Brigid Bergen: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. I'm Brigid Bergen, filling in for Brian today. Now we continue our interviews with all the major candidates in the primaries coming this June for mayor of New York and governor of New Jersey. With us now is City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams, who's running to be the Democratic nominee in this year's mayoral race. Speaker Adams was elected to her leadership post by the council in January of 2022. She's the first African American to hold her position, and the first woman to represent District 28 in Southeast Queens. Now she'd like to be the first woman to hold the top position in New York City government as well.

Speaker Adams, welcome back to WNYC.

Speaker Adrienne Adams: Great to be back, Brigid. Thank you.

Brigid Bergen: Listeners, we're going to open up the phones for you right away. We can take your questions for Speaker Adams on her work in the City Council. We'll get to the council's lawsuit against Mayor Adams and the Trump administration over the move to reopen ICE at Rikers Island, as well as budget negotiations that are currently underway. You can call or text us with questions about her mayoral run. The number is 212-433-WNYC. That's 212-433-9692.

Speaker Adams, you entered the mayoral race a little bit on the later side in comparison to the other candidates. What was keeping you on the fence about running until March, and can you share a little bit about yourself for listeners who are just meeting you here for the first time?

Speaker Adrienne Adams: Oh, sure. Sure, I can. Well, as you said, I am the first African American Speaker of the New York City Council and have been leading the first women majority in the most diverse City Council that this city has ever seen before. I was elected in 2017 as the first woman to represent District 28. That's in Southeast Queens. I have been having an amazing time going through my campaign to be the first woman mayor of the city of New York; the only candidate in this race, actually, that has overall city knowledge of what it takes to negotiate three budgets, and I'm now working on our fourth budget, as well as a lot of other things. I know the agencies. I know the nonprofits. I know the people, and I know the process. I don't need a handbook or a manual; already doing the work and hope to do more when I'm elected as mayor.

Brigid Bergen: Well, let's talk about some of the work that's underway. Particularly, let's talk about this fight over sanctuary cities between Mayor Adams and the City Council. Last week, First Deputy Mayor Randy Mastro signed an executive order allowing Immigration and Customs Enforcement to return to Rikers Island. You and the City Council have sued to block this order. Why did you sue the mayor, and what do you think is at stake here?

Speaker Adrienne Adams: Oh, so much is at stake, Brigid. The council did file a lawsuit requesting a temporary restraining order and a preliminary injunction against the mayor's illegal executive order to invite ICE to operate on Rikers. The order, quite frankly, is tainted by the mayor's conflict of interest. He clearly stated his intention to issue it. We saw the interview on Fox News with Tom Homan with the mayor sitting next to him. When the Trump administration tried to dismiss his corruption case, in what Judge Dale Ho saw as indeed a quid pro quo, we saw that.

We are standing up in the City Council. We're standing firm on protecting our laws and the safety of New Yorkers. We're not going to let corrupt bargains with Donald Trump to let ICE onto Rikers. It's going to make all of us less safe. In fact, if we let ICE onto Rikers, you know what? They're not going to follow the law. They're going to execute Trump's extreme mass deportation agenda, and we have a mayor that will not stop them. We believe he's going to help them. We can't trust the Trump administration, when they've been arresting-- people are disappearing off the streets, and our mayor is definitely not defending our city.

Brigid Bergen: Speaker, just for context, let's remind listeners of what it means to be a sanctuary city, what that law is here in New York, and what the purpose of it is, and how this order to reinstate ICE at Rikers Island contradicts that sanctuary status in the council's view.

Speaker Adrienne Adams: Sanctuary city laws-- Let me just say, statistics do prove that cities with sanctuary city laws are the safest. Sanctuary city laws, actually, they protect immigrant communities when it comes to being able to be free to talk about things that they experience, be they any kind of illegal activity that they may encounter, harm that they may feel that are coming to them, and knowing that they may be undocumented, these laws actually do protect them. They're able to say and give testimony and other things; just free to speak their minds and not be afraid of law enforcement.

If we take these freedoms away, we're going to see folks hiding again. We're seeing it already, quite frankly. We've been under a lot of pressure to change sanctuary city laws because there is a misperception that ICE cannot be activated or act because we are a sanctuary city law, and that is just not true. ICE has the ability to do what they do. They can deport criminals that have created violent acts and have been convicted for those violent acts. That is already baked into the law. We are protecting our status as sanctuary cities to make our city safe.

Brigid Bergen: The executive order from the Adams administration came the same day that President Trump posted to Truth Social, "No more sanctuary cities. They protect criminals, not the victims." Then went on to threaten federal funding to city and states that "allow these death traps to exist." How are you preparing for a fight with the President over our sanctuary city status and obviously, to protect that federal funding?

Speaker Adrienne Adams: Yes. The Trump administration continues to threaten sanctuary cities. Quite frankly, Brigid, New York City is going to have a target on its back no matter who the next mayor is. We've got that target on our back already. The administration is making destabilizing cuts to the federal workforce already and key services that New Yorkers rely on, everything from public health to emergency disaster response. We know that the mayor's administration has failed to outline any contingency planning for our city, and they even skipped our public hearing yesterday, which is unheard of.

The council, again, is going to have to do the work for our mayoral administration. We are aiming to Trump-proof New York City with smart, targeted investments that preserve our key programs that keep New Yorkers safe and healthy. This is at a time when working families are under attack by the Trump administration. It's so unfortunate that the mayoral administration didn't even feel the need to show up to such an important hearing and publicly testify to the people of our city to let the people know what the contingency plan is. It once again puts it on full display, the mayor's obvious deference to Donald Trump, the refusal to engage and collaborate with the council. It wasn't just a missed opportunity, but it's a failure of leadership that people deserve more.

Brigid Bergen: Speaker, we have a full board of callers, and I want to get them in. Listeners, thank you for holding because we're going to get to you. I want to get through a couple quick questions still related to some business in your role as Speaker. Quickly, what do you make of the mayor tasking his new deputy mayor, Randy Mastro, with issuing that executive order related to ICE on Rikers instead of signing it himself?

Speaker Adrienne Adams: Yes. I think, again, Brigid, that's a great question. It is so telling that the mayor would call himself delegating his own responsibility to the deputy mayor in such a critical act of signing Executive Order No. 50. Again, this is unprecedented. We believe, again, that the optics smack of the quid pro quo that Judge Dale Ho actually said this was when he gave his order. This is a part of our lawsuit. We want the lawsuit to take a good look at the City Charter because we don't believe that the deputy mayor actually did have the authority to sign on behalf of the mayor of the City of New York any such executive order. We believe that it is illegal.

Brigid Bergen: Mastro responded by taking aim at you and a decision that you made to remove some council members from the budget negotiating team: Selvena Brooks-Powers and Lynn Schulman. A little piece of what Deputy Mayor Mastro wrote, "The Speaker has misused her city position for her own personal interest. This is not the way responsible parties should be conducting themselves. It places politics ahead of process."

Why did you remove Brooks-Powers and Schulman from the budget negotiating team, and what's your response to Mastro's assertion that this was an abuse of power?

Speaker Adrienne Adams: Well, I don't believe that Mr. Mastro is the authority on anyone's abuse of power, nor does he understand the working of the City Council. As the leader of the City Council, my responsibility, among many, many others, is to listen to those concerns of the body. Quite frankly, when certain choices are made, the body is affected by that, and that impacts the trust as far as the whole body. It impacts decision-making. It impacts the work that we do in the City Council. We have two members who, quite frankly, in some respects, lost the trust of a lot of members of the body. With our majority whip, this is someone that is responsible, huge responsibility to whip those votes. We lose the confidence and then we lose votes, we lose the trust.

We don't make these decisions in a vacuum. I have an entire leadership team that was consulted. We consulted together. We could have, quite frankly, taken away committee chairs from both of these individuals, and we did not do that. Minimally, removal from the BNT was what happened, and this was a business decision that was made by the leadership team and myself.

Brigid Bergen: That was for a lack of confidence, you said, in them?

Speaker Adrienne Adams: A lack of trust. Given the feedback that we had gotten from our colleagues, the lack of trust is now there, unfortunately. We have to have like minds in leadership to get the business done, and this goes along with that and it went along with the thought process, indeed.

Brigid Bergen: We have a full board of callers. I'm going to try to get as many of them in as I can, while I still have a whole bunch more that I want to ask you, Speaker. Let's start with John in Park Slope. John, you're on WNYC with Speaker Adams.

John: Hi, Speaker Adams. I'm thrilled to speak with you. I agree with you on many points, especially the points against former Governor Cuomo. I loved his father, but I don't like him. [chuckles]

Speaker Adrienne Adams: Oh, my.

John: The thing that I really don't understand is why you failed to sponsor Intro 1096. My wife and I are both teachers. We're retired. I have a serious disease. I'm really interested in why you're continuing not to uphold Intro 1096 that stands with the retirees and our families and all of the people, like police officers, and firefighters, and DC 37, and the teachers' union. We need not to privatize our healthcare benefits like [crosstalk]--

Brigid Bergen: John, let us-- let me jump in, John, and let the Speaker get a chance to answer you, because we've got a lot of callers who want to ask her questions. Speaker, the question from John on this bill related to retiree healthcare in New York City.

Speaker Adrienne Adams: Yes, thank you for the question, John, and it's one that I get quite often. The issue around this particular bill-- and just to be clear, we want our retirees to be healthy. We want you to have full and fully established healthcare. We all want that. We feel that legislation coming from the City Council, though, is misdirected legislation. If the City Council were to enact this legislation, that would take us to the bargaining table, to keep on doing this in a recurring pattern, and that is not the function of the body of the City Council. We cannot take up items that bring us to the bargaining table, to collective bargaining, when these are issues that are decided by the unions and their members.

We feel that the legislation is misplaced. We also feel that the mayor, the administration needs to stop fighting this in court. They need to let the retirees have exactly what they need and what they deserve after all of this service, and stop fighting this court case and let this item go to restore the healthcare fully to our retirees.

Brigid Bergen: Speaker, a listener texts a question about one of your proposals for your mayoral campaign. The listener writes, "The guaranteed income proposal. The Speaker has proposed a guaranteed income for homeless families. Wouldn't that exacerbate the issue we've seen with our city shelter rules, where we become a generous caretaker to the country and to some extent of the world? Haven't we learned anything else from the last five years." If you could talk a little bit about your proposal and respond to that listener's question.

Speaker Adrienne Adams: I would love to, and thank you, listener, for bringing this up. This is such an important plan. Let me just lay it out for you just a little bit to help explain what it is exactly. This plan is a guaranteed income plan. It's a bold but practical plan to end homelessness for pregnant mothers, families with children under five years old, homeless youth, and young people aging out of foster care. We're talking about real direct support. Three years of monthly income paired with wraparound services. There's no red tape; just help for people that need it that works and saves the city money.

Let's talk about that savings part. The first two years would cost about $430 million. It would be funded by the city and social impact bonds, but we estimate that it would save the city over $1 billion on spending in shelters. That is the perpetual place where we are spending billions and billions of dollars to keep homeless individuals inside of, and that's not what we want to continue to do. Just to let you know also, the third year would be supported by the private sector and philanthropy. This isn't just humane. It's also very smart.

The program is going to save us money on shelter and emergency cost. We actually did test this model, which we're really proud of, and 63% of families moved from shelter into permanent housing. It works and it's more effective than what we currently do. The data is very, very clear. Families use the money to stabilize their lives. They get housing, food and health. It's much cheaper, faster, and much more dignified than our status quo is. It's not about ideology. It's actually about real solutions that work.

Guaranteed income has been shown to help people move out of shelter and become independent. Don't we want that? I think we do. We could keep spending hundreds of millions on shelters that leave New Yorkers trapped in poverty, or we could use guaranteed income to save us that money when they move completely out of shelter.

Brigid Bergen: Speaker, just to pick up on what you were saying, the piece that jumped out to me that I would love for you to tell me a little bit more about is how it will be funded with these social impact bonds. Specifically, what is the expectation of who is purchasing these social impact bonds, and how does that provide enough capital to support a program like this?

Speaker Adrienne Adams: Brigid, it is more of the outcome than anything else, and the results that the city is going to see in saving billions of dollars. We are now looking at the potential saving that we pour into shelter, that we pour into hotels, makes no sense. It makes more sense for us to make individuals independent, where they can stand on their own and they can eventually provide themselves with housing.

Once we get over the three-year period, which-- The stipends do go down each year, by the way. I forgot to mention that as well. It's not the same stipend every year. They do go down every single year. The savings are what we're looking at. We can't go on spending all of this money to keep people in perpetual poverty, particularly child poverty.

Brigid Bergen: Let's go to Virginia in the West Village. Virginia, thanks for calling WNYC.

Virginia: Hi, thanks so much. Hello, Speaker Adams. My question is about [crosstalk]--

Speaker Adrienne Adams: Hi, Virginia.

Virginia: Hi. My question is about housing. There are so many New York real estate investors who have undermined rent stabilization and harassed thousands and thousands of tenants, and I'm one of them. Does the mayor or the City Council have a role in approving these developers after they've applied to HPD for tax credits or affordable housing development programs? Because I know there's a lot of activity that's about to start, and I'm just really concerned that there's no look-back at what they've actually already done in the buildings that they've already owned.

Speaker Adrienne Adams: Yes, thank you for the question. What a great question. We look towards HPD to do a lot of things. The City Council, our responsibility is oversight of the agencies, but the agencies that are responsible, and you mentioned it, is HPD, who we would want to have a clear eye and a very, very good look on what's going on as far as housing development is concerned.

What we do know right now, though, in speaking about HPD and other agencies, is that HPD is understaffed. That's an issue, and that's as a result of the mayor's PEGs. They were cut, their headcount was cut. They are deficient in their headcount in order to do these things and oversight that they are supposed to be doing and mandated to doing their responsibilities for you and other New Yorkers in the same situation.

When I'm mayor, we're going to make sure that we are staffed up in these agencies, that we don't look at pulling away from the things that are harming New Yorkers. Again, like the situation that you mentioned, I happen to think that it has a lot to do with the vacancy issue. DOT is under-headcount. DSS is under-headcount. Certainly, HPD and many more agencies are under-headcount, and it is affecting the way that the city is being managed by the mayoral administration.

Brigid Bergen: Speaker, just picking up on that theme of housing from that last caller. According to a new Data for Progress poll, three in four New Yorkers want a rent freeze. As mayor, your appointees to the Rent Guidelines Board could grant a rent freeze for New Yorkers living in rent-stabilized apartments. Several of the candidates in the race, Zohran Mamdani, Jessica Ramos, and Michael Blake, have said they'd support a rent freeze. Are you going to join that list? Would you also support a rent freeze?

Speaker Adrienne Adams: I mentioned in one of the many forums over the past couple of weeks that I certainly would consider a rent freeze and certainly would support it, but I don't want it to be to the detriment of our renters, where there could be retaliation for a rent freeze. I would look to make sure that our renters were protected first, but I certainly am not opposed to a rent freeze. Not at all.

Brigid Bergen: We have a listener who texts, "I have a question for Speaker Adams. What is her position on trans rights? How would she support the LGBTQ community? How would she also support women's health, access to abortion? Thank you very much."

Speaker Adrienne Adams: Wow, that's a lot. Check out the City Council's record on all of those issues, and I think that you will find that we pass all of those issues with flying colors. We have been the council that have been protecting trans rights, protecting women's rights. We have a fund of over a million dollars. People actually do come to New York for their women's reproductive care when they cannot get that same care in their own home states.

Our record in the City Council women majority is very, very clear, very supportive of trans rights, of the rights of the LGBTQIA+ community. We have been doing above and beyond when it comes to our responsibility and protection of the community and of our women's reproductive rights and their rights to safe abortion.

Brigid Bergen: Speaker, another listener texts, "What is Speaker Adams' position on Local Law 97? I'm a 70-year-old lifelong progressive in a co-op who could lose my entire mortgage and interest investment if the co-op is bankrupted by this law."

Speaker Adrienne Adams: We are still working around Local Law 97. Definitely, realizing the growing pains that we are seeing with compliance with Local Law 97. The good news is that we are looking at some items legislatively to take some of the pressure off when it comes to compliance with this local law. We're all in that same boat. We want the same thing, and that is climate green spaces, and we want to make sure that our climate is protected. Those are the things that we want, but we also want to be sure that people are protected and not harmed by the local law.

Brigid Bergen: Speaker, public safety is one of the top issues on the minds of voters in this year's election. You and I spoke at Vital City's mayoral forum on this issue just about 10 days ago. At that forum, you said you'd tackle the issue of violent crime through implementing trauma recovery centers. What would this look like?

Speaker Adrienne Adams: Well, that is one thing that I would do. Trauma recovery centers are actually centers that prevent cycles of violence from those that have been impacted by violent situations in their lives. What we find that this is a very neglected group of people who, quite frankly, would rather see a trauma recovery center help them in their recovery of what they've been through rather than being placed on Rikers, or rather having an offender incarcerated for many, many years, when a person can very, very effectively be helped with therapy. We opened our fourth trauma recovery center in East Flatbush about three weeks ago, and this is where individuals get therapy. We have seen people go in catatonic and actually come out whole, being able to participate in society again.

The TRCs are one way of handling public safety. I also don't want to leave out the component of our law enforcement individuals who are grossly understaffed. We have an issue right now where there are about 2,400 uniformed and non-uniformed vacancies within the NYPD, but folks are talking about hiring extra. We need to staff up. This is one of the agencies that I just mentioned that are understaffed, and these vacancies are not being filled at the rate that we need them to be filled.

Also, Brigid, we need to pay our officers what they're worth. We're losing officers after two and three years because the salary is too low. We're not competitive in paying our NYPD what they deserve to be paid. We also need to take them out of the business of being mental health experts, being social care experts. We need to take them out of that. That is not what they signed up for. We need the appropriate people in those roles, and we need for our officers to do the job that they were hired to do, and that is to prevent crime before it begins.

Brigid Bergen: On that topic, Speaker, as you said, officers are being asked to do a tremendous amount. Overnight patrols on the subways, counterterrorism protest patrol, as well as dealing with quality-of-life issues. On that issue of protest control; about this time last year, students at Columbia University, along with CUNY and NYU, faced off with the NYPD after our current mayor sent police to deal with pro-Palestine campus protests. How would you have handled that situation? Would you have also used the police to quell unrest on those students or other protest movements?

Speaker Adrienne Adams: I thought it was an extreme move. I was actually asked by some Columbia Journalism students the other day the same question. I thought it was very extreme. When I saw it, I was appalled that this is the way that the administration would treat students. I believe that there was a different way to handle the situation with a lot less force by the NYPD. There could have been some moderating that was done. There could have been some talks that could have happened, but I didn't see the need to storm troop our college campuses. I just didn't see the need to that. As one who is a mother and grandmother, I can't imagine that being one of my children or grandchildren being approached by heavy artillery coming in from the NYPD, sanctioned by the mayor.

Brigid Bergen: We have a listener who texts, "What is Speaker Adams' position on e-bikes?"

Speaker Adrienne Adams: I think that e-bikes-- Well, there are two sides to the e-bike story. First of all, we need to protect our pedestrians. We need to protect our e-bike riders as well. We need to figure this out; the best way to protect everyone involved. I think there needs to be some regulation, but I don't believe that we need to go overboard with the regulation. There is a way to come to a happy medium, and that is what the City Council is looking towards right now. We've got a couple of bills that are going through the process. We're working through them to see what works best for New Yorkers.

Brigid Bergen: Speaker, you have been endorsed by the Working Families Party along with some of your other candidates. They endorsed a slate, including Brad Lander, Zohran Mamdani, Zellnor Myrie. Yesterday, you, and Comptroller Lander, and Assemblymember Mamdani also received an endorsement from Congresswoman Nydia Velázquez and six other Brooklyn lawmakers. We have ranked choice voting in the primary. Voters can rank up to five candidates in order of preference. Why do you think voters should rank you first, and are you planning on co-endorsing with any of your other candidates?

Speaker Adrienne Adams: Well, I'll take the second part of the question first, and I said this last night at yet another mayoral forum. I am the last one to enter this race and intend on being the winner ranked number one, by the way, but I'm still sizing everybody up. They get a laugh when I say that, but I'm still sizing these folks up to see where they stand, how they stand, and whose ideologies most match my own. I'm still working through those things, and I'm going to figure it out.

As far as why I should be rank number one, well, I'm the one with the experience in this race. I'm the one that does not need a manual or a handbook on how to do this work because I've already been leading the city where we have a mayor that has not wanted to or has not, quite frankly, been participatory in leadership where he should be. I'm the one with the mouth out here saying what must be said or what should be said by a mayor when it comes to Donald Trump, instead of cozying up to the Trump administration and following through with some bargain, and not saying anything or protecting New Yorkers from this chaos that is coming to us from Washington.

We need somebody that is going to speak up, and we need a leader that is leading, that is doing the work. I'm not saying things that I will do, but things that I have been doing and still doing as we speak. Someone that has protected this city against harmful budget cuts, restored funding to our cultural institutions, restored funding to our education, our early childhood education, restored funding to our public libraries that the mayor wanted to shut and close. Unbelievable. It's not just what I say that I will do for the people; it's what I am currently doing and will expand on for the people of the city.

Brigid Bergen: Well, we are going to have to leave it there. My guest was New York City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams, who's also running to be the Democratic candidate in this year's mayoral election. Speaker Adams, thank you so much.

Speaker Adrienne Adams: Such a pleasure to be with you, Brigid. Thank you.

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