Running for Comptroller to Fix New York's Fiscal Crisis

0:00 Speaker 1 Sunday morning. What us today is Joseph Hernandez. He ran for mayor in the city in New York last year. Now he’s running for a New York State controller and he’s got the nomination for it. And Joseph is a friend.

0:18 He’s a Cuban American immigrant and a biotech entrepreneur. Well, you want to run for controller of the state in New York, Tom DiNapoli has had it for nineteen years already. What would you do different?

0:34 Speaker 2 Yeah? Thank you John for having me. I really appreciate it. Look, I’m delighted to be here. I’m running. I’m running for controller because I’m just trying to pay back the debt I owe to America. As I mentioned to you, As you know, I’m a Cuban immigrant. I came here at the age of seven, and this country has given me

0:51 so much and I feel like I need to pay back. And honestly, New York is in a lot of trouble. New York fiscally is in a lot of trouble, and you’re seeing what’s going on at the state in Sylia level.

1:00 We’re just in a financial crisis in my humble opinion, So we need somebody who really knows how to run things and sort of manage money. Tom’s a nice guy. Everybody I speak to says that he’s a great guy.

1:12 So I’m not questioning his character as an individual, but the performance says a lot. And I mean, if you look at the returns of the fund, which is one of the roles of the Comptroller’s office, you know, those returns are incredibly low. It’s about five point eight percent return.

1:28 Just to put it into perspective, the Treasury’s return about four point two five percent, So he’s not far out from the Treasury returns, which is which is really dismal performance in my opinion. So depends upon is not performing.

1:40 The other thing is, you know, we have massive, massive, as you know, John, fraud and abuse in the system, especially abound medicaid around the MTA, I would argue, and you know, the Department of Education is one of our largest budgets. We need to kind of see what’s going on there as well, and unfortunately nothing’s been done about that.

1:56 Nobody’s really scrutinized those agencies are those entities, and we got to do that. We got to do that. So I plan to build an in house investment team to increase the returns of the pension fund, which is a three hundred billion dollar fund, massive fund, one of the largest in America, one of the largest funds in America.

2:15 And then in terms of the fraud interviews, we’re going to go ahead and bring in in a really I want to form what is what I call the in house fraud strike Team, which is going to be made up of forensic accountants and prosecutors that know how to prosecute criminal financial crimes, and we’re going to get to

2:34 the bottom of it. We’re going to clean up, We’re going to clean up shop. And then the last thing we want to do with the with the office is we want to invest in New York. Part of what the fund does, it does a lot of venture investments and a lot of new company investments and so forth.

2:48 So what we want to do is we want to invest in New York. We want to go ahead and invest in the upper parts of the States and the western parts of the States, states that have really been left behind economically, and bring some great companies to that area so that we have a the next generation of

3:01 tax payers, but also the next generation of jobs for our kids. And I plan to execute on that like I do everything else, and from a business perspective, and look, no get no critique to the current controller, but the reality is performance is not there and oversight is not there.

3:14 Speaker 1 We got so in other ways, you would invest more money into the New York state system.

3:20 Speaker 2 Yeah, absolutely, I would. You know, I would. I would do with what economic development venture funds do. And again, look, you have to use your fiduciary duty is to make sure you get an internal rate of return on the investments.

3:31 But you can do that. You can do good investments and bring good companies to New York. So my strategy is to effectively incentivize companies to move through the state of New York by investing in them from an equity perspective, so you get returns on the investment of your returns on having those companies here and creating jobs. And I

3:47 think if you can do that aggressively, and I plan to do it very aggressively, plan to allocate timby and dollars to do that, I think you’re going to have success.

3:55 Speaker 1 Well. Joseph Hamandez. Also, the fact is that one of the problems we have in New York it’s it’s a it’s a state where we have bigger exodus than people coming in. Really, well, what are the ideas.

4:11 Speaker 2 On that album? It’s a real, real problem. I mean, look, I do the numbers, and I am a numbers guy that I ran, and there’s about eighty two thousand people that pay the majority of the taxes for the state of New York and there’s about seven hundred.

4:24 Speaker 1 And I think the statistics are two percent of your New Yorkers are paying forty eight percent of the taxes. Correct. And the fact is and they and the new mayor is pushing the governor to raise to raise raise the amount of taxes, and you know, I point out that the exodus will continue even more.

4:47 Speaker 2 Absolutely, you’re gonna see and you’ve already seen it. Look, I’ve had good friends that are in the investment community and they’re they’re saying, you know what, screw it, I’m going to I’m going to Florida, And you don’t want that.

4:57 These people are the ones that create jobs and they put money in of the economy. They’re important for the tax base. And you know, as we increase the budget on expenditures, which is what we’ve done. This current city budget has an nextra eleven billion dollars of expenses. You know, our state budget is two hundred and sixty two billion,

5:14 and it’s insanity. I mean it’s these budgets are big.

5:17 Speaker 1 We’re almost three hundred billion because they’re proposing one hundred and twenty seven billions just from New York City, which is big. That’s bigger than the whole state of Florida.

5:26 Speaker 2 That’s right, and the state of Florida has twenty three million people. I think, Look, I think this is this is government run a monk. We need to change it. I’m really glad to be partnering up with Bruce Blakeman, who’s really an operator. Look, he’s ran massa county like New York should be run. It’s one of the safest

5:43 counties in the nation. I think it’s the safest county in the nation. They haven’t increased taxes. I mean, there’s economic growth there. People feel safe there, and people feel happy there, and I think we got to replicate that across the states. I’m proud to be partnering up with him and the rest of the GOP candidates to be

5:58 able to change the trade of New York because if we don’t New York is not gonna be around for our kids.

6:04 Speaker 1 Johann Anders, thank you so much for coming on this Sunday morning, and please keep us informed. It’s a long way till.

6:10 Speaker 2 November exactly exactly. Thank you, John. I appreciate you, appreciate everything you do got us