Title: City Politics: The Candidates on Subway Crime

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Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. Today, we'll continue our WNYC Centennial Series, 100 years of 100 Things. It's thing number 89, 100 Years of Women in the Military, including your oral history stories of women in your family who served anytime from World War I until now. Of course, that could include yourself. We're doing this on the 50th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War, which is today.

Your women in the Vietnam era military story is very much invited in about an hour from now. Also, today we continue our series on being upwardly mobile without a college degree. Today, it's politics and people getting skilled through alternative routes. People with college degrees or not, of course, was such a defining demographic line between who voted for Trump and who voted for Harris in the election, right?

Are Democratic and Republican ways to help Americans with no college degrees move up the economic ladder any different? We start with our usual Wednesday visit from our lead City Hall Reporter, Elizabeth Kim, with news from the New York City mayoral race and the Adams administration. Today, it's Liz plus one, WNYC Transportation Reporter, Ramsey Khalifeh, who did a story on unprovoked attacks in the subway as a prime issue in the mayoral race.

We'll also touch on other city politics news, including the announcement from Mayor Adams yesterday, as he vies for reelection, of funding more after-school slots, a plan he's looking to emphasize from his annual budget proposal expected tomorrow, also, a plan coming from the Mayor's Charter Revision Commission to abolish partisan primaries entirely. What in New York City mayoral elections in the future? We'll talk about that, and we'll see what else he might be proposing to fund or cut in the budget. Happy Wednesday, Liz and Ramsey, thanks for being a part of this, this week. Hi.

Elizabeth Kim: Happy Wednesday.

Ramsey Khalifeh: Hey, good morning. Thanks for having us.

Brian Lehrer: Ramsey, to start with the basic stat, your article reminds us that some kinds of subway crime have been going down, but other kinds going up. Remind us of the basics on that.

Ramsey Khalifeh: Yes, it's a good point to bring up. There are so many different crimes, major felonies that the MTA and the NYPD reports on. If you look historically, since 1997, but also since the pandemic, crimes like robberies, burglaries, and grand larcenies have gone down. I think it's important to distinguish, for listeners, the difference between those three because they sound like the same thing.

A larceny is when somebody takes something from somebody else with the intent of keeping it. A robbery is doing a form of larceny, but with violence, with force, or a threat of violence, and then burglary, which doesn't happen as often in the subways because just how the space is, but that's unlawfully breaking and entering into a vehicle, a building, a home with the intent to commit a crime.

You can think of people, operators in the subway cars, who they're in behind locked doors if that gets broken into. Those have gone down, but the difference is in what we've seen since the pandemic, and I have all the crime stats for the last 20 or so years, and major felonies have gone up, and they're actually the highest they've been since 1997, last year, so that's in 2024. That time, the crime is up.

I think that's important to talk about when we say unprovoked attacks. The MTA argues, and we can get more into this a bit later, but the MTA argues that since they flooded the system with police officers right around the time when Adams was elected into office, now there are more interactions between riders and police officers. If police officers are stopping people for fare evasion, the MTA says this has created the likely scenario where a police officer gets shoved, gets punched, because they're just trying to enforce the law.

One thing I'd like to point out is about crime so far this year, though. If you look at the first three months, both Mayor Adams and the NYPD have touted that there's been a 22% drop in the first quarter of all major crimes compared to the same period last year. Again, as a reminder, major crimes include felony assaults, murders, harassment, robberies, and burglaries. All those things. I'll say quickly, up until last week, there were no homicides in the transit system, but there was a man who was stabbed to death on a Downtown 5 train on Friday near the Brooklyn Bridge City Hall station. That was actually the first homicide in the subway system.

Brian Lehrer: Which, compared to last year, I guess you're saying, when there were 10.

Ramsey Khalifeh: There were 10 total. Yes, that's correct.

Brian Lehrer: Which was historically very high, not having one until near the end of April. Of course, any murders are too many murders, but it sounds like potentially a big improvement. Unprovoked subway attacks related to mental health, especially, are front and center in the mayoral race, but before we get to the candidates' proposals, let's talk about what the MTA is already doing. Are there some pillars of random attack prevention in place as of now?

Ramsey Khalifeh: An important thing to understand about subway crime is that it's so different and more difficult to address when you compare it to crime above ground in the City streets. I spoke with an expert, and he was telling me how if there is a hotspot for shootings on a street block, typically what happens, the NYPD floods that block with police officers, and all of a sudden there's no more shootings there.

With subway crimes, it's a bit different. Trains are moving. You don't really know where the stations go and where they are. Here's what the MTA has done. We have scout teams. Those are groups of teams trained to address the most severe cases of mental health crises within the subway system. It's about a handful of teams throughout the system. That includes city clinicians and MTA police. That's one way we can help prevention.

If it's people who are experiencing mental health crises in the subways, they can address that, maybe at the root cause, but here's how we can also identify unprovoked subway attacks. Those are like shovings, random assaults. As most New Yorkers know, over the system, like I said, there's been police officers everywhere, on subway stations, platforms, in the cars, patrolling.

That could be one other way that this prevention somewhat exists. Another thing, less important, but there are also platform barriers in many stations. Hochul announced in a newly announced state budget that she's going to invest more dollars into building more of those. Actually, what I should say is, shovings are typically front and center of a very egregious crime and an unprovoked attack that you see in the subway system. The MTA says that's one of the ways we can prevent that from happening.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, if unprovoked subway crime is an issue for you in the mayoral race, what kinds of solutions are you most interested in? How are you evaluating the candidates on this, or any questions you have for our City Hall Reporter, Liz Kim, and Transportation Reporter, Ramsey Khalifeh? 212-433-WNYC 433-9692. You can also call on other topics for Liz. We'll touch on the Mayor's announcement yesterday about some more after-school funding, City Hall's reaction to public health funding cuts for the City that we discussed on yesterday's show, coming from Washington, and maybe more.

How about no party primaries in mayoral races, just one big open primary for all? The Mayor's Charter Revision Commission seems to be getting ready to put that on the ballot this fall. Who likes or dislikes or has questions about that idea? 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. Liz, before we get to the candidates, and we'll play some clips of a couple of them, anything to add to what Ramsey has already said about what the MTA, as an agency, or the governor or mayor have been doing about unprovoked subway attacks? Presumably, nothing effective enough if it's such a major issue in the election.

Elizabeth Kim: I would just stress that this has been an issue that has really loomed over Mayor Adams and also Governor Hochul as well. At the very start of Adams' term in 2022, Michelle Goh was a subway rider who was fatally pushed onto the tracks at Times Square, and the man who pushed her turned out to be homeless and also had a history of mental illness, and that really set the tone, I think, for Mayor Adams and this challenge of "What was he going to do to make people feel safer on the subways?"

He and the Governor have proposed some solutions. We've seen them. There have been, as Ramsey has talked about, a surge in policing, the Governor has introduced National Guard members, I saw four of them myself on the way to work today, and they've also coupled it with this plan to lower the threshold for involuntary removals, and that is something that Hochul has successfully negotiated in her latest budget deal.

Going forward, it should be easier for these teams of outreach workers that Ramsey talked about to bring someone in forcibly because they will now establish the standard where if a nurse determines that someone cannot meet their basic needs, that they can be forcibly hospitalized. Now, I would expect that there may be some legal challenges around that, right? Because to think about "What does it mean for someone not to be able to meet their basic needs?"

All the same, we're going to see how these proposals shake out. Even the outreach teams, that has been something that the Mayor had started under his term, but it's only really now that he's really expanding them. Currently, between the City and state, there are 10 outreach teams, and they're going to bring that up to 15 soon.

Brian Lehrer: Ramsey, this is supposed to be a local segment, not a Trump-focused one, but your article notes that Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy took a subway ride recently with Mayor Adams and then threatened to withhold federal transit funding unless the MTA submitted a plan to address transit crime, and they did. Have you seen that plan, or do you know if they announced anything new, or if they satisfy Duffy's demand enough to ward off punitive funding cuts?

Ramsey Khalifeh: Well, I should say it might take a lot to satisfy Duffy and the Trump administration on this issue. Well, what I need to say is I don't need to see a plan to know what the MTA has said publicly, and when Duffy demanded that they talk about the subway crime, how they're going to address it. Because all of this information has really been public for a while, and MTA Chair Janno Lieber has said this publicly as well.

Transit crime data is shared every month at the MTA's board meetings. I'm looking, like I said, at a sheet of the last 20 years of transit crime since 1997, and policies on how to address this subway crime has also been public, the thousands of police officers working in the subway system, how they address felony assaults, and also the clear decrease in fare evasion due to that enforcement.

Something interesting to note, year to year, between 2023 and 2024, arrests are up in the platform in the subway system, and summonses for fare evasion are way, way up. I don't have the exact percentage points, but it's really big, so nothing new that the MTA has announced, but their argument is that we have and we continue to do everything the Trump administration is asking of us, and looking into.

I didn't want to get into congestion pricing this segment, but that seems to be the bigger debate that could put funding cuts front and center. I don't know if you're aware of all the legal battles between the federal administration and the MTA, but the Trump administration and Secretary Sean Duffy have given all these deadlines. They've pushed them back, I think now three times, and most recently last week, the funding cut threat was actually to highways.

If you look at this letter that they sent out, they said, "If you don't abide by our congestion pricing deadline to end the tolls," even though the MTA said, "We won't do that until a judge tells us to," here's what they might threat. First, they'd cut all highway funding to highways in Manhattan, specifically in the zone, so there aren't many there. There's just the two. Then, if they don't comply, they might expand that threat to the five boroughs, and then, if they don't comply again, they might do that to all of New York State.

That's if both the City DOT and the MTA don't comply, so at this moment, we don't know the state of grants at risk, let's say, inked between the MTA and the federal government for big projects. Are they at risk? We might have to wait and see. What I've been thinking about as I've been reporting some developments in East Harlem and the Second Avenue Subway, there's a multi-billion-dollar grant that the MTA and the federal government agreed to extend the Second Avenue Subway. Could that be pulled? I think we still have a lot of questions there about the extent to which the federal government might go against the MTA.

Brian Lehrer: Ironically, on that threat to withhold highway funding, sorry, let me get this right. A legal argument against congestion pricing is that if drivers are paying a toll, it shouldn't go to help fund mass transit. [crosstalk] It should only go toward roads that the drivers use, so we'll see how that plays out in court, but that's another show. Ramsey, you cite a range of solutions that different candidates are proposing to fight unprovoked subway crime, like shovings. Let's start with Andrew Cuomo. Your article cites a Cuomo plan centered on adding more police officers, in addition to the ones you've already described that have been added in recent years, right?

Ramsey Khalifeh: Yes. The former governor, his main plan is specifically to hire an additional 1,500 police officers to the NYPD Transit Bureau. Their argument, I guess, New Yorkers might say, "Okay, how much is that going to cost us?" They argue that in effect would pay for itself, mainly because the City is already spending a lot of money on overtime pay for existing police officers in the system.

Cuomo believes that it's a police-first program to address subway crime. If you look at the last two, three years, now that already seems to be in place. Maybe his argument is more of a cost issue rather than an effectiveness issue, so that's his main policy. I think he does support involuntary hospitalizations. One thing I want to note about what Liz said earlier on that issue with involuntary hospitalizations, every candidate has their beliefs for or against it.

While we don't have the specifics of the new proposal or what had passed in the state budget, one thing I spoke, I spoke to Kathy Wilde. She's president of Partnerships for New York. Well, I should say the caveat is she represents businesses, but she helped kind of get this revision through in the state in Albany, and one of the concerns that she was hearing from medical experts on the existing laws is the amount of time that the City or the government is allowed to keep somebody in a mental health care facility against their will.

Now, at the point before this law may be changed, it was 72 hours. She was advocating for that to be extended. She says medical experts say that that's not enough time for somebody to get the care that they need. What you typically see happening is after 72 hours, people go back into the subway system, back onto the streets, and it's this cycle of institutionalization that may be damaging and may be part of the reason why people feel unsafe. It's a perception. That's another part of this. It's a perception issue.

Elizabeth Kim: There also aren't enough psychiatric beds.

Ramsey Khalifeh: Not enough, yes.

Brian Lehrer: Which, Liz, I think brings us to your news story about a subway crime and mental health proposal from mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani, assemblymember from Western Queens, and you brought us a clip of Mamdani. You want to set this up?

Elizabeth Kim: Sure. I took a tour with Mamdani of the Times Square Station, and this is an idea. It's not new. It's based on a model that has been used in Philadelphia, but it is new to New York City. Now, in New York City, we've traditionally relied on this model of, as we talked about, we send out outreach teams, right? These outreach teams are going to talk to people who live in the subway system and convince them to leave the subway system to receive services, but what if the City instead delivered the services inside the subway system? That's what Mamdani was talking to me about in this clip.

Zohran Mamdani: Even if you just think about New Yorkers who are in a moment of crisis, in a mental health crisis, to just have a place they know they can go to, that is in the subway station, where they can get just a moment of relief, a moment of care, a moment of guidance, it could be all the difference.

Elizabeth Kim: He's talking about repurposing vacant retail space in the subway system, and he wants to look at the 100 busiest subway stations with the highest rates of homelessness, and what if we created a-- some people in Philadelphia, they called it a drop-in center, a place where people can go if they're in need of something. It's also a place where police and these outreach teams can bring people to if, as Mamdani talks about, they're experiencing a moment of crisis, and maybe it's not ideal to have those kinds of crises play out in public on a platform.

This is a novel idea for New York City. I do want to point out, the way this was done in Philadelphia was, they originally took over a relatively small space. It was like 900 square feet. It was a former hair salon in their underground subway system, but they found that it worked so well that they later expanded it to an 11,000-square-foot facility that is right beneath their City Hall. It's in a formerly abandoned police station.

What they offer is they offer coffee. They offer showers. They offer laundry services. They told me that they receive about 100 people a day. Now, the big caveat here is, Philadelphia is a much smaller city. Their homelessness problem is minuscule compared to New York City. They have their count. Their point in time count is around 5,000 people total. That's total. That's people in shelters as well as living on the streets.

That's compared to New York City, where it's well over 100,000 people. The other point we should make is, they have a much smaller transit system, too, but all the same, I spoke to a couple of experts about this, and they thought that this was a really interesting idea. In particular, I reached out to Mary Brosnahan. She was the former director and head of the Coalition for the Homeless for around three decades, and she thought she looked it up, and she told me that she thought it was very intriguing, and she told me that she thought it could work here.

Brian Lehrer: Here's what Mary Brosnahan said.

Mary Brosnahan: From the perspective of just the everyday New Yorker or even people who are working on the front line, I think that this is a win-win, and I think that all the candidates should embrace this. It's innovative, and I think it could be highly successful.

Brian Lehrer: State Senator Jessica Ramos, another candidate in the race, really technically running against Mamdani, embraced the idea and said they should go even further.

Jessica Ramos: I would also argue that beyond the retail spaces, some train stations that don't have retail spaces do have ample mezzanines and spaces where we could set up desks or tables and create a makeshift operation so that we are much more deliberate about literally meeting people where they are.

Brian Lehrer: All of that is really interesting, Liz, but I could imagine pushback, and I wonder if you're hearing it. A, how many subway stations have retail, to begin with? Times Square and any other, and Senator Ramos says, "Go beyond retail." You could use mezzanines and other spaces like that, where there are no retail stores or abandoned, really empty retail shops, is what Mamdani is proposing, ones that don't actually have businesses in them at the moment.

That's a limitation, I guess, but I could imagine a lot of riders potentially being uncomfortable with this. Like, "Is this really the place that people should play out their mental health crises if the goal is to rid the subway system of people in crises?" Because that's not what the subway system is for, you know what I mean? As they would have to be walking by people in the middle of a mental health crisis in a retail space or a mezzanine in a subway station, as they're on their daily commutes. Are you hearing any pushback like that?

Elizabeth Kim: For sure, Brian, this is a radical idea. What I would say, people who are in favor of this idea, in response to this, like, "Well, this, this is not what the subway system is for," the problem is it's already happening. People are already living in the subway system. People are already having mental breakdowns in public. The idea is, should the City do something radical? Maybe this involves rethinking about what the subway system is. I was thinking about something that-- Remember Andy Byford, 'Train Daddy,' when he was first--

Brian Lehrer: Very popular head of the New York City Transit system, yes.

Elizabeth Kim: Right. Now, one of the things, controversial statements actually, that he said when he was first brought on was he was talking about homelessness, and he was saying this is a very unfortunate social problem, but it's not the job of the MTA to address social problems. Our job is to get people from Point A to Point B. When I was doing my reporting for this story, I was looking at how Philadelphia approached this, and there was this.

They had this press release at the time when they were undergoing this expansion of this drop-in center, which they called the Hub of Hope, and the chairman of their transit system at the time said that not only are we in the transportation industry, we are also in the community service business, and that is sort of this reframing, and it is radical. It is a radical way of thinking about it, and yes, I think that is a question whether riders would accept this, whether the MTA would accept this.

I did put the question to the MTA, and then the MTA declined to comment on the feasibility of something like this. They told me that the vacancy rate is not as high as a lot of people think. They told me it's around 30% when you factor in spaces that are under renovation or in negotiation for lease, but at the same time, I did reach out to the Riders Alliance, which is an advocacy group for riders, and they said similar to what homeless advocates have said is that this is already happening.

Maybe it involves trying something new. It's trying a host of solutions. It's not just giving up on the outreach teams, and in fact, Mamdani isn't proposing that we do that. This is an idea that he is proposing in tandem with outreach teams.

Brian Lehrer: Ramsey, did you want to add something there?

Ramsey Khalifeh: Well, one thing I wanted to say about State Senator Jessica Ramos coming out of that cut, I also interviewed her as well for the story on these these unwarranted attacks, how it's front and center, and another issue that I think we need to talk about is people's perception of these crimes and how she says it, not only changing retail spaces, but how can we beautify a subway station?

Whether that is a cleaner, a brighter, a more vibrant subway, the station, could that make people feel more safe? Because look, just last week, the subway system surpassed 4.5 million riders two days in a row. That's the first time since March 2020, and if you look at it and all the crime in the system, you could still argue that it is an anomaly. With that being said, people still feel scared. They, maybe, feel unsafe. Not everybody, but a lot of people do, so I just wanted to add that that's one way she's also addressing or could address the problem. How do we make it look safer to make us more at ease as we ride? That's just one of the other proposals that she had.

Brian Lehrer: All right, we're going to take a break for a minute, then continue with City Hall Reporter Elizabeth Kim and Transportation Reporter Ramsey Khalifa. We'll take some of your calls that are coming in on this particular proposal, as well as unprovoked subway crime in general, and we are going to get to some other topics with Liz here. As I mentioned, we had Adams' Health Commissioner, Dr. Michelle Morse, on the program yesterday.

As many of you heard, it was right around this time, and she was really giving it to the Trump administration on budget cuts to vaccine outreach and other things that are going to affect public health in New York. She says a much different kind of talk about the Trump administration than we hear from the Mayor himself, so we'll get Liz's impressions of that difference, also the Mayor's proposal yesterday for more after-school funding, and also AI as a way to prevent subway crime. Uh-oh. 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692, or any of those on any of those things, or the idea that the Mayor seems to be for now, of open mayoral primaries in the future, not party primaries, open primaries. We'll get to that, too. Stay tuned.

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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC with our City Hall Reporter, Elizabeth Kim, and Transportation Reporter, Ramsey Khalifeh. Before we get to some of those other topics with Liz that I mentioned before the break, let's take a couple of the calls that are coming in on unprovoked subway crime, especially shovings that people are always afraid of since Michelle Goh a few years ago, and some others that have happened more recently as an issue in the mayoral primary. Antoine in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC. Hello, Antoine.

Antoine: Hey, Brian, and your guests. I am calling because I feel like we're having an ad hoc conversation about what we have clear evidence about at the City level, particularly in the state agencies, and this question of upstream interventions about putting rest areas in the in the subways seems like to placate the root causes of homelessness and also what we know about violence, which is also down.

I know that people are afraid, the psychological safety about it, but I just feel like in the City with some of the best and most prestigious public institutions around interventions and root causes to be able to address violence and homelessness, these projects seem a bit ad hoc and not systematic in any way.

Brian Lehrer: Antoine, thank you. Liz, there are many people who agree with Antoine, but probably many people who don't agree with Antoine. Is there a candidate who comes closest to his position?

Elizabeth Kim: I would say it's Brad Lander. When you ask Brad Lander, the City comptroller, what he thinks the City should do to solve this question of street homelessness and homelessness on the subway and this intersection with mental illness, he would say housing, and that's what he calls his approach. It's a housing-first approach, and that, at the end of the day, we need to create more housing for people, and specifically for people who are mentally ill, we need to create what's known as supportive housing, that's housing in which people receive services on site. That has always been the core issue, and the City never seems to be able to create this kind of housing fast enough to address, to be able to house all the people that are living on the streets.

Brian Lehrer: Ramsey, a listener writes in a text, this is kind of the opposite of Antoine, I think, "During COVID, the trains were emptied every night. We can do it. We lack the political will and the willingness to deal with a difficult situation." Anybody proposing anything close to sweeping the trains every night of people?

Ramsey Khalifeh: Not that I've heard of and know of.

Elizabeth Kim: Well, that was a credit to then-Governor Cuomo, who insisted on doing that.

Ramsey Khalifeh: What I will say is that, like we mentioned, with the involuntary hospitalizations, should it be expanded or once we get the details of how it is expanded, I think that there's going to be a lot of uproar against "How legal is this, and what is this?" Right? Technically, if you look at the MTA's rules that if you're in a train, if you're in the subway system, it's for transit, you can't loiter, you can't stay inside, but of course, that is controversial.

A lot of people don't have the support that they need. I'll just say quickly, I met a man named Michael Brown in East Harlem, and he's homeless, and he lives in a shelter in 24th Street and 6th Avenue, I believe. I can't remember the name, but he was telling me that he comes up to East Harlem, he uses one of the safe injection sites, and he's trying to wean off of it. He told me directly that the fact that he had access to this temporary, or more so, it's a transitional housing system, it has helped him to eventually get the services he needs to have permanent housing to possibly find a job.

He panhandles on the subways. He doesn't stay in there, but that's just, I don't think we get that perspective often. Just back to the question before that from the caller, he is somebody who is benefiting and seems to be benefiting from the public services the City has to offer. Not everybody does. That's just an example.

Brian Lehrer: Some other comments coming in from listeners and texts. One person writes, "Like the idea about centers for homeless people, but could they be organized above ground near to main subway hubs, I guess, instead of in the subway stations themselves?" Another person writes, "Maybe homeless people would be less likely to have a mental health crisis if they had a place to get cleaned up and wash their clothes."

Another one writes, "Some libraries in DC have social workers to work with homeless people who come for other services. Why not the subway?" Another one, "We need more money for beds for mental health, which was dismantled by the Pataki administration." Ramsey, have you looked yet at this other new idea coming from Mayor Adams? The prospect of using AI to spot people who might be about to commit violent crimes in the subways? Maybe that's promising, but you can imagine how it raises all kinds of red flags as well. Do you know what the Mayor is proposing?

Ramsey Khalifeh: Well, I will correct you on that. It's not what the Mayor has proposed, but rather the MTA, and this was brought up--

Brian Lehrer: Oh, it's the MTA. I'm sorry.

Ramsey Khalifeh: Yes. This was teased at the MTA's committee hearings earlier this week. For some context, I think listeners should know that the MTA, over the past year, has installed surveillance cameras all throughout the system, but more importantly, on every single subway car. The MTA Chief Security Officer, Michael Kemper, I should note that he was just at the NYPD; now he's at the MTA.

Their argument is that AI is the future. I think any advertisement you see around the world now has something to do with AI. Maybe the MTA is jumping aboard, but they're in the early process of working with companies to produce some sort of technology that could detect, and here's the quote, so I can be specific. It's "potential trouble or problematic behavior on subway platforms."

They were clear when we followed up, and this is reporting by my colleague, Stephen Nessen, that the technology won't detect people or use facial recognition, but rather identify behavior. My question is, and I'm sure listeners agree, what constitutes as problematic behavior? Is that somebody moving erratically? Are they pushing trash cans over, lying down on the ground? It's unclear. Maybe some people might argue that this is attacking or will unjustly target people who are homeless, let's say, if they are laying down or if they are just walking around the system.

We don't know how far along the MTA is in introducing this technology. It was just brought up, and this is the first time we're hearing of it. I will say there were advocates, and again, with Stephen Nessen's reporting at the New York Civil Liberties Union, they say that artificial intelligence technologies are unreliable, they're biased, and that a surveillance state might not make New Yorkers feel more safe or be more safe.

Brian Lehrer: Although, interestingly, here's a text that just came in, not responding to our conversation just now about AI, but kind of implying, I think, that maybe they would have liked something like that tool. In this case, a listener writes, starts with a question, "Is there meaningful tracking of threats of assault and detection of early signals of violence? Asking because this Sunday, a man on the F Train verbally threatened to assault and kill me and a fellow rider, and blocked us in and gestured with his hands. I'm not sure if the police will care about a report of a threat, so just going to leave that hanging out there."

All right, Liz, let's touch on some of these other topics that I teased. We had Mayor Adams' Health Commissioner, Dr. Michelle Morse, on the program yesterday on Trump budget cuts to vaccine outreach and measuring healthcare disparities and other programs that affect the City's public health efforts, and I don't know if you heard the segment, but she was taking it to Trump world in ways that Eric Adams himself never seems to. Have you ever heard Adams talk about these public health funding cuts at all, or in the explicit way Dr. Morse did?

Elizabeth Kim: The Mayor himself will rarely, if ever, bring up the funding cuts himself. He's typically asked about the funding cuts, and most recently, there was a very big story about the federal government cutting aid to migrant shelters. This was money that had already been awarded to the City. It was about around $188 million. At the time, the Mayor's office did release a statement calling it unlawful.

As we've seen with the Mayor since Trump has been elected, he has been very careful. He does not directly criticize President Trump as he did President Biden, and he has argued that this is a better approach for the City. That is, it is better for him to have a good working relationship with the president. Now, why he didn't do that with President Biden is another question, which he hasn't really given a satisfactory answer on.

Brian Lehrer: Next topic. Well, first, has Dr. Morse, as health commissioner, perhaps been given permission rather than stifled for some reason? Like, "Yes, you go out and do that, and the people will think our administration is on it, but I don't have to publicly say anything against Trump when he's still got a sword over my head with legal issues."

Elizabeth Kim: I have wondered about that, especially since the Mayor's corruption charges were dropped, whether he is giving maybe his top officials a little bit more rein. Now, if you remember, Brian, earlier in the year, before his charges were dropped, this was back in February, the Mayor instructed his top officials not to criticize the federal government or Trump, and that, in turn, was followed by the departure of four of his deputy mayors.

That was considered widely controversial. Now that the dust has settled a little bit, I do wonder whether it's maybe the Mayor tacitly telling his officials that they can speak out a little bit, or maybe it's just that these officials with, I think, what is it? They have eight months left in Adams, assuming he doesn't get reelected, but the numbers show that he has a very difficult path, maybe they sort of feel that they have room to talk.

Brian Lehrer: Interesting.

Elizabeth Kim: Because if you see that Dr. Morse is an interim commissioner, that has been a question that I have wanted to ask the Mayor for a really long time, is why, for such a critical agency for the City, especially now, if you're thinking about things like measles outbreaks, why has he not appointed a permanent commissioner in that role? Now, there could be two answers. There could be one, he hasn't found the right person, or two, he hasn't been able to find someone who's willing to take a job that will only last, as I said, eight months.

Brian Lehrer: Next topic. The Mayor yesterday touted something that apparently will be part of his annual budget proposal, which we'll hear more of formally tomorrow. He's touting it as an ambitious plan to achieve a universal after-school program, and he says it won't just help the kids.

Mayor Eric Adams: It's not just young people who benefit. Sometimes we forget, when a parent or a caregiver knows that the child is in a safe place, they're able to also continue to thrive.

Brian Lehrer: Liz, I read into the details of what the Mayor calls an ambitious plan to achieve universal after-school programming, and it starts with this language in his written release with 5,000. It doesn't start with this, but it's got this language. "With 5,000 additional K through 5 seats for the upcoming fall school year, 10,000 more seats," these are after-school seats, "in the fall of 2026, and 5,000 more in the fall of 2027, as we see this rollout and continue to move forward with it." Liz, that's in a system of nearly a million kids, so those new 10,000 seats over the next couple of years, plus what we already have, how close to universal is that?

Elizabeth Kim: Well, I should point out, Brian, that this is focusing on elementary school, which is where it's really needed. They really need to expand after-school for the youngest children in the system, and at the middle school level, there are already many schools that do have free after-school programs. That was something that de Blasio worked to expand.

I do think this is very significant, and I think it does reflect how this issue of child care, which this essentially is, it's both enrichment, but it's also a place for children to be until maybe five o'clock when their parents can get off work and pick them up, that was also part of the issue with Pre-K, too, but we're really seeing how this has really shaped not only the mayoral race, but I think also a lot of Adams' own mayoralty, too, and how he's responding to the pressure.

Brian Lehrer: One more thing. As we head toward this ranked-choice voting primary, I see the Mayor's Charter Revision Commission. I saw a release on this just this morning. Liz, you could tell me if this is brand new. There's a release today, and if I read it right, "New Yorkers will vote this November on a ballot question that would end party primaries altogether in city elections and replace them with open primaries, all candidates from all parties in one big primary, with the top vote-getters then running against each other in the general." Am I seeing that right?

Elizabeth Kim: This is a proposal that the Charter Revision Commission is considering, and this was something that Former Mayor Bloomberg really pushed, but was unsuccessful in getting it to a ballot. I think there will still be significant pushback from the parties themselves, the Democratic Party and the Republican Party, on doing something like this because, of course, they benefit from a closed system, because what's the point in registering for a party if you can vote in an open primary? I think there's going to be lots more discussion on this, and we'll see. I think I would be surprised. I think this is kind of a Brigid Bergin question, but I would be surprised if they were able to get this through.

Brian Lehrer: Who decides if it's actually going to be on the ballot?

Elizabeth Kim: The Charter Revision Commission, and according to reports that I've read, there are members on the Commission themselves who are not comfortable with this idea.

Brian Lehrer: Here's a caller who is Joseph in Downtown Brooklyn. You're on WNYC. Hi, Joseph.

Joseph: Yes, thanks very much. Actually, there's a website, nycopenprimary.com, which indicates that New York City is really an outlier these days with having these partisan primaries. Yes, and your experts there said the Democratic Party might be opposed, but this may be the year that the Democratic Party really gets bit in the rear with the existing system because, heaven help us, Curtis Sliwa could become elected mayor in November with 30% of the vote because of the system that we have, and I'm sorry there, Curtis. Yes, I think this may be the year where we really learn a lesson that we need reform.

Brian Lehrer: Yes. Well, you could hang that on partisan primaries, or you could hang that on how many people could run as independents, right? What if there was an open primary? It would have to include a law if you were going to knock out the possibility, which is what you're referring to, for the fall, where there would be Cuomo and Adams and a Working Families Party candidate and Sliwa as the Republican on the ballot, so Sliwa or somebody might get elected with just 30% of the vote. If you've looked into open primaries, would something in that system prevent some of the also-rans in that open primary from running anyway as independents?

Joseph: Yes. There are different models out there for how this would work, but I think the key is that there would be, as you said, a unified primary with ranked-choice voting. In some cases, they allow like three to five candidates to move on to the general. It's interesting because there's four and a half months between the primary and the general election, which is a long time, and people's preferences might shift a little bit, so I think that makes more sense to have a field of candidates that you can rank both in the primary and then in the general.

Brian Lehrer: Joseph, thank you for your call. We appreciate that. We will see if that winds up as something that New Yorkers will vote on in November. We thank our City Hall Reporter, Liz Kim, Transportation Reporter, Ramsey Khalifeh. Thank you both.

Elizabeth Kim: Thanks, Brian.

Ramsey Khalifeh: Thanks, Brian.

 

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