Migrants still the biggest problem in the City.

0:00 Speaker 1 With us today’s former Governor David Patterson. Governor Patterson, Tomorrow’s Christmas.

0:06 Speaker 2 Merry Christmas, at Merry Christmas to you, John, and to your whole family and everyone listening on WABC, and may.

0:14 Speaker 1 We have a healthy twenty twenty form and may the world change a little bit in twenty twenty four. So we’re all a little bit better off and the world is a little bit better off. What do you want to talk about this day before Christmas?

0:29 Speaker 2 Well, you know, there is an understanding that public officials can be educated in public in other words, that you take a position, maybe different information or data comes in at a point later on and you might change your point of view. So when I first came into office in nineteen I was totally against the whole concept of

0:51 charter rules. I changed that position years later because charter schools can be a really good laboratory for improving the public the public schools. So I think we saw an example of this during this week, and I was a little surprised it was that Governor and Clomo taking another look at congestion pricing, has basically decided he’s imposing it now.

1:18 The congestion pricing started actually as an idea of Mayor Bloomberg started in two thousand and eighty at a press conference with myself Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger from California, where they had worked on it, and in twenty eleven when I left, Governor Cuomo picked up the effort and stayed with it until the time that he left. But look at what’s

1:45 changed since then. First of all, the economic sovereignty of the city’s pretty much the same as it was before the pandemic, but it is not coming directly from Manhattan as it had before. The other barrows in the city are doing a lot of business these days, so that would be an argument against it. Secondly, the central business

2:08 district of thirty four Street to fifty ninth Street isn’t doing the same amount of business that it was, and so asking people fifteen dollars for cars, twenty four dollars for trucks, thirty six dollars for big trucks to go back and forth, it’s really going to cause a problem.

2:25 And the third issue that really is a problem is a lot of people are not living in the city. A lot of people are working from home these days, so you wouldn’t be able to get the revenue from them traveling back and forth between the central business district and the rest of the borough.

2:42 Speaker 1 So in the office buildings, the office buildings are in trouble because then nobody’s coming.

2:49 Speaker 2 The office buildings are a huge trouble. And I can’t understand. I can’t walk two blocks without seeing a construction site and I don’t know what they’re building because I don’t know who’s going to stay there. But the you know, our Governor Huckel is a big champion of congestion pricing.

3:06 Janel Leeber has gone as far as shutting down some criticism that was not accurate against it. And actually I would hope that if they do institute it, that it works needed to work, but the warnings from people who are taking a second look at it and saying that it might not work need to be listened to as well.

3:30 Speaker 1 I agree one and ten percent in what I’ve said to the governor and I’ve said to the mayor. Right now, Manhattan still has one nail in the coffin. Let’s not put a second nail in the coffin. And maybe we should postpone it for a few years and when the economy gets better, then we can reconsider it.

3:52 Speaker 2 Yeah, and interesting. I know there were a number of people at the time when it was first proposed, wanted to come to Albany and meet with the Assembly because they were verulently opposed to it. I kept trying to arrange that meeting, but the late Speaker, Sheldon Silver, wouldn’t allow it. And so even in the best of times,

4:14 it’s a controversial issue. But the fact that someone who was right at the center of it and takes a second look at it now that he’s out of office, I think is healthy. And people who don’t agree should go right ahead and try to demonstrate to the former governor Andrew Crmo that he’s wrong. But they were saying

4:39 when some of these news visions were scratching our heads, why do you scratch your head because someone has an informed view and has changed their position from what their view used to be. For goodness sakes, There are examples of people changing their position in American history. Probably the greatest was the biggest segre dations in the country. George

5:01 Wallace going to black churches and apologizing years later worked very well in the South. So if he can do it, I think anybody else can and be not criticized, had the character criticized, but lauded for the fact that they even take an interest.

5:20 Speaker 1 I agree one hundred percent. Anything else bothers you. I mean, I know we had Eric Adams in the studio or on the phone the other day and I think it was on Wednesday, and all these new laws at the City Council wanted he’s supposed to veto and what say you?

5:41 Speaker 2 And that, well, he does want to veto them. What’s interesting is that because this was an election year, he’ll be dealing with a different city council if he does veto them, because we’ll be in twenty twenty four in just a week or so, and it will The issue of the requirement that the police file a lot more

6:07 data on what their activities are on duty is something that the mayor has said he’s going to veto. He has thirty days to figure out if he wants to do that. Interestingly enough, the Speaker of the City Council, Adrian Adams, was pretty forceful in saying that a lot of what people are saying the bill does, it actually

6:29 doesn’t do. So the idea that if a person asks the please offer sort of directions that they have to write that down and submit it in a report. Apparently it is not in the bill. So I am looking forward to getting a copy of the actual bill because I believe, based on what a lot of people said,

6:50 that they were actually in other words, every time a cop had a conversation with someone, they had to write about it. And as Mayor Adams did say that if that were the case, it would be the worst use of police law enforcement then that you could even imagine, and would totally revert the dropping crime that we’ve experienced,

7:13 or at least we’re experiencing up until a few months ago. And so this is I think an issue where both sides have got to be brutally honest about what the governor of the bill is.

7:24 Speaker 1 Governor, there’s no dropping crime, there’s drop in arrest. Police officers are not arresting criminals because they they get to go home before the paperworkers done.

7:42 Speaker 2 The things are worse than I thought, Yes.

7:44 Speaker 1 Yes they are, well, Governor Patterson, Tomorrow is Christmas. Let’s pray that the world gets better for all of us, especially in New York City where we live. Thank you, John, Thank you