Transcript: Mayor Bill de Blasio Appears Live on WCBS Newsradio 880

April 1, 2016

Lynda Lopez: A small building on Rivington Street in Manhattan has become a huge issue for Mayor Bill de Blasio’s administration. The building, which is owned only to be a nonprofit health center, had its zoning restrictions changed by a city agency and was sold to developers to become high priced condominiums. Now, Mayor de Blasio who has made affordable housing a centerpiece of his administration says he’s angered by that development. Mayor de Blasio joins us live on the news line right now. Now Mayor, I guess two questions to start: how did a building get its zoning restrictions changed without your administration knowing? And do you have a plan to prevent that happening in the future?

Mayor Bill de Blasio: Well, as you said, I’m very angered by this situation. I find it absolutely unacceptable. We have begun a full investigation through the City Department of Investigation. And as has been reported, they have already issued subpoenas. It’s going to be a very aggressive investigation. We’ve also sent an order to all agencies to suspend any action in which a deed restriction might be canceled. What happened here was wrong by any explanation and goes against the values of this administration, and what we came here to do. Our goal is to create affordable housing and to protect the kind of services that neighborhoods need; and not to see luxury housing replace something that was necessary like a nursing home. So, something really went wrong here. We’re going to get down to the bottom of it. We’ll hold people responsible, and we’re looking at all our legal options because the company involved, from everything I’ve seen so far, misrepresented the reality. And that company could very well face very serious consequences.

Lopez: Alright, Mayor I also wanted to ask you about the new State budget. The budget is going to allow for the minimum wage to rise to $15 an hour despite huge opposition in Albany. And New York City is actually going to get there more quickly than other parts of the State. Do you feel like that’s a big victory for the city?

Mayor: It’s a great victory for the City. And you know I’ve been fighting for a long time for an increase in the minimum wage and for better benefits for working people in New York City. This is really going to profoundly affect the lives of hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers. It’s going to help us – you know, we have a clear pledge. We want to get 800,000 people out of poverty over the next ten years. This is one of the things we needed most to achieve that goal. So, it’s a very good day for New York. I commend the Governor and the Legislature for that. But you know, the budget – a lot of other things were going on. And particularly, the New York State Assembly and lots of other leaders in this city stood up strong and fought back the effort to cut the City University of New York and to cut our Medicaid support. And that was very, very important. I really want to commend Speaker Heastie of the Assembly because they stood very strong against efforts to make New York City have to pick up hundreds of millions of dollars of cost for CUNY and for Medicaid that the State historically [inaudible]. And it would have been a horrible thing for New York City if those costs were shifted onto the people of New York City, but the Assembly really did a great job stopping that.

Lopez: Let’s stay up in Albany. With the budget out of the way another big issue coming up for you is mayoral control of the schools. You only got a one year extension last year. Are you confident that you’ll continue to have mayoral control of the schools?

Mayor: Well, I’m confident that mayoral control works and we have more evidence even in the last year than we had when we last had this discussion: New York City high school graduation rate over 70 percent for the first time in our history; our new Equity and Excellence plan, which is going to have components like computer science for every child and every grade level; and getting our kids to reading level by third grade. There are so many important new things happening in our school system all because mayoral control allows us to make these changes quickly and effectively. So, there’s are a lot of people in this city across the political spectrum who believe mayoral control should continue. I think their voices will be heard in Albany. I think it will be renewed. I’ve said very clearly, I’m happy to go to hearings before the Legislature and talk about all we’re doing with the schools, but – you know, I said a very simple thing, mayoral control is the only system that works. What we had before, sadly, didn’t work and was associated with a lot of corruption, a lot of inefficiencies. This is the only system that actually works for our kids.

Lopez: One last question about the campaign if I can. Both Democrats who are campaigning for president are here in New York. What are your thoughts on how close this primary race is turning out to be? You support Hillary Clinton. Does she need to do anything to win over more of Bernie Sanders’ supporters?

Mayor: I think Hillary Clinton is running a great campaign. She, obviously, has won most of the states that have had their primaries so far. The message that she’s put forward about how to address income inequality; how to preserve the middle class and raise wages and benefits has been very, very staunch. She has the toughest plan on reining in Wall Street – tougher than Sanders. So I think she’s doing a great job and I think the State of New York is a place where she has tremendous support and a lot of appreciation for what she did for us in the U.S. Senate.  My fundamental belief is if it comes down to the issues and who can actually get the job done and make the changes we need – Hillary Clinton clearly will prevail. There’s been some attacks in the last 24 hours from some Sanders supporters which I found not accurate and not fair at all on the issue of climate change. Hillary Clinton has an extraordinary record of a vision for how we address climate change. And she’s someone who actually knows how to do it. Look what President Obama has done – so effectively pushing the nations of the world to act on climate change. There’s no question that Hillary could take that progress and build upon it. And so I think any attacks on her record on climate change are absolutely unfair and they’re unfounded because she’s clearly the person who can do the most to address the issue.

Lopez: Alright, well actually Mayor de Blasio, we have a story into our newsroom today that I wanted to ask you about – a man who was slashed during an attempted robbery on an A train platform this morning. What can you tell us about the efforts that are being made now by the City in light of all these subway slashings?

Mayor: The NYPD has systematically addressed every new challenge that we’ve found. You remember a year ago, there was an uptick in shootings. NYPD applied additional resources and new strategies – we got that situation not only under control but turned it around. Right now we have the lowest shootings year-to-date of any year in a decade. Well I think the same thing is going to happen on stabbings and slashings. The NYPD has analyzed where the problem is. It is primarily late Friday night going into early Saturday morning – late Saturday night going into early Sunday morning. A lot of it is around nightclubs and nightlife. And they’ve drilled down on where the problem is geographically – what times of day – and we’re pouring additional NYPD resources at those particular problems. [Inaudible] starting to see some results – the number in March – so the rate of stabbings and slashings started to go down. So we have real work to do – definitely been an uptick we have to address – but I think the NYPD has shown when it drills down and puts a new strategy in place, it has a huge impact.

Lopez: That’s Mayor Bill de Blasio joining us live on the WCBS news line. Thank you so much for joining us.

Mayor: You’re very welcome. Take care now.