Transcript: Mayor Adams Appears on NY1's "Inside City Hall"

December 20, 2023

Errol Louis: Welcome back to Inside City Hall. As we told you before the break the City Council passed two high‑profile bills today. The first requires NYPD officers to report some low‑level encounters with the public, the second would ban solitary confinement in most forms in city jails. Both of these have veto proof majorities, and here now to talk about that and much more, from the Blue Room inside City Hall is Mayor Eric Adams. Welcome back to the show. Good to see you.

Mayor Eric Adams: Thank you. Great seeing you also, Errol.

Louis: Well, right off the bat, do you plan to veto the two bills that the council passed today?

Mayor Adams: It was just passed, and we're looking at all of our options and the legal team is going to make the final determination. So, you know, it just passed, and we want to make sure we review it, and we're going to continue with some conversations.

Louis: On the question in particular about low‑level stops that cops have to record, this is something you had to do earlier in your career as a police officer. My understanding is a lot of these are stops that will also be recorded on body worn cameras. So, there's some level of recording going on of these encounters right now. Is that correct?

Mayor Adams: Yes. And this is not only duplicative, but it is also, you know, time consuming at a moment when you want police on patrol, not doing paperwork. So, if for example, Level 1, that's a real questionable place. If an officer does an inquiry for a missing person, he takes a photo around to see if anyone saw the child that's missing.

Every person he asks "did you see this child" he must fill out documentation either through an app or writing it down in some way. That is, at a minimum, is going to take about five minutes. The sergeant has to review the documents. Let's say he does that 20 times, Errol. That's 100 minutes. That's 100 minutes that that officer is not on patrol.

And if he does a series of interactions like that throughout his tour, you can see 200, 300 minutes. And so I don't know if people really understand what it takes to do these type of inquiries daily as a police officer.

Louis: Well, but you know, that same question. When you say duplicative, if those same inquiries are done while the body worn camera is operating, is anybody looking at that? I mean, we're capturing the data one way or another, but there is a question about what happens to it.

Mayor Adams: Yes, it still is available. And it could be viewed by CCRB and other entities that review it. Now, remember, the officer, after he does that body worn camera he has to dock it, and then he has to do paperwork based on that body worn camera and attach the documentation to after he docks it and bring out that actual video.

So, there is so much reporting that police officers are doing that is taking away from the public safety aspect; and, it's going to impact overtime, something that the City Council is always asking about.

You can see overtime go through the roof on this measure.

Louis: Yes. I mean, I'm mostly interested in what's going to happen to it, like who's going to analyze it, which I think is the whole point of the exercise, right, is somebody's got to use it for some purpose.
Let me move on. I have a budget question for you, Mr. Mayor. As a candidate for mayor, one of your promises was to call for what you called a recovery share, and you said — I'm quoting you here — we can generate one to $2 billion annually by instituting a modest increase to the income taxes of city earners who make more than $5 million a year, and it would sunset after two years.

Have you and your budget director considered bringing that up as an idea at a time when we're, you know, cutting libraries and doing other kind of things?

Mayor Adams: Well, remember, when it comes down to income taxes, that is an Albany agenda. We control property taxes and we control fines and fees and looking at PEGs. That is how we bring in additional resources to the city. And we're in a very precarious place right now where you don't want to damage the economy.

As you saw, Fitch last year gave us a AA bond rating. We want to make sure that we do not cut services to the point that it's going to impact the everyday lives of New Yorkers. And we're going to need support from Albany and Washington, D.C., because we can't just spend our way out of this crisis that we are facing.

We have to be able to make sure something is sustainable, and that is why we continue to call for the end of this onslaught of migrants and asylum seekers that we're seeing in our city. It's wrong for the migrant and asylum seekers and it's wrong to New Yorkers, New York taxpayers.

Louis: Yes, yes. I'm only bringing this up because it was your campaign promise, right? So, if you said in 2021 this would be a good idea to help bring us out of the pandemic, has something changed to make that less worthy or workable of an idea?

Mayor Adams: Yes, we added a pandemic. We were successful in doing a 3 percent PEG two times in a row. I managed this budget, and that the budget monitors or those who are the bond raters lifted our bonds. We did a successful job in recovering over 100 percent of the jobs that we lost in the private sector, more jobs in the city's history. So, because of the management that this team has done, we navigated through the pandemic.

Now we're at a point that we can't continue to spend money on a $5 billion problem this year — the migrant and asylum seekers — and $7 billion in January. Just throwing money at it is not going to solve this crisis, it becomes a bottomless pit.

Louis: Okay. Well, let's talk about the migrant crisis. At yesterday's press conference, you emphasized again that local officials should be putting pressure on their counterparts or the powers that be in Washington, D.C., but then earlier this month you had said that help is not on the way and that you said, quote, we did not walk out from D.C. with any level of optimism that anything is going to drastically change. If nothing is changing, why insist that people continue to complain to Washington?

Mayor Adams: Well, because you know, I was a state lawmaker before, and I know that you don't get the change instantly; it comes from really mobilizing people. Every day when I was in the State Senate you would see advocates come up. Those who were your constituents came up. People need to see their constituents to know that this is an issue that impacts all of us.

And we're saying the same to the coalition that we built. We're saying it to our Chicago mayor, our Denver mayor, our Houston mayor, Massachusetts who experienced 7,500 families just about. Everyone needs to go to Washington, bring this on the forefront like we've done with the Million Man March, like we've done for voting rights, like we've done for women's rights.

Washington is the center of our national government, and if Eric Adams is going alone with just a coalition of other mayors, it's not going to send the same message then when those constituents are going there and say this should not be happening to our city.

Louis: Okay. Can you give us a sneak peek of what policies you're going to be pushing in Albany next year? Those sessions going to start up in Albany in just a few weeks from now.

Mayor Adams: A few things. Mayoral control is important. We need to continue the great work that the chancellor is doing. His switch to a phonics‑based reading program is being hailed nationally. We need to continue to move forward with the other programs that we're doing around dyslexia, Summer Rising, after school programs.

The second is that we need a real housing plan. We have to examine the inventory aspect of our housing plan, and I think we could come away with 138 million square feet of empty office spaces, we could do some conversion. We need to lift the FAR, and we need to make sure we have some form of housing tax incentive to really encourage housing to take place.

And then we've got to attack cannabis. We need to have local enforcement on cannabis. If I'm given that opportunity, I will close all of these illegal shops in 30 days using the sheriff and the Police Department. We don't have that local authority right now, and that's a real problem. We took $23 million of cannabis out of some of these illegal shops, but we can go even further if we're allowed to do so. But so those are some of the things that we're going to push for when we're in Albany this year.

Louis: One thing that the governor did just yesterday, she created a panel to study the idea of making reparations to descendants of enslaved people here in New York. Do you want to see that happen? Do you think that down the road there should be some financial compensation?

Mayor Adams: Well, that's the purpose of doing the review on what should happen, and connect the dots with those companies and institutions that are actually still in place who profited from slavery. Slavery was not this fictitious thing that took place on America's history, this was real.

And there are companies and institutions that are still profiting because of the free labor that came from slavery. Hats off to Senator Sanders. This is something that he wanted. I remember traveling to Africa with him, it was his first trip to Africa and how emotional it was to him.

He made a commitment then that he was going to dig into this issue, and I commend him for actually getting the governor to see the importance of it. And we should make that investigation and determination if something should be done outside of that investigation.

Louis: And what do you say, I think I saw a column or an editorial, it might have actually been the lead editorial in the New York Post today, saying that it's divisive, it will set people against each other, it will be something that will either yield an unrealistic number that the State of New York can't really come up with or at best it will make people sort of feel bad about their neighbors and drive the city apart.

Mayor Adams: I don't think so. I believe that when you are trying to reconcile and come to truth with something, we saw that in the South Africa with the Truth and Reconciliation Committee, a commission that was put in place. You want to really close the doors on these issues.

And because time passed by, it does not mean there are not wounds that need to be healed. And as I stated, there are corporations, companies and institutions that have directly benefited from the free labor. And they may have to some way compensate for that, because there's some major institutions that benefited from it.

And you can't just say, time has passed, let's ignore it. That is not how we should do it. Let's close the door. Let's do the investigation and come up with a real determination.

Louis: Okay. My colleague Ayana Harry did a story yesterday, we aired a lengthy report on one of your top officials, Deputy Mayor Phil Banks. I noticed he was not at the media briefing yesterday. Is he leaving the administration?

Mayor Adams: Phil is going to be here until he's ready to do something else. I'm excited to have him here. As I stated, look at the success. I ran on crime, crime is down, jobs are up. We're seeing a double‑digit decrease, 12 percent in homicides, 26 percent in shootings, 6,000 guns removed off our streets, 13,000 since I've been the mayor. Five of the seven major crime categories are down. Our subway system is safe.

Phil has done one heck of a job bringing that experience of being a former chief of the department, and I'm happy that he was part of the team. I knew it was a good pick when I chose him, and New Yorkers are assured that he's a good pick based on the results that we're seeing.

Louis: Okay. So, what you're saying, he's done a great job, but should we expect him to continue doing that job in 2024?

Mayor Adams: Well, as we always do, when the announcements are to be made to a point and the announcements are being made that someone is going on with their career, we do that. And until then, we can expect Phil to continue to do the job. As a matter of fact, we were just laughing it up a few moments ago talking about some good old days when we were in the Police Department together. I'm pretty sure New Yorkers are going to see Phil around for a little while.

Louis: Okay. Give him my regards, please.

Something else happening next year is the race for president, of course. It will get to New York soon enough, there will be a lot of activity before then. What do you plan to do by way of assisting the Democratic ticket, assisting President Biden in his reelection bid?

Mayor Adams: Well, listen, we need a Democrat in office. I'm continuing to give my full support. We put in for the bid for the Democratic National Convention, we lost out to my friend in Chicago.
But we're going to still remain focused. You know, we can disagree on an item, it doesn't mean we disagree on the direction we need the party to move forward. We need to protect women's rights, we need to make sure we come up with some real solutions down at our border. We need to make sure we continue to recover this economy. And I'm going to continue to push forward the Democratic agenda.

Louis: What… I don't remember, I guess you were setting up to run for mayor, but four years ago, did you do campaigning outside of New York for the Democratic ticket?

Mayor Adams: No, I did not. I was here in New York City campaigning for the Eric Adams ticket.

Louis: Okay, fair enough. Fair enough.
Regarding congestion pricing. You've said that people who are paying for discretionary — or, luxury travel, I think was the way you put — should pay but others should get an exemption. One of the things

Carl Weisbrod, who led them the study, said that if that's the case, if people have to drive into the city, then their employer should cover it, whether it's a private sector, public sector or anybody else. What do you think of that?

Mayor Adams: Well, you know, I always try to let people know, life is not so cut and dry. And a concept is different from operationalizing something. You know, you can conceptualize it, but operationalize it is a different entity.

There are people who must drive into Manhattan that don't have employees. They could be going for chemo treatment, they could be going for so many other reasons that their healthcare facilities could be located in Manhattan. And there's some that I'm not even thinking about.

And so many people don't have the luxury of simply saying, okay, let me go to my [employer]. And I don't think we should be looking to charge yellow cabs and school buses and other vehicles. So, we need to do this right. This is a major change in our city, and I think we need to do it right and we need to balance the continuous recovery of our economy. And I think Governor Cuomo made some good points also about what the economy is going through.

So, we have to just do it right. We need to be deliberate and think through as we move forward with this important change in our society. As we want to clean our environment, we also don't want to displace the car pollution into places like the South Bronx and other areas.

Louis: Right, right, right. I mean, do you accept conceptually the idea that it's intended to sort of get people to consider mass transit. And the way you do that is to make it more difficult, and frankly, a small bit more expensive to, you know, take a solo car trip into the city.

Mayor Adams: Yes, I believe strongly in that, and that's why I say those who are riding for luxury and not necessity, those are the ones that should be picking up the tab. Some people ask me, well, what about central Manhattan, you have some of the best transportation system crosstown, uptown, downtown in Manhattan.

And so those who have access to this great transportation should be utilizing this great transportation. So, I believe in the concept and what it is and what we need to do to deal with congestion that's not only hurting our environment, it's hurting our economy.

But I am saying, let's get it right. We need to get it right to make sure that we are not overtaxing or overburdening working class New Yorkers.

Louis: And finally before I let you go, Mr. Mayor. As we head into the holidays, a lot of New Yorkers are going to be with family members and festive celebrations that will include all of the foods that you wrote about in your book that are killing us that lead to diabetes, all the fried foods, the sugary drinks, the processed meats and so forth. What are you planning to do about that, and what suggestions would you give to New Yorkers who maybe want to try and make it into 2024 a little bit healthier?

Mayor Adams: Well, first of all, you know, my friends allow me back to eat with them again because they realize I'm not the food police. I'm not going to tell people what to put on their plate and what not to. I can only live my life by example and tell them what my change of diet has done to me. And you know, let them know it's not their DNA, it's their dinner. And if they want to make those choices, that's up to them.

I say find healthy alternatives, and there are so many of them. The plant‑based lifestyle will give you a good healthy alternative. And if I could give them one tip, I just finished a book called Glucose Revolution, which I thought is an amazing book. Eat a big salad as your first meal.

Don't dive into the carbohydrates, these sweets. Eat a good salad as your first meal. That will give you the fiber you want, it will make you feel fuller and you won't overeat in the process.

Louis: Yes. A real salad, not those sad salads, not some, you know, washed up lettuce but something that really tastes good.

Mayor Adams: Exactly.

Louis: Okay. Great advice. Happy Holidays to you. Thanks so much for spending some time with us.

Mayor Adams: Same to you. Have a good New Year. Take care.

###