New York Is Facing a Fiscal Crisis

0:00 Speaker 1 Sunday morning. Well with us today is Commissioner Bill Bratton served two terms as Commissioner of the City of New York at the NYPD, one under Rudy Giuliani and one under Mayor Di Blasio, two extremely different people. And well, Commissioner, you know you love New York. New York loves you.

0:27 Give us your gut feeling what the heck is going on?

0:31 Speaker 2 City’s in trouble. It really is in trouble that Fortunately the NYPD, under the leadership of the Common Commissioner Jesse Tish, is working very hard to hold it together in terms of crime disorder, but the politics of the city just get worse and worse, if you will, crazier. The recent Pediteia attacks is causing so much concern and actually going

0:57 to cause a lot of people who make money and pay taxes in the city to leave. And that’s the reality of it, as many others have already done.

1:06 Speaker 1 Well, so many publications like The New York Post has published that he borrowed either five million eleven million dollars from the Governor’s office based on relief to balance this year, and with the amount of people that are leaving, it probably costs another eleven billion dollars and lost revenue. Does any realize that what happens the next year’s budget.

1:32 Speaker 2 Well, one of the realities that’s not fully understood in New York City is that a phenomenal share of the revenue comes from a relatively small proportion of the population, and that share supports the rest of the population to a large degree. And what the mayor is doing is effectively undermining that small proportion of the population the businesses

1:58 that really support the city, and it’s going to cause many of them to leave. And if they leave, their tax dollars go with him, and he’s going to have less to work with, he and the governor, and again, the future is going to be problematic.

2:13 Speaker 1 I am worried about our city. You know. I felt that everything is workable, but I’m starting to really worry about our city. Not I heard, and I haven’t seen the actual story yet that even Bank America has decided to build a new tower in Texas.

2:32 Speaker 2 Well. I think we’re seeing significant stories about that’s. My office is located up on Park Avenue right and actually the new JP Morgan building across from the recently renovated Waldorf Park Avenue is going through a renaissance at the moment, but the reality is, in a few years time, are those companies that are right now pouring a lot of

2:53 money into that renaissance going to want to stay as the city continues to deteriorate in many respects and the sense of the ability to fund the many services that it provides. And then the public safety issue, We’re very fortunate that, as I mentioned earlier, we get Jesse Tisher’s commissioner.

3:11 Jesse understands the department, understands public safety, but so many of the mayor’s promises that he made during the campaign that many of the supporters are pushing him to fulfill. So far, he’s left the police department pretty much alone, except for not giving it sufficient resources in terms of the numbers of officers. He canceled the plan to hire

3:32 five hundred and forty additional officers. The department is critically shot by several thousand officers. Jesse’s done a wonderful job with what she has, but being worn out. That’s tragic that the cops are making a lot of money, which actually, ironically, they’re making money which will encourage many of them when they reach retirement age to leave because basically, the way

3:56 the retirement system works here, it’s based on their last three years of salary and all the money they’re making that they kind of afford not to leave. So it’s it’s it’s really it’s a Bubi’s cube type of problem that they’re going to have a hard time trying to put it all together.

4:15 Speaker 1 Well, my number one concern, You’re number one concern too, was keeping our people safe. And by the way, they just put out a thing from the governor’s office and I guess the Attorney General’s office ordering old county executives not to cooperate with ICE. Now, when I talk to the judge in our office, retired judge, he says, that’s

4:44 that’s it’s against the law because the federal government has supremacy. It’s a supremacy court. Of course, what do you think is going to happen with that? With the with Governor Hucals and in the Attorney General’s I guess order to the county.

5:02 Speaker 2 Exact independent of the law is what Trump. President Trump has already initiated in the sense that he controls a lot of budget, a lot of revenue that comes to states and to cities, and I know that firsthand, is police commissioner. We got phenomenal amounts of money from the federal government every year. And what Trump has threatened to do,

5:24 when is in fact done in some locations, is to withhold federal funding from cities that do not support is immigration initiative. So the full effect of that dilemma has not yet been felt as some of these new laws that are being passed by states like New York, so the full impact of that is yet to be felt.

5:49 Let’s face we’ve been a sanctuary city going back to my time as commissioned in twenty fifteen. Twenty sixteen when we first started using that term. To Vlasio of the mayor I work for, was supportive of the concept of New York being a sanctuary city. And so going forward now ten years into that designation. But the federal government

6:10 withholding a large sums of money that’s a new initiative and is a state, is a city that’s going to lose a lot of high paying tax payers because of petitive and other issues, and they’re going to lose further additional federal revenue. So your concerns about the city a well placed that how it’s all going to end up.

6:31 I wish I had a clear crystal ball the right now that crystal ball is really swirling and it’s very cloudy.

6:38 Speaker 1 Anything else you want to sell the tell all Americans and all the people in our city, in our.

6:44 Speaker 2 State, Well, John, you and I have been along not a long time. I’ve been associated with the police world for fifty some ideas now still work with it, and it’s been quite of all the coast by the ups and downs, and we’re going, I think into one of those downs. One of the great things about the city,

7:02 about this country, about so many of the people that both you and I know, is the resiliency that in the worst of times we see some of the best of people coming forward. So we’re about to go into some tough times and hopefully that resiliency that we’ve seen throughout our life, the comeback. We’ve seen New York come

7:21 back time and again, time and again. When everybody thinks it’s down for the count back it comes. So let’s hope that this time will be like that at those times in the past.

7:31 Speaker 1 Bill Bratton, thank you for your common sense, and let’s pray for our city, pray for US state, and pray for our country.

7:37 Speaker 2 Thank you so much, follow us John