
Speaker 1: in New York that connect to larger ones around the country.
Speaker 1: Our guests are Michael Cecitski from the New York Civil
Speaker 1: Liberties Union and Catherine Wilde. I spoke with Kathy Wilde
Speaker 1: back in May when things looked dismal for New York City.
Speaker 1: As the President and CEO of the Partnership for New
Speaker 1: York City, Kathy is one of the smartest and most
Speaker 1: connected people I know. She's in close contact with the
Speaker 1: city's top CEO s, and now a year later, I
Speaker 1: wanted to check in with her to get a sense
Speaker 1: of what she's hearing, but first a closer look at
Speaker 1: another issue closely related to New York City's finances and
Speaker 1: city safety, police reform. Michael Cecitski is a lawyer at
Speaker 1: the New York Civil Liberties Union. One of the nyc
Speaker 1: l us top priorities is to ensure a more equitable
Speaker 1: justice system by addressing systemic police violence, and Michael leads
Speaker 1: its Police Transparency and Accountability campaign. The n y c
Speaker 1: l U is in the process of requesting police discipline
Speaker 1: records from around the state, requests made possible by the
Speaker 1: state legislatures. Recently, peal of New York Civil Rights Law
Speaker 1: Section fifty A, which previously kept the disciplinary records of
Speaker 1: police officers hidden. Was this provision of the New York
Speaker 1: State Civil Rights Law that put New York at the
Speaker 1: back of the pack when it comes to transparency on
Speaker 1: police misconduct. So this was a law that said that
Speaker 1: records of police misconduct, whether their complaints against officers, whether
Speaker 1: they're investigated, whether there's any kind of accountability, essentially a
Speaker 1: state secret um and the public was not able to
Speaker 1: know whether or not the systems that we have in
Speaker 1: place to hold officers to account for that misconduct or
Speaker 1: working because we just couldn't access any of those records.
Speaker 1: So it first came about in the nineteen seventies. Why
Speaker 1: why do you think so? The idea was that defense
Speaker 1: attorneys were doing their jobs, so police officers were upset
Speaker 1: at the fact that they were being called to testify
Speaker 1: in cases, and defense attorneys would look at whether there
Speaker 1: was a record of misconduct and that officer's history, had
Speaker 1: they made bad arrests in similar cases before? Were they
Speaker 1: ever accused of lying on the stand or on official reports,
Speaker 1: and they would use those bad acts to question the
Speaker 1: credibility of the officer testifying. Exactly. So, when fifty eight
Speaker 1: was first passed, it was justified in that lens of
Speaker 1: trying to prevent defense attorneys from going on fishing expeditions
Speaker 1: in the course of doing their jobs and representing their clients.
Speaker 1: But over time it morphed into something completely different, and
Speaker 1: it became the go to excuse that police departments would
Speaker 1: point to to withhold any kind of record of officer misdeeds. Now,
Speaker 1: was there a person or an institution or both that
Speaker 1: we're spearheading this back in the seventies, Was there somebody
Speaker 1: ramming this down the legislature's throat. It was police unions,
Speaker 1: police departments that were leaving the charge on this, and
Speaker 1: it was with a very receptive legislature. There was not
Speaker 1: a lot of organized opposition to this proposal when it
Speaker 1: came about, and maybe in part that's because it was
Speaker 1: envisioned as this narrower approach to dealing with the specific
Speaker 1: case of officers on the witness stand. But it was
Speaker 1: at a time where New York and other states were
Speaker 1: starting to pass freedom of information laws. Freedom of Information
Speaker 1: Acts to make more public records open and accessible, and
Speaker 1: the was one of the first areas where we saw
Speaker 1: police union start to push back on that trend of
Speaker 1: making more government records available to the public. Where is
Speaker 1: fifty A at now in New York? I mean it
Speaker 1: was repealed, was repealed and then something happened or did
Speaker 1: they did they litigate that? Or what? Fifty A journey?
Speaker 1: It's a long and tortured one. Fifty A started to
Speaker 1: get applied more and more outside the courtroom context and
Speaker 1: as the blanket response to public records requests going into
Speaker 1: the NYPD and other police departments, and we saw a
Speaker 1: dramatic expansion of its use in the past five ten years,
Speaker 1: largely under the Blasio administration, where the NYPD started to
Speaker 1: withhold just summary redacted information on disciplinary outcomes for officers.
Speaker 1: They used it to justify with holding data like use
Speaker 1: of for statistics and more and more. They were fighting
Speaker 1: these efforts in the courts to expand the scope of
Speaker 1: fifty A make it impossible to get any kind of
Speaker 1: access to those records. They wanted to just broaden the
Speaker 1: scope of fifty as much as they could exactly. They
Speaker 1: wanted to make the supply and context that were entirely
Speaker 1: unheard of when this law was first enacted in the seventies.
Speaker 1: So the case that ultimately led to its most dramatic
Speaker 1: expansion back in the n y c l U submitted
Speaker 1: to foil request with the NYPD. We asked for decisions
Speaker 1: from the n y p d S trial room that
Speaker 1: were redacted, didn't have officer names, are identifying information. We
Speaker 1: just wanted to see what the reasoning was of NYPD
Speaker 1: trial judges in reaching their recommendations on whether or not
Speaker 1: to hold an officer accountable, recommend discipline against them, and
Speaker 1: basically just understand what the process was. The NYPD said, no,
Speaker 1: we're not going to give you these records because even
Speaker 1: if we take officer names off of it, fifty A
Speaker 1: prevents us from telling you any of this information. And
Speaker 1: so if I'm not mistaken, what was originally wanting to
Speaker 1: redact with the names of officers specifically who might do
Speaker 1: fear retribution or their records might fairly or unfairly derail prosecution.
Speaker 1: Then it became they expanded it too. We don't want
Speaker 1: you to know anything, not just the names. We don't
Speaker 1: want you to know anything, right, exactly as it was written,
Speaker 1: applied specifically to personnel records used to evaluate performance, and
Speaker 1: what they tried to do was take a very expansive
Speaker 1: read of what counts as a personnel record. And because
Speaker 1: of the way that the statute was written, they also
Speaker 1: argue that there was no kind of out for them
Speaker 1: to just take an officer name off the file and
Speaker 1: release the underlying record or just basic summary information on
Speaker 1: the cases. They took the position that no disclosure was permitted,
Speaker 1: and that's ultimately what the State Court of Appeals held
Speaker 1: in in our lawsuit. They said that fifty A, unlike
Speaker 1: all of the other kind of exemptions that typically apply
Speaker 1: in public records laws, actually blocks police departments from releasing
Speaker 1: anything that's related to an officer's disciplinary or misconduct records,
Speaker 1: and basically punted to the legislature to take action and said,
Speaker 1: if you want this problem fixed, the legislature needs to
Speaker 1: fix it. Once fifty A was repealed and the remains
Speaker 1: repealed correct, Oh, there's lots of litigation. There was federal litigation.
Speaker 1: The Second Circuit Court of Appeals just a couple of
Speaker 1: weeks ago tossed out of police union lawsuit from New
Speaker 1: York city trying to block the publication of disciplinary records
Speaker 1: were they published. So the city had planned to publish
Speaker 1: those records until this litigation stopped them from doing so.
Speaker 1: But before the litigation even began, the NYC l you
Speaker 1: obtained a database of disciplinary records from the Civilian Compoint
Speaker 1: Review Board, this independent entity in New York City that
Speaker 1: investigates certain allegations of police misconduct. And we posted the
Speaker 1: database that we received from that agency on our website,
Speaker 1: so you can look up the three hundred thousand plus
Speaker 1: complains dating back to the nineteen eighties that are in
Speaker 1: those records. But you know, that's only a slice of
Speaker 1: the records that exist, because that is just the ccrb
Speaker 1: S files. We haven't seen the records from the NYPD
Speaker 1: itself yet, but with this ruling from the Court of Appeals,
Speaker 1: we now expect that hopefully within the next couple of weeks,
Speaker 1: we'll be able to see that information go up online.
Speaker 1: You have faith that you're going to be getting unedited
Speaker 1: on redacted information. I'm assuming when they sense that the
Speaker 1: fifty is going to be repealed that they try to
Speaker 1: do all kinds of things to prepare for that, to
Speaker 1: maintain the lack of transparency. What's happening in New York
Speaker 1: the NYPD following the repeal of fifty A, they said
Speaker 1: that they were going to create this database, they were
Speaker 1: going to put the records up online. I don't have
Speaker 1: confidence that it is going to be the full universe
Speaker 1: of records, and I do think that they're going to
Speaker 1: be selective about trying to find whatever existing exceptions in
Speaker 1: the state free of information law. They're going to find
Speaker 1: as much ground for themselves as they can to withhold
Speaker 1: certain categories of records. But we're not just relying on
Speaker 1: the department itself to make the records of llable. One
Speaker 1: of the things that the ny c LU has done
Speaker 1: in recent months is send a series of public records
Speaker 1: request to police departments across the state, demanding that in
Speaker 1: accordance with state law. Now these are public records, we
Speaker 1: demand access to them, and the departments that are not
Speaker 1: producing them. You know, we have a ton of law
Speaker 1: firms that we're working in partnership with us on to
Speaker 1: make sure that we have the ability to go into
Speaker 1: court and make sure that now that you know fifty
Speaker 1: as gone, we have a legal right to see these records.
Speaker 1: What troubles me there is that Let's say there's a
Speaker 1: piece of evidence like a tape or a photograph or whatever,
Speaker 1: that the police themselves are the only ones with a
Speaker 1: copy of that evidence. So what if the police turn
Speaker 1: around and go, no, we're not going to release it
Speaker 1: like like make us and there's no other copy of
Speaker 1: its somewhere else that another entity could release. Does that
Speaker 1: trouble you that they might just say, fuck you, We're
Speaker 1: not going to release that. It's absolutely concerning. I think
Speaker 1: what we have going for us as a starting point
Speaker 1: is the fact that with fifty A gone, the rest
Speaker 1: of the kind of framework for getting access to these
Speaker 1: types of records, the law is very much on our side.
Speaker 1: So if we have those disputes to end up going
Speaker 1: to court, if the police department is saying we don't
Speaker 1: want to turn over these records, we have really solid
Speaker 1: legal footing to go in and argue for why those
Speaker 1: records should be made available. But to the broader point,
Speaker 1: I do think it needs to be part of a
Speaker 1: broader conversation around how we're structuring police accountability systems to
Speaker 1: be more independent of the department itself. So we're looking
Speaker 1: at what it could take to have entire agencies that
Speaker 1: are set up with real disciplinary power that are not
Speaker 1: beholden to a police department structure that would exist in
Speaker 1: an agency like a civilian review board, that would exist
Speaker 1: somewhere else, so that we're mitigating the risk of putting
Speaker 1: all of this information being kept in the hands of
Speaker 1: people who have a real clear interest in not making
Speaker 1: that information public. And that's true of disciplinary records. It's
Speaker 1: one of our concerns with things like body camera footage,
Speaker 1: like if you want to have officers wearing body cameras
Speaker 1: and recording interactions to improve transparency, then you should have
Speaker 1: someone who's not the police department be the one who
Speaker 1: decides on when those records are being published and released.
Speaker 1: It's as true for disciplinary records as it is for
Speaker 1: body cameras and any other kind of tool meant to
Speaker 1: improve transparency. You can't rely on the police themselves to
Speaker 1: be transparent when they've been fighting against those basic measures
Speaker 1: for as long as they have. Who are the people
Speaker 1: in the legislature that helped bring about the repeal off
Speaker 1: on the legislative side who took the lead on this
Speaker 1: were members of the state, Black, Puerto Rican, Hispanic and
Speaker 1: Asian Legislative Caucus, the b p h A. These are
Speaker 1: legislators of color who have been really at the forefront
Speaker 1: of criminal justice reform, police reform, and really helped make
Speaker 1: sure that this legislation moved through the legislative process in
Speaker 1: as strong reform as it did. But I would say
Speaker 1: the real heroes of this movement, the people who ensured
Speaker 1: that this repeal moved forward. We're are a lot of
Speaker 1: the families of people who had lost loved ones to
Speaker 1: police violence. The mother of Eric Garner, the mother of
Speaker 1: Marley Graham. These were some of the champions who from
Speaker 1: their own personal experiences, had been fighting for years to
Speaker 1: get some basic measure of transparency and accountability from police departments,
Speaker 1: and always saw fifty A as one of the main
Speaker 1: obstacles being used to not even give them any measure
Speaker 1: of closure knowing whether or not the police department had
Speaker 1: thoroughly investigated these cases. And they led the charge on
Speaker 1: this issue and on so many of the other issues
Speaker 1: that the state legislature ended up passing last year in
Speaker 1: the wake of the George Floyd protests. What about Cuoma
Speaker 1: was he in favor of repealing so he hadn't taken
Speaker 1: much of a position on it until we saw the
Speaker 1: George Floyd protests really pick up momentum, and we saw
Speaker 1: the instances of really horrific police violence directed against protesters.
Speaker 1: But as as those protests were unfolding, we heard a
Speaker 1: call from the Governor's office to say, the legislature needs
Speaker 1: to pass something. They need to fix the statute. And
Speaker 1: you know, in that maybe week two weeks of kind
Speaker 1: of frantic negotiations putting together a police reform package, this
Speaker 1: became the centerpiece of it. Michael Sisitski is a lawyer
Speaker 1: at the New York Civil Liberties Union. If you like
Speaker 1: conversations with people who are exploring ways to save America's
Speaker 1: great cities, they would go to our archives and listen
Speaker 1: to my conversation with Tom Wright from New York City's
Speaker 1: Regional Plan Association. Right joined Corey Johnson and the Code
Speaker 1: Alimas pre Pandemic to talk about ways to cut unnecessary
Speaker 1: costs related to the subway. The entire system is broken
Speaker 1: from front to end. The procurement process in New York
Speaker 1: State is so ridiculous that contractors will be hired to
Speaker 1: build a piece of the Second Avenue subway. They will
Speaker 1: know that it's going to change, but it's going to
Speaker 1: take a year for the procurement process to effectuate that change.
Speaker 1: So they build something knowing that at the end of
Speaker 1: it they're going to be told to rip it up
Speaker 1: and rebuild it again under some new way. But they
Speaker 1: have to do it and the contractors if they don't
Speaker 1: do is happening Here my conversation with Tom Wright, Corey Johnson,
Speaker 1: and Nicole Julinas at Here's the Thing dot org after
Speaker 1: the Break, Michael Sisitski and I discuss whether the calls
Speaker 1: to defund the police will help keep communities, especially communities
Speaker 1: of color safe. I'm Alec Baldwin, and you're listening to
Speaker 1: Here's the Thing. Activists around the country have been calling
Speaker 1: for defund the police. As a result, more than twenty cities,
Speaker 1: including Austin, Minneapolis, and Seattle, have made efforts to reduce
Speaker 1: their police budgets and increase funds for social services. However,
Speaker 1: Michael Sasitski says that's not really working anywhere yet. I
Speaker 1: can say some of the places that you noted are
Speaker 1: places that have made bigger strides than say New York,
Speaker 1: and the kind of defunding that we've seen in those
Speaker 1: departments there is a shift away from over reliance on
Speaker 1: police as kind of the default solution to every societal ill.
Speaker 1: But it's all very much a work in progress, and
Speaker 1: I think part of what we're grappling with as we're
Speaker 1: trying to identify, you know, how do you shift police
Speaker 1: out of homeless outreach, out of mental health responses, out
Speaker 1: of their kind of ever present presence in schools is
Speaker 1: you know, we are not able to point to a
Speaker 1: real model of the place that has done everything right,
Speaker 1: but there are individual pieces that we're trying to replicate
Speaker 1: and build on. And you know, you look outside the
Speaker 1: US and you see that there are entire countries that
Speaker 1: have fewer instances of police killings of members of the
Speaker 1: public in an entire year than a police department here
Speaker 1: would get through in the course of a week. And
Speaker 1: you look at how they've structured these departments to have
Speaker 1: less of a focus on officers playing the role of
Speaker 1: kind of warriors against communities, of this war on crime
Speaker 1: mentality where officers are heavily armed, they're given surplus military equipment,
Speaker 1: And it's this idea that in most places of the
Speaker 1: US police are so heavily militarized, and they incorporate that
Speaker 1: militarization framework into every aspect of their work. You know,
Speaker 1: one thing that always strikes me about this issue in
Speaker 1: New York especially is this notion that, you know, the
Speaker 1: President of the United States, the only individual who was
Speaker 1: elected to office by all of the people in this country,
Speaker 1: is the commander in chief of the military. We have
Speaker 1: civilian control of the military, and I'm wondering if the
Speaker 1: same thing applies to the City of New York, where
Speaker 1: we have civilian control of the police department. Why does
Speaker 1: someone like the Blasio and de Blasio, of course, has
Speaker 1: a very troubled relationship with the police department, I mean,
Speaker 1: turning their back on him at funerals and stuff, whether
Speaker 1: in there. These are the things that they do on
Speaker 1: the record, And I don't know why it is the
Speaker 1: police have been allowed to achieve this kind of supra
Speaker 1: regulatory status within the government of the City of New York.
Speaker 1: There's a laws and regulations that apply to the fire
Speaker 1: Department and to the Sanitation Department into other city services,
Speaker 1: and none of that applied. The police are like the Kremlin.
Speaker 1: It's it's its own fiefdom inside the city. Would you
Speaker 1: agree with that, I would agree. I mean, in theory,
Speaker 1: the Police Commissioner is an agency official of just like
Speaker 1: any other executive agency in New York City in theory,
Speaker 1: accountable to the mayor. In practice, what we've seen is
Speaker 1: deference given to this agency unlike the difference shown to
Speaker 1: any other New York City entity of government. The NYPD
Speaker 1: has kind of unique among city agencies, basically been given
Speaker 1: the authority to exercise a veto over city Council legislation
Speaker 1: and other forms of oversight. You know, I think back
Speaker 1: to one of the first campaigns that I worked on
Speaker 1: at the end my c l U when I started
Speaker 1: back in was this package of bills called the Right
Speaker 1: to No Act, which were really basic measures in the
Speaker 1: city Council. They were requirements that officers identify themselves, give
Speaker 1: out business cards and encounters, let people know like what
Speaker 1: the reasons are for stops, and to let people know
Speaker 1: when they're being asked to consent to searches. Really basic stuff,
Speaker 1: not actually changing anything fundamental about what officers can or
Speaker 1: can't do, but being more transparent in interactions, which you know,
Speaker 1: in theory could help improve police community relationship because you're
Speaker 1: actually getting to know who these officers are. You're understanding
Speaker 1: what these encounters entail. I wonder how frustrating it is
Speaker 1: for the incoming chief of the New York City Police
Speaker 1: Department to realize that the head of the union has
Speaker 1: more power than you do, that the head of the union,
Speaker 1: the police union, is that one really calling the shots.
Speaker 1: What do you think the Blasio did or did not
Speaker 1: do during his term? He's almost done with his second term.
Speaker 1: What did you think he did or did not do
Speaker 1: to help manage the police or did he not even
Speaker 1: bother to try to manage the police? Yeah? I think
Speaker 1: there was maybe an opening where this is someone who
Speaker 1: ran on a platform about ending the tail of two
Speaker 1: cities in New York, on reigning in unconstitutional stops, on
Speaker 1: having a police department that would take a fundamentally different
Speaker 1: approach than what we saw under Giuliani and Bloomberg. And
Speaker 1: maybe that was the intention for a while, but it
Speaker 1: didn't last long. If that ever was the case. The
Speaker 1: point at which officers turned their backs on the mayor
Speaker 1: at that funeral seemed to be the moment where this
Speaker 1: administration gave up on trying to get control of the
Speaker 1: police department and We saw from that point forward efforts
Speaker 1: to block the City Council from passing really basic police
Speaker 1: transparency measures. We saw the administration basically object to any
Speaker 1: attempt at legislative oversight of the department, and we saw
Speaker 1: the administration take its new interpretation of fifty A to
Speaker 1: start blocking and withholding more records of police accountability. This
Speaker 1: is a mayor who, as his first police commissioner, brought
Speaker 1: in the architect of broken windows policing from the Giuliani
Speaker 1: era and has stayed committed to that approach, which just
Speaker 1: proportionately leads to more police contact and criminalization of poor
Speaker 1: people in communities of color, and has never really diverged
Speaker 1: from that track. So, you know, there's not been really
Speaker 1: much of a solid effort from the administration that we've
Speaker 1: seen here in New York City to actually fundamentally transformed policing.
Speaker 1: A lot of it ended up being more of the same.
Speaker 1: I want to get back to something, which is I'm
Speaker 1: not one of these liberal Democrats who thinks that Obama
Speaker 1: is the lyricist for all of our anthems here in
Speaker 1: the world. But at the same time Obama and I
Speaker 1: agree with him that the phrase defund the police's bad
Speaker 1: optics for this idea of reform. Do you think to
Speaker 1: fund the police is the best wording for that movement?
Speaker 1: I think defund is important as a message, and I
Speaker 1: get that there are concerns about the optics, concerns about
Speaker 1: how it lands when you're trying to convey what it means.
Speaker 1: But I think the focus on defunding the police is
Speaker 1: critical because it keeps the focus on the fact that
Speaker 1: police departments have dramatically expanded their budgets, their functions as
Speaker 1: other agencies that are better equipped to handle things like
Speaker 1: public health, education, housing. As all of those agencies have
Speaker 1: been defunded, we have been in consciously putting that money
Speaker 1: into police departments, expanding their scope, expanding their powers. And
Speaker 1: that is at the root of a lot of these problems,
Speaker 1: is how much we're over investing in police. But you
Speaker 1: and I get it, But so many Americans, have you
Speaker 1: defund the polices, You're going to abolish the police? Have
Speaker 1: you found that to be true. I've certainly heard that,
Speaker 1: and I think you know it's a complicated call, and
Speaker 1: it's one that does merit really in depth discussion public education,
Speaker 1: and that's on advocates to do the hard work of
Speaker 1: explaining what defund means and why it makes sense, why
Speaker 1: it's going to lead to the types of improvements we
Speaker 1: want to see in other areas and other services. So
Speaker 1: I don't disagree that it is complicated, that it takes
Speaker 1: a lot to move the public needle on this, but
Speaker 1: it is. You know, we talk about defunding the police
Speaker 1: because of the active harm that police are causing and
Speaker 1: inflicting on communities because they have been given such outsize power,
Speaker 1: outsize reese forces, and gets to a point where a
Speaker 1: lot of the calls that come back to reform or
Speaker 1: fixed or all of these things, they've been kind of
Speaker 1: the call for years, and we've seen that they haven't
Speaker 1: produced the types of change that are really needed to
Speaker 1: protect communities from the worst excesses of police violence. Some
Speaker 1: of the reforms that have long been called changes to
Speaker 1: things like use of force policies. You know, if we
Speaker 1: just better document force, if we better regulate tactics like
Speaker 1: chokeholds and banned chokeholds, that we're going to see a
Speaker 1: reduction in their use and against communities. But that hasn't
Speaker 1: borne out. Now. Let me ask you this, in the
Speaker 1: work you do do you cast an eye at other
Speaker 1: countries and other areas of the world and who's getting
Speaker 1: it right in terms of their policing. So we haven't
Speaker 1: done a kind of in depth or I haven't done
Speaker 1: at least an in depth review of how other countries
Speaker 1: structure their police departments. But you know what does kind
Speaker 1: of jump out is the fact that most places outside
Speaker 1: the US don't have as heavily armed and militarized police forces.
Speaker 1: They're not sending in someone who's training is to think
Speaker 1: of themselves as basically a soldier going in to get
Speaker 1: control over a neighborhood or population. You know, you're not
Speaker 1: seeing the level of shootings, the level of force used
Speaker 1: against communities because you're not you know, you're not arming
Speaker 1: the cops in these other places as if they are
Speaker 1: actually part of a military force. Sometimes I only have
Speaker 1: cliches and my fingertips here. But the idea that you know,
Speaker 1: when you're a hammer, everything looks like a nail may
Speaker 1: apply to that whole idea of the para militarization of
Speaker 1: the police. But do you believe there are cops out
Speaker 1: there who they want to see those reforms too. I'm
Speaker 1: sure like there are a lot of people who go
Speaker 1: into their profession thinking that, you know, they can make
Speaker 1: a positive difference, that they want to see many of
Speaker 1: the reforms that are called for. But the problems, you know,
Speaker 1: are less a about individual officers are though, there are
Speaker 1: problems who have individual officers, but it's more about the
Speaker 1: systems that are in place that block that type of
Speaker 1: movement from happening. You know, you hear a lot about
Speaker 1: the blue Wall of silence. There are these disincentives and
Speaker 1: retaliation against officers that point out when the system is
Speaker 1: not working the way that it supposedly should. What role
Speaker 1: do you think racism plays in the maintenance of police
Speaker 1: practices that we have today. I think it's inescapable. Racism,
Speaker 1: if you look back at the history of policing in
Speaker 1: this country, has been at the core. Policing in the
Speaker 1: US traces its origins back to slave patrols, groups of
Speaker 1: white citizens that came together to control disorder in communities,
Speaker 1: and that disorder was to crack down on black people
Speaker 1: who were kept as slaves and to capt runaway slaves.
Speaker 1: And from those slave patrol origins you started to see
Speaker 1: the template for how many of the country's early police
Speaker 1: forces developed policing following the Civil War was largely focused
Speaker 1: on enforcing Jim Crow restrictions. You see the role that
Speaker 1: police departments have played in suppressing labor movements, suppressing the
Speaker 1: civil rights movement, in enforcing segregation. It's largely been a
Speaker 1: core function of police departments as part of this idea
Speaker 1: of maintaining order and control, that they are there to
Speaker 1: maintain order and control on behalf of white people and
Speaker 1: targeting black and brown people. Do you think it's necessary
Speaker 1: for something as sensitive as the police department to reflect
Speaker 1: the color of the community. I think the what we've
Speaker 1: seen is a pattern of police departments not reflecting the
Speaker 1: makeup of their communities, and I think it's important that
Speaker 1: they make strides to better reflect the communities they come from,
Speaker 1: the communities they patrol. I don't think it's anywhere near enough.
Speaker 1: It's good to have diversity, diversity itself cannot be the
Speaker 1: end goal if you're not changing the underlying purpose and
Speaker 1: mission of the department. And what we've seen is as
Speaker 1: the rank and file has gotten more diverse in the NYPD,
Speaker 1: you're still not seeing much in terms of senior leadership
Speaker 1: of the departments concern the people calling the shots setting
Speaker 1: the policy people in charge. Yeah, the people in charge
Speaker 1: are not actually reflective of most New Yorkers. I'm always
Speaker 1: mystified as to not that we need quotas, but I'm
Speaker 1: always mystified about the optics of that that the population
Speaker 1: of New York is a plurality of people of color,
Speaker 1: at the police department looks pretty whitey white, white at
Speaker 1: the top. To me, the city is a mess. The
Speaker 1: city is on the precipice of this horrible reckoning in
Speaker 1: terms of its finances, and and I'm assuming just logically
Speaker 1: that's gonna have a tremendous impact on the tech space
Speaker 1: of the city right when they need money most. The
Speaker 1: city is in a free fall economically right now. What
Speaker 1: do you think the impact of that is going to
Speaker 1: be on police reform? Because crime is going up. So
Speaker 1: I think it's it's central to the discussions around what
Speaker 1: to do with the city's budget with the state budget.
Speaker 1: And we saw the first part of these conversations around
Speaker 1: how to handle the fallout of the pandemic in city
Speaker 1: budgeting last year, when the kind of center piece of
Speaker 1: the debate around New York City's budget was what to
Speaker 1: do with the NYPD which there were calls last year
Speaker 1: to defund the NYPD by one billion dollars, which incidentally
Speaker 1: is about the amount by which the NYPD's budget has
Speaker 1: expanded since de Blasio took office. So still returning to
Speaker 1: some realistic level. So do Blasio, who was elected in
Speaker 1: two thoust and you're saying that during de Blasio's term,
Speaker 1: the budget of the police department is going to one
Speaker 1: billion dollars, That's right. The expense budget when he took
Speaker 1: office was around five billion dollar dollars and it got
Speaker 1: up to six billion dollars when we were having this
Speaker 1: conversation last year. Why there was more hiring of thousands
Speaker 1: of officers added to the police force. There is really
Speaker 1: hard to grasp like number because so much of it
Speaker 1: was kept secret of new surveillance technologies and equipment that
Speaker 1: the NYPD was acquiring, new units that were put together.
Speaker 1: You know, we saw the NYPD has touted their Strategic
Speaker 1: Response Group, which is a new unit that was created
Speaker 1: under the Blasio that brought in really expensive and alarming
Speaker 1: to look at military equipment and gear. These are the
Speaker 1: counter terrorism officers who incidentally are also tasked with policing
Speaker 1: protest because for some reason the NYPD has decided that
Speaker 1: First Amendment protected protest is similar enough to counter terrorism
Speaker 1: responsibilities that they're going to put the same militarized officers
Speaker 1: out of the force. But we saw this investment of
Speaker 1: resources into the police department in terms of their budgeting,
Speaker 1: and we saw this real dramatic expansion of just how
Speaker 1: much funds we're going into the department. So the call
Speaker 1: last year was to say, you know, as a starting point,
Speaker 1: we need to look at how this rapid growth of
Speaker 1: spending on the police department can be reset a bit
Speaker 1: and take some of that billion dollars that was called
Speaker 1: foreign savings, put it into things like the Department of Health,
Speaker 1: which was struggling, the Department of Homeless Services, which was struggling.
Speaker 1: You know, you look at the NYPD's budget and it
Speaker 1: is more than the budget for the Departments of Health,
Speaker 1: Homeless Services, Housing Preservation, Youth, community Development, and workforce development combined.
Speaker 1: So the needs that are facing New Yorkers as we're
Speaker 1: trying to, you know, look towards recovering from this pandemic,
Speaker 1: are in those areas. That's where the most critical daily
Speaker 1: needs of New Yorkers are not being met. So I
Speaker 1: think we'll be having this conversation again heading into city
Speaker 1: budget season this summer. I don't think the calls for
Speaker 1: divesting from the NYPD budget and reinvesting in these other
Speaker 1: agencies is going to go away anytime soon. I would say,
Speaker 1: state level, a lot of the conversation now around what
Speaker 1: happens with things like can we add state revenue with
Speaker 1: marijuana legalization, for example, And it's certainly something that we're
Speaker 1: advocating for, but with a very kind of specific purpose,
Speaker 1: which is the legislation that's been around in Albany for
Speaker 1: a while, the Marijuana Regulation and Taxation Act. It takes
Speaker 1: a historical look at how policing has impacted communities of color,
Speaker 1: devastated communities of color as part of the War on drugs,
Speaker 1: and says that for the revenue that we're now going
Speaker 1: to be generating from this industry that just yesterday we
Speaker 1: were locking you up for, we're actually going to take
Speaker 1: half of it and reinvested in these communities, which I think,
Speaker 1: you know, is one really critical way to repair harm done,
Speaker 1: but it's also critical to COVID recovery because many of
Speaker 1: the same communities that were devastated by marijuana police saying,
Speaker 1: are the same communities that have been hardest hit by
Speaker 1: the pandemic. Now you have been You've commented occasionally about
Speaker 1: surveillance equipment. Give us some examples, if you will. What
Speaker 1: are some of the developments in terms of the police
Speaker 1: use of surveillance equipment that trouble you the most. So,
Speaker 1: the most troubling thing for years was the fact that
Speaker 1: we just didn't know what tools and technologies the police
Speaker 1: department had acquired and was deploying against New Yorkers. The
Speaker 1: NYPD would always fight requests for information on contracting, on
Speaker 1: what tools they were buying, on what their capabilities were.
Speaker 1: So last summer that started to change when the New
Speaker 1: York City Council passed what's called the Post Act Public
Speaker 1: Oversight of Surveillance Technology, And now we're starting to see
Speaker 1: some basic transparency and reporting on just what the NYPD
Speaker 1: surveillance infrastructure looks like. So if you look at the
Speaker 1: NYPD's website, there's now thirty six different policies that are
Speaker 1: listed that talk about what kind of surveillance capabilities they have.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of lies and misrepresentations in those policies,
Speaker 1: but it's the starting point and we've seen that the
Speaker 1: n y p D has purchased an unknown number of
Speaker 1: mobile X ray bands, for instance, which were developed as
Speaker 1: military tools for deployment in active war zones, and they
Speaker 1: would use it in New York for what They don't
Speaker 1: really say. Their policy is that we may be able
Speaker 1: to use it in counter terrorism purposes to look for explosives,
Speaker 1: but there's not a lot of data on what that
Speaker 1: translates to in practice. We also don't know how many
Speaker 1: of them there are. We do know that they're very expensive.
Speaker 1: Just one unit, it's about eight hundred thousand dollars. So
Speaker 1: that's one technology that we've learned about through litigation. Through
Speaker 1: recent disclosures, we know that the NYPD has space recognition,
Speaker 1: which is hugely problematic. What troubles you about that so
Speaker 1: based recognition. The way that it's worked in practice is
Speaker 1: that it's reasonably effective at identifying white men and not
Speaker 1: so great at producing positive matches on anyone else who's
Speaker 1: subject to the technology. Why is that? Largely because the
Speaker 1: technologies are developed by largely overrepresented groups of white men,
Speaker 1: they're just not effective. They're not really trained to work
Speaker 1: well when looking at other skin tones. What we see
Speaker 1: the NYPD use this technology for it's some really questionable
Speaker 1: practices where they've had a policy that allows them to
Speaker 1: manipulate photos before they even run it against their databases.
Speaker 1: You know, one thing that came out and reporting from
Speaker 1: Georgetown Center on Privacy and Technology was they uncovered that
Speaker 1: the nyp D was uploading celebrity lookalike images if they
Speaker 1: didn't have the best quality picture of the suspect that
Speaker 1: they were trying to identify. They would say, and this
Speaker 1: is a real example, well that guy kind of looks
Speaker 1: like Woody Harrelson, So let's run a picture of Woody
Speaker 1: Harrelson's face into our database and see who that might
Speaker 1: produce as a potential match. They would manipulate faces. They
Speaker 1: would edit someone's face, if someone was viewed in profile,
Speaker 1: they would try to recreate like a full image of
Speaker 1: that person's face. We'll gonna have a Meryl Race coming
Speaker 1: up in the completely exhausted and innervated New York City.
Speaker 1: Do you have any hopes that anybody who's assumed to
Speaker 1: be running from there that resetting the police. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: coin that phase now that resetting the police is on
Speaker 1: their menu. I think it's been an issue that's come
Speaker 1: up in a number of the candidates platforms. I've seen
Speaker 1: some discussion of to use your term resetting, to use
Speaker 1: my term defunding that have come up in some of
Speaker 1: the candidate forums that have come up on their platforms.
Speaker 1: But I think it's something where I don't know that
Speaker 1: we'll see what fully needs to be done from my perspective,
Speaker 1: to fundamentally change the way that the NYPD operates. I'm
Speaker 1: not discounting the possibility, but I think a lot of
Speaker 1: it will depend on whether New Yorkers maintain the current
Speaker 1: energy and momentum that we started to see building from
Speaker 1: the George Floyd protest last year when Albany repealed fifty.
Speaker 1: When they passed the police reform bills that were part
Speaker 1: of that package, these were measures that had existed for years,
Speaker 1: they had been installed, there was no real legislative sense
Speaker 1: of urgency to move them. Then you saw New Yorkers
Speaker 1: by the thousands turnout protests demand that some action finally
Speaker 1: be taken, and it's led to real sustained conversations beyond
Speaker 1: that about what other kind of shifts we want to
Speaker 1: make in the role, the powers, the scope of law enforcement.
Speaker 1: And I think if that momentum is able to be maintained,
Speaker 1: if that is carried forward into the next election cycle
Speaker 1: and the one after that, you know we're going to
Speaker 1: see continued calls for elected officials, for mayors, for city
Speaker 1: council members, and for police departments to take a different approach.
Speaker 1: But it really is going to be dependent on New
Speaker 1: Yorkers elevating those demands and making the call to reset,
Speaker 1: defund policing a continuous call. What do you say with
Speaker 1: the work you do, which is to expose the wrongdoings
Speaker 1: and to reform the system. I don't like that phrase
Speaker 1: good cops, but what does the warrior from the a
Speaker 1: c l U on behalf of police transparency? What message
Speaker 1: do you have, if any, to the good cops out there.
Speaker 1: I think the message is, we have, as you said,
Speaker 1: often antagonistic relationships because it's our job to make sure
Speaker 1: that the systems that are put in place by our
Speaker 1: government are actually serving the people and benefiting the people.
Speaker 1: And it's often not about attacks on individual cops, although
Speaker 1: there are some individual cops who deserve as much scrutiny
Speaker 1: as they as they can get. But this is about
Speaker 1: making sure that the work that we do is to
Speaker 1: hold government accountable to the ideals that they purport to follow.
Speaker 1: And that's what it is. At the end of the day.
Speaker 1: We have these systems, we are told because they are
Speaker 1: meant to protect the public. They are meant to ensure
Speaker 1: people's well being in safety. And if they're not doing that,
Speaker 1: if they're not serving that purpose, it's our job to
Speaker 1: call them out. Michael Sasitski as a lawyer of the
Speaker 1: New York Civil Liberties Union. His work is focused on
Speaker 1: police reform. If you're enjoying this conversation, tell a friend
Speaker 1: and be sure to follow Here's the thing on the
Speaker 1: I Heart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get
Speaker 1: your podcasts. When we come back, I'll check in with
Speaker 1: Catherine Wilde, CEO and president of the Partnership for New
Speaker 1: York City about the city's post pandemic future. I'm Alec Baldwin,
Speaker 1: and this is here's the thing. In the early months
Speaker 1: of the pandemic, New York City seemed to be on
Speaker 1: the ropes. Storefronts and restaurants were closed, Broadway was dark,
Speaker 1: unemployment claims skyrocketed. Now a year later, things look very different,
Speaker 1: as New York City is slowly coming back to life,
Speaker 1: how wanted to follow up with Katherine Wilde, CEO and
Speaker 1: President of the Partnership for New York City. She's in
Speaker 1: close contact with the heads of the city's biggest corporations
Speaker 1: and as such she has an informed outlook on the
Speaker 1: city's finances. Things are substantially better than people thought it
Speaker 1: would be. A year ago in we had a gross
Speaker 1: city economic output of eight hundred and nine billion dollars.
Speaker 1: That is only shrunk by three point four percent during
Speaker 1: the pandemic, which is far less than anybody thought was
Speaker 1: going to happen. And that's for basically three reasons. Number One,
Speaker 1: Wall Street and much of our office industry was able
Speaker 1: to immediately transfer to remote operation actually improve their profitability
Speaker 1: and productivity in the process. Number Two, we got tremendous
Speaker 1: a from the federal government starting with the first stimulus,
Speaker 1: and so that while in March and April last year,
Speaker 1: consumer spending dropped dramatically. Today, while we're still in pandemic mode,
Speaker 1: consumer spending is back up to normal levels. It's e
Speaker 1: commerce spending more than ever, but that's kept the economy going.
Speaker 1: And finally, we were well positioned for the digital economy
Speaker 1: takeover our key growth sector has been in technology and
Speaker 1: in the technology side of financial services and media. All
Speaker 1: these industries that use technology have been our growth area
Speaker 1: and represent most of our economy. So we've had all
Speaker 1: those things going for us and going well. What we
Speaker 1: lost was our brick and mortar economy, retail, travel, and tourism.
Speaker 1: Direct service is small business that represents of our jobs,
Speaker 1: but it's only nine of our economy. So the losses
Speaker 1: there were severe and tended to focus on low wage
Speaker 1: workers and small business. They were severe, but they did
Speaker 1: not take down the whole economy, and our tax roles
Speaker 1: kept growing, and every day were more surprised by state
Speaker 1: and city government not being in a fiscal crisis. Everybody
Speaker 1: was predicting, we're gonna have a fiscal crisis. We've got
Speaker 1: a problem, We've got to raise taxes. We have no
Speaker 1: fiscal crisis. Between the federal aid to the state and
Speaker 1: the city over a hundred billion dollars, thank you, Senator Schumer,
Speaker 1: and the macro economy that has kept going throughout the pandemic,
Speaker 1: we do not have a fiscal crisis, and we had
Speaker 1: no need to raise taxes, even though two weeks ago
Speaker 1: Albany raised taxes for the people that were put out
Speaker 1: of a job. I don't want to say time bomb,
Speaker 1: but of their loom being problems for us in terms
Speaker 1: of how to deal with those people in their loss
Speaker 1: of income. I don't think time bomb is inappropriate because
Speaker 1: what happened is the COVID accelerated what we knew was happening.
Speaker 1: You know, work of the future going to robots replacing people,
Speaker 1: et cetera. The COVID accelerated that by maybe as much
Speaker 1: as two decades. So we find ourselves in a situation
Speaker 1: we knew was coming in the distant future has come
Speaker 1: within the last thirteen months. So we have a crisis
Speaker 1: of six hundred and forty two thousand job losses. Those
Speaker 1: are New Yorkers who are probably not prepared for the
Speaker 1: jobs that are available. Ironically, in March, we had postings
Speaker 1: of three hundred and sixteen thousand open jobs, but we
Speaker 1: don't have the people to fill those jobs because of
Speaker 1: this skills gap that we've been talking about for years,
Speaker 1: but we've done nothing at scale to deal with. What
Speaker 1: should we do about the skills gap? Well, I think
Speaker 1: number one, I think employers have a big opportunity to
Speaker 1: step up and they are beginning to do that with
Speaker 1: a number of programs. JP Morgan has started a program.
Speaker 1: There's other companies that are participating in starting programs to
Speaker 1: one revisit jobs. You know, New York got spoiled. They
Speaker 1: could hire an Ivy League b A for a job
Speaker 1: that could be done by somebody with a community college degree,
Speaker 1: especially in technology areas, and we haven't focused on making
Speaker 1: those marriages with the City University and with others that
Speaker 1: are producing people who could fill those jobs. Got to
Speaker 1: change the criteria, and we've got to go to Albany
Speaker 1: and get the state Education Department to change their classification
Speaker 1: so that people can be credentialed in these jobs as
Speaker 1: your organization lobbying for them. Absolutely, yes, we are working
Speaker 1: on that and we have been for a couple of years,
Speaker 1: and hopefully things are going to speed up now. So
Speaker 1: this is a fixable problem. The other piece of this
Speaker 1: problem is our immigration policy. Immigration has been cut off
Speaker 1: in recent years, especially in one H one B s
Speaker 1: and education scholarships and the ability for people to come
Speaker 1: here and study, so we have lost a lot of
Speaker 1: the talent pool that was filling those jobs. So it's
Speaker 1: a combination of reforming our immigration policies at the federal
Speaker 1: level and at the local level really going in there. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: there is a lot of education funding in the stimulus
Speaker 1: package that the federal government has put out. Let's invest
Speaker 1: in that education, and let's do it in partnership with employers.
Speaker 1: This should not be Ivory Tower, get your bachelor's degree.
Speaker 1: This should be get a job. Right. A friend of mine,
Speaker 1: he's got two floors, two fifty employees on Park Avenue
Speaker 1: and that Gold Coast. They're hovering around the fifties and
Speaker 1: sixtie Street. They said, half of them home and then
Speaker 1: up bringing them back, he told me, And he said
Speaker 1: they're going to downsize their lease to half. Now I've
Speaker 1: been told that the residential real estate market is bottoming out.
Speaker 1: Its starting to come up again, because as as people
Speaker 1: have said, in a kind of folkloric way, they've said, well,
Speaker 1: you know, New York, no one can pay for one
Speaker 1: bedroom apartment in a nice part of Brooklyn and Manhattan
Speaker 1: or anywhere for that matter. And then the rents come
Speaker 1: down below, some come down below two thousand and a
Speaker 1: whole other crop of people that couldn't afford to live
Speaker 1: in your they're coming absolutely, and that is the silver lining.
Speaker 1: I talked to a similar Park Avenue guy last week
Speaker 1: who told me he just bought two Upper east Side
Speaker 1: apartments for his kids at fifty percent off what they
Speaker 1: cost a year and a half ago, so he was
Speaker 1: thrilled with the bargain. It's a long term investment, so
Speaker 1: it's not for speculative resale. But I think, yes, this
Speaker 1: has happened. Remember in the seventy of course, where everybody
Speaker 1: got all those fancy Central Park views for a song.
Speaker 1: New York is affordable to a new crop of people
Speaker 1: now who are going to come, which solves a big
Speaker 1: problem looking for jobs. Looking for jobs, absolutely, but it's
Speaker 1: it solves the problem of gentrification, fear of displacement, and
Speaker 1: if construction costs can come down. You know, it's been
Speaker 1: a seller's market in the office market for years. They
Speaker 1: now have a sixteen percent vacancy rate in Manhattan. That's
Speaker 1: a good thing as far as businesses. Absolutely. People tell
Speaker 1: me that the commercial real estate market that's in the
Speaker 1: retail market that's still struggling, very weak, very weak. And
Speaker 1: we've got another time bomb coming, which is May first.
Speaker 1: The moratorium on evictions of small business in New York
Speaker 1: ends and that's the point where thirteen fourteen months of
Speaker 1: rent could come due for those small businesses and in
Speaker 1: many cases small landlords of small businesses in neighborhoods throughout
Speaker 1: the city, not just Manhattan, who have not had the
Speaker 1: wherewithal to pay the rent. And that's particularly true, unfortunately,
Speaker 1: as with much of the COVID, particularly impactful to black
Speaker 1: and Hispanic, low income immigrant communities, where you've got small
Speaker 1: building owners, you've got small businesses that weren't ready to
Speaker 1: go online, didn't have a website, didn't have the capacity
Speaker 1: to meet the demands of the COVID. So this is
Speaker 1: going to be a serious problem. And this is where
Speaker 1: those job losses really are going to become long term problems.
Speaker 1: The federal aid will not last long enough. We have
Speaker 1: to fix this through education and through upgrading the technology
Speaker 1: and the skills of those small business owners. Now you
Speaker 1: hear a constant, metronomic call to tax their bitch, tax
Speaker 1: their bitch. And I believe that this is an opinion.
Speaker 1: I'm under an economist, but in my opinion, there should
Speaker 1: be minimum taxes that everybody pays. If I say to
Speaker 1: you that you're in a fifty percent bracket and So therefore,
Speaker 1: on an income of a million dollars, you oh half
Speaker 1: a million dollars in taxes, and I can say to you,
Speaker 1: you can knock it down by giving away to order
Speaker 1: in fifty dollars to charity, but nothing below that, meaning
Speaker 1: you must pay a minimum amount of tax. What do
Speaker 1: you think has to happen in the city and in
Speaker 1: the state in terms of tax policy, Well, two weeks
Speaker 1: ago the state has made us the highest tax state
Speaker 1: in the nation without looking at the equity arguments. Before
Speaker 1: the pandemic, fifty six percent of the people in the
Speaker 1: top bracket in New York State were non residents of
Speaker 1: the state. Comes the COVID. Suddenly people are working remotely
Speaker 1: from Palm Beach or Miami or Austin or wherever, and
Speaker 1: suddenly that talent is telling their companies, we want you
Speaker 1: to move our job to where we are because the
Speaker 1: tax burden. If Biden's proposed tax increases on the wealthy
Speaker 1: also go through, which they probably will to pay for
Speaker 1: the next infrastructure bill. If those go through, then you're
Speaker 1: going to have a situation where New York professionals at
Speaker 1: the high end earning more than a million dollars a
Speaker 1: year are going to have a tax burden of about
Speaker 1: six of their income going in federal, state and city taxes.
Speaker 1: And that is a kind of breaking point when you
Speaker 1: found out that you can do your work from a
Speaker 1: state where your taxes like Florida, will be your income,
Speaker 1: so you keep more than you would both under Trump
Speaker 1: and of course I one thousand percent view this that
Speaker 1: he did this to kill major cities in blue states.
Speaker 1: The deductibility on your federal income taxes if your state
Speaker 1: and local Texas was disallowed. Is that going to come back?
Speaker 1: Does your organization wanted to come back? Our organization is
Speaker 1: split because it's tied to the corporate taxes. I would
Speaker 1: say the vast majority of our members of the business
Speaker 1: community of New York fields this was a discriminatory hit
Speaker 1: at New York. It was designed to disadvantage our economy,
Speaker 1: to create incentives to move to Florida and to Texas
Speaker 1: and to other red states states with no income tax,
Speaker 1: with no income tax. So absolutely, it is a hit
Speaker 1: at New York and it is devastating. And we made
Speaker 1: that argument in Albany to no avail. The feeling of
Speaker 1: the politicians was that rich people will never leave New
Speaker 1: York you really have to tread carefully because yes, they
Speaker 1: will leave. I mean, I'm telling you right now. You
Speaker 1: say a lot of people are going to leave, people
Speaker 1: start to notice, and every tax accountant, every tax lawyer,
Speaker 1: every private wealth advisor that I speak to tells me
Speaker 1: that their business in people working on relocating their residents
Speaker 1: for tax purposes has dramatically increased since the COVID. So
Speaker 1: this is again another ticking time bomb. We're not going
Speaker 1: to see it this year. We've got good tax revenues
Speaker 1: coming in this year, but over the next couple of years,
Speaker 1: as they're able to make those arrangements and people can
Speaker 1: if their company opens an office in Florida and you're
Speaker 1: working out of that office, you're no longer paying New
Speaker 1: York City income Texas. Right. So, for example, if you've
Speaker 1: left New York and you're in Connecticut or you're in
Speaker 1: New Jersey and the office that you're working through is
Speaker 1: in New York City, you're an employee of a New
Speaker 1: York City company, and the moment that company opens an
Speaker 1: office into the remote area you're in, you're out. Now
Speaker 1: you're working for a Florida company. Correct, Bingo, That's exactly
Speaker 1: the problem. That's what I said before. Fifty six percent
Speaker 1: of the current highest taxpayers are already non residents in Connecticut,
Speaker 1: in New Jersey, wherever, but their company resisted investing and
Speaker 1: opening an office where they are Now the pressure from
Speaker 1: the talent is so strong. A guy was telling me
Speaker 1: last week, I've got four partners us in Florida. I've
Speaker 1: ignored them for years. I haven't opened an office there.
Speaker 1: And then a new recruit that's a superstar came along
Speaker 1: and said, I will not pay New York taxes. You
Speaker 1: have to open an office in Florida. And he said,
Speaker 1: what am I gonna do? April one, I opened an
Speaker 1: office in Florida. Well, listen. Thank you for doing this
Speaker 1: with us anytime, anytime. Thank you. Catherine Wild, CEO and
Speaker 1: President of the Partnership for New York City. My thanks
Speaker 1: to her and Michael Cisitski. I'm Alec Baldwin. Here's the
Speaker 1: thing is brought to you by iHeart Radio. We're produced
Speaker 1: by Kathleen Russo, Carrie donohue, and Zach McNeice. Our engineer
Speaker 1: is Frank Imperial. Thanks for listening. Don't make n