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Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. Here's some questions and some possible answers about Mayor de Blasio's latest round of vaccine mandates for businesses and for kids. Does the private sector mandate apply to all small businesses that are bringing people to work in person? Yes. If you are a sole proprietor working alone, are you exempt? Yes. Will this stand up in court? Maybe. This will take effect December 27th.

Will Eric Adams keep it when he takes office five days later? Adam says it's insane. Do businesses like this idea? The Mayor says yes, their lobbyists say, "No way." Is this political because de Blasio is probably running for governor? Sure, looks that way. Does that make it bad? That's up to you. Is the definition of fully vaccinated changing for adults in New York City? Yes.

About the mandate for kids, will children ages five through 11 have to be vaccinated to go to school? No. To go to a restaurant or next game or show? Yes. To participate in close contact school sports? Yes. Why does that mandate take effect on December 14th when businesses have until the 27th? Because they can. Will any of this be enforced if people just ignore it? Well, we'll try to get an answer to that and many other questions now from Elizabeth Kim, WNYC, and Gothamist reporter covering Mayoral power.

Her two articles in the last day are called New York City Will Mandate COVID-19 Vaccines For All Private Sector Workers and the more pointedly titled, With A Month Left In Office And A Potential Run For Governor, De Blasio Makes A Political Bet On Vaccine Mandates. Hi, Liz, thanks for your reporting. Welcome back to the show.

Elizabeth Kim: Good morning, Brian. That was a great summary.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you. Can we start with a new mandate that applies to children? I think most of the conversation in the media so far has been about the businesses, so let's talk about the kids. Want to explain it more thoroughly?

Elizabeth Kim: Sure. Basically, the city already has a rule in place that if you want to dine at a restaurant, or go to a cultural venue like a museum, or go to a gym, that people who are 12 and older have to show proof of at least one dose. Now the city because children five and up can now get the vaccine, they're going to extend that requirement to that particular age group.

What we do know is that about 20%, the city says, of children between ages five and 11 have gotten the vaccine so far. That's just one dose, but the city is also concerned about this particular group because case rates are now the highest in this particular category.

Brian Lehrer: I forget what the movie theaters, in particular, are covered in the event venue mandate for kids, are they?

Elizabeth Kim: They are. That's cultural and entertainment venues.

Brian Lehrer: Why require vaccines for five-year-olds?

Elizabeth Kim: As I said, right now, children are eligible for the vaccine. The 20% intake is not great and I think that health officials would like to see that go up. They're assuming that similar to what happened in the summer when they instituted this mandate at restaurants and cultural venues, that people want to go out to eat and they want to go out to eat with their families, people want to go see Broadway shows. Somehow this will be an incentive to spur those parents to get their younger children vaccinated now.

Brian Lehrer: Now, here's a lobbyist for the restaurant industry. Andrew Rigie, objecting to this yesterday on the grounds that it will affect tourists with children who the Mayor and everybody else wants to come to the city. Listen.

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Andrew Rigie: You're not going to be able to see shows, you're not going to be able to dine in restaurants, you may have purchased tickets already, made reservations. It just poses a lot of complexities really at the last minute.

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Brian Lehrer: Hospitality Industry lobbyist Andrew Rigie. Why is the restaurant industry saying tourists will be affected more than New Yorkers?

Elizabeth Kim: Tourists for one, they're coming from a different state or possibly a different country with their own rules and with their own different levels of access to the vaccine, so then to come on a trip to New York City and to want to take part in cultural activities or restaurants. This is now another wrinkle that they have to contend with. Their child is not vaccinated, "What do I do? Do I do then somehow give up my tickets to the Broadway show?" You can see it getting a little complicated.

Brian Lehrer: For kids, is it still the one dose that qualifies them as vaccinated for these purposes, and then they could go to a restaurant or a movie or whatever, right after getting that one dose, as oppose to adults where the rules are now stricter.

Elizabeth Kim: Here's an example of how it gets complicated. For those children who are between five and 11, it's one dose, but for those 12 and up, it's now two doses. For tourist, it's a lot to keep track of, and I'm now imagining the list of rules that now have to be placed in the window of a restaurant or there's already a long list of rules that you get when you try to buy a ticket to a Broadway show. This will, again, like Rigie says, add some complexity.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, what do you think of Mayor de Blasio's latest vaccine mandates? 212-433-WNYC. Would they make you any more or less likely to vote for him in the Democratic primary for governor? If I could put that political question on the table with this. 212-433-9692. If you have any questions since this is so new, and as Liz just said, complicated and has a number of moving parts.

[unintelligible 00:06:30] Kim, who covers Mayoral power, might be able to answer your questions. 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692, or you can post a question or comment on Twitter, just use the hashtag or not hashtag but @BrianLehrer, tag me and we will see them go by. How would the Mayor respond to that concern? Has he been asked that question yet about the tourists?

Elizabeth Kim: He's going to ask the question about the tourists repeatedly, and his answer to it is we will vaccinate anyone. I think that most people would agree that access to vaccinations in New York City is pretty good, and probably even unparalleled, but at the same time, the Mayor seems to be suggesting that New York City is a place where you can get a vaccine on every corner, and just like walk up to a pop-up tent. That is really not true yet.

If you think about tourists who are staying here, they usually have a limited number of days, and they have an agenda where they want to see a certain number of sites, go to a certain number of shows and restaurants in a certain number of days. Now, you're asking tourists to plan ahead to a lot one day to get their child or themselves vaccinated, so I think that could be a tall order for a lot of people.

Brian Lehrer: A day to get vaccinated, another day for side effects for many people.

Elizabeth Kim: Exactly.

Brian Lehrer: Why does the kid's mandate take effect on December 14th, and the business mandate on December 27th?

Elizabeth Kim: That's was not made clear, except for the fact I think that the Mayor thinks that that's easier for restaurants to begin adapting since they're already checking for those vax cards for children ages 12 and up to adults. That is my guess, is that that's already an embedded practice, presumably, at most restaurants.

Brian Lehrer: Here's another aspect of this, that somebody is tweeting a question about that. I didn't even mention in the intro because this is a few days old, not part of the rollout yesterday. Liz, this listener writes, "My private school is translating this as a mandate for kids to be vaccinated." He did announce the other day that not only public-school teachers and other staff, but private school, including religious school teachers and other staff, will now have to be vaccinated. Right?

Elizabeth Kim: That's correct. He has basically extended the vaccine mandate when it comes to educators, basically, to every single type of setting, whether it be public, private, preschool, daycare, after school. That was the last missing piece, was private and religious schools, which the Mayor tackled last week.

Brian Lehrer: Do you expect a lot of religious exemption applications from the religious schools? The major denomination religious schools in the city are Catholic schools, Jewish, [unintelligible 00:09:55]. I imagine those would be the two biggest, and Catholicism doesn't say no vaccinations, Judaism doesn't say no vaccinations, so where might that come up?

Elizabeth Kim: I think it's probably aside from the exemptions, I think, the first route that some of these schools might take is a lawsuit, even in public schools, there were lawsuits about teachers having to get vaccinated and I expect that this will be no different, and then barring the lack of success there, I expect that, yes, there will be people who ask for those kinds of religious exemptions. The city has consistently said that there's a very, very high bar and they give out very, very few of those, but we'll see what happens.

Brian Lehrer: To the actual question that listener on Twitter asked, "My private school is translating this as a mandate for kids to be vaccinated." There is no vaccine mandate for kids to go to school. The Mayor has made that very clear.

In fact, this is one area where Eric Adam has indicated, he may be tougher than de Blasio on a vaccine mandate, but de Blasio has made it very clear, he doesn't want to put up any barriers to kids being able to attend school in person because of the social and emotional consequences, not to mention educational consequences of staying home and being left behind. It would not, to answer this listener's question, be a mandate for kids to be vaccinated to go to private school, correct?

Elizabeth Kim: Correct. The Mayor has been asked about that because it seems like a contradiction. You're asking a five-year-old to show a vaccine card in order to enter a museum or restaurant, but at the same time, you're not asking that five-year-old to be vaccinated, to enter a classroom with other children? The answer, as you just explained, is that the Mayor prioritizes in-person learning, and he doesn't want to put any barriers for families who want their children to be in school, he does not feel that remote education can be a fair substitute to learning in the classroom.

Brian Lehrer: By the way, if our Twitter feed is any indication, this is a pretty popular set of rollouts by the Mayor now, of course, this is not scientific at all, but if we expected a lot of pushback right off the bat on Twitter, which is famous for pushback, we're still getting the opposite. Here's one, "Your guest seems extremely sympathetic to out of towners. How about the idea that New York is pretty well vaxxed and we don't, in fact, want tourists to undermine our vaccine compliance?"

Here's another one, "Tourists can manage to find discounted Broadway tickets and navigate a huge busy city. It hardly seems too much to ask that they make sure that they and their kids figure out how to get vaccinated." Here's another one, "Political or not, mandates work. I am concerned about the possibility of widespread abuse of so-called religious or medical exemptions." Here's one on the phone, Joe in Scarsdale, you're on WNYC. Joe, thank you for calling in.

Joe: You're welcome. First of all, Brian, I love you. I saw you in Brooklyn when you were with Malcolm Gladwell, you're amazing.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you so much.

Joe: Just ticking it off, I don't like de Blasio. I think he's a very unpopular Mayor, but even he has got to be right sometimes and on this one, he is dead. He's protecting us all, and so I think people should accept it, stop with the nonsense, let's be grownups and all get vaccinated, kids included.

Brian Lehrer: Joe, thank you very much. Here's another one, Judy on the Upper West Side, you're on WNYC. Hi, Judy.

Judy: Good morning, Brian. Thank you for taking the call. Children have to get a whole number of vaccinations in this city before they go to school. Jesus, I remember getting my own. This is what has to happen. The only way to kill this virus is with vaccines. I think the Mayor is a hundred percent correct, and as the other people said, there's many ways to take care of it, to get tickets, there was a show on Broadway that had to close this week. People had tickets, and there was a COVID outbreak. Well, this is what's going to happen.

Brian Lehrer: I think it was Chicago, right?

Judy: I don't remember what show was.

Brian Lehrer: I think it was Chicago.

Judy: I don't remember. The fact is that is going to continue to happen and if the tourists are coming in, well, they need to get the message, and I'm sure they're getting it, and get vaccinated or come here and get vaccinated.

Brian Lehrer: Judy, thank you very much. Here's another one on Twitter. "My 10-year-old finally got her second shot on Friday, and I'm much more likely to take my three children to a restaurant, movie, or live performance with this vaccination policy in place." But not all the calls that are coming in are positive, let's take a couple of the negs. Gary in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC. Hi, Gary.

Gary: How are you doing? I appreciate you taking my call. I am a business owner in Park Slope, Brooklyn. I actually not too far from the Mayor's residence in Park Slope. He has actually been a guest at our restaurant. I don't have a problem with mandates. I think they are effective. I have a problem with the way this mandate was implemented on a Monday morning call, 20 days before you leave office without any input from small businesses.

Not all of it is incorrect, but some of it's just obvious grandstanding, to me, to get a huge amount of attention and it's working, but it's not a way you do things with small businesses that rely on communities like kids and families to come and die. I wish he had just given more time for people to effectuate this plan. I understand he's a lame-duck Mayor, and this was done just simply because it's an opportunity. I believe to grandstand just a little more than he needs to, the mandates do work, but the way he implemented it was just abusive to small businesses.

Brian Lehrer: Gary, thank you very much. Good luck with your restaurant. Christian in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC. Hi, Christian.

Christian: Hello? Yes. I'm a Democrat, a father, and I live in Brooklyn. I am a heavily vaccinated person because I used to work overseas. I've got all sorts of exotic vaccines, but I'm very opposed to forcing children to have this vaccine because the safety of it hasn't been tested properly on children. There are five Scandinavian countries that don't give the Moderna. Don't allow the Moderna shot for men under the age of 25 because they've determined that the risk of myocarditis is higher than the risk of the disease for young people.

I think this is poorly thought out, and I think there's an element of hysteria in all of this, that people have allowed themselves to be totally driven into panic. This is obviously about Bill de Blasio running for governor and not only getting attention, he's currying favor to big pharma.

This is a massive financial bonanza for these companies. The government buys the shots and I think Pfizer's made close to $40 billion already on these shots, and you don't think that calculation comes in for Bill de Blasio. I certainly think it does and I oppose forcing children to get these mandates, to get these vaccines.

Brian Lehrer: Christian, thank you very much. By the way, somebody tweeted the show was Wicked, that was closed. I'm not sure, you're going to have to check that. Don't take it from me of that listener who tweeted, we're not sure exactly which Broadway show had to temporarily shut. Liz interesting first set of calls and tweets obviously, and I always say this when we run through a bunch of people's opinions on something like this, this is a thoroughly unscientific example as you can get, but interesting.

Elizabeth Kim: Yes, it was very interesting and it was a wide spectrum. I think it reflected pretty accurately the different types of support and objections to the mandate. I think it does tap into a segment of Americans and New York City residents that are very tired of this pandemic, and they really see that our only way out of it is getting vaccinated. That's the first set of tweets and callers that you played, I think really reflected. They're not fans of Mayor de Blasio, but they feel that he is spot on when it comes to this because they've gotten vaccinated and now they're saying, "All right, it's time for all of you to get vaccinated because we're tired of this".

Brian Lehrer: We have a lot more calls coming in, a lot more tweets coming in. We'll continue in a minute with our reporter, Liz, Kim, who covers mayoral power for WNYC and Gothamist, and when we come back, we will put this even more squarely in the context of de Blasio's potential run for governor and take more of your calls and tweets and answer more of your questions. Brian Lehrer on WNYC.

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Brian Lehrer on WNYC. As we continue with our WNYC and Gothamist mayor power report order Elizabeth Kim covering the new vaccine mandates issued by mayor de Blasio yesterday. Liz, let's go squarely to the run for governor. He must think more democratic primary voters will like this set of mandates that he won't even be in office to enforce, and we'll find it a voting issue. Then will dislike it or just shrug it off and maybe the tweets. Frankly, thoroughly unscientific or not, when you get a lot of positive tweets on something, it's a fairly rare day, so maybe there's an early indication here that he's right.

Elizabeth Kim: I think so, and you're right. Bill de Blasio does not get a lot of positive tweets or callers. The fact that those people said, "I may not agree with everything the mayor says, but I'm with him on his vaccination policy", I think that that says something, and I think it reaffirms that this is very shrewd politics for him. It allows him to be a national leader. Basically, the Biden administration has followed the mayor on a lot of his policies, not just mandates, but also vaccine incentives. It allows him to also be on cable news shows like MSNBC and CNN.

Brian Lehrer: My producer, Zoe Azulay, just went out to the TKTS line to-- No, I'm kidding. She tells us, "Wicked was the musical that was cancelled over the weekend due to positive COVID test results. All tickets are being refunded. Most Broadway shows are not open Mondays, so the next scheduled performance is s7:00 tonight, Tuesday night." Let's go to another caller. Desiree in Park Slope, you're on WNYC. Hi, Desiree.

Desiree: Hi, can you hear me?

Brian Lehrer: I can hear you just fine.

Desiree: Okay. Two things very quickly. I live in Park Slope, obviously. My response to the small business owner is that I actually think that because we are such a highly vaccinated neighborhood, I think that our response to being asked to show that we have been vaccinated is much different. The only places I actually would feel safe to go are places that would require that people be vaccinated, and social distancing, and masking unless you're drinking, all those things. I don't think that that's going to be an issue. It doesn't matter if de Blasio said it or not. I think it's a matter of just public safety and reminding people that the pandemic is still happening.

That's one thing. I don't think that that's going to be a real concern in my opinion. The second thing that I wanted to say is that I don't feel that the previous mayor has ever given remote learning a real chance to be better. I think that because he has decided that on-site learning is the best thing for students, he never really put any kind of infrastructure into remote learning. I think that as we're going into the winter, into a time when people are more inside and there's going to be more transmission, I would love to see the new mayor actually put some kind of infrastructure in place so that students who can't go into person-learning can have the actual opportunity to learn from home in a way that is better than we have done previously.

Brian Lehrer: Do you have any opinion from what you've heard about Eric Adams that he might be more interested in that?

Desiree: He seems like a very rational guy. He seems much less argumentative when it comes to presenting him with facts that he is uncomfortable with. I'm not sure. Obviously, we won't really know until he is in place, but I would love to have the opportunity. I'm a librarian. I call all the time. I would love to have the opportunity to speak to him about it because I am yet to hear anybody actually talk about what it would take to make remote learning better for students who can't or whose parents don't want them to go on-site. It shouldn't be a situation where it's just like, "You have to do what I say", even if I feel like it's unsafe.

Brian Lehrer: Desiree, next time he's on the show, call up and remind [unintelligible 00:24:01] that I said we're going to try to connect you with Mayor Adams so you can ask him that question, all right? You do that, and we'll try to get you that audience with the incoming mayor that you want. There's another example. Desiree really wanted to make that anti-de Blasio point, that criticism of Mayor de Blasio, but she prefaced it with, "Yes, but he's right about the vaccine mandates." Here's another context that it didn't occur to me that we might get for this on this day. Robin in the Bronx, you're on WNYC. Hi, Robin.

Robin: Hello, Brian. Thank you for taking my call.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you for making it, and happy-- No, you can't wish somebody, "Happy this", but you're calling to say what day this is, right?

Robin: Yes. It is Pearl Harbor Day, and it's a day our nation came together. I'm just reminded of that at this time when, yes, we all just need to get vaccinated. I think the city and New York State has made it pretty easy, but whatever it takes, we have to do it. It's just a part of coming together at this time in that same spirit. Could I make one comment too about what one of your callers said about our mayor's intention in coming through with this mandate? Because I do think that President Biden said something early in his presidency that I was very taken with. "You can question somebody's judgment, but don't ever question their motive because you don't really know it." I'm reminded of that at this time. I'll just share those two points.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you very much. On the other hand, we don't want to put our heads in the sand if somebody is doing something for political reasons or self-interested reasons. That's one of the purposes of journalism, is to at least raise those questions. Robin, thank you very much. Liz, did you expect Pearl Harbor Day and an analogy to rallying around as one nation like we did after Pearl Harbor Day to come up in the context of de Blasio's vaccine mandates here on December 7th?

Elizabeth Kim: It's not completely surprising to me because as part of the work we've been doing on de Blasio's legacy, we've been going out on the street and interviewing New Yorkers and asking them to grade Bill de Blasio. When I did it a few weeks ago, I was actually a little bit surprised by some of the good grades that he got. In almost every case, it was attributed to what the mayor was doing on the pandemic. I think that maybe we, the press, we're a lot more critical of him, but I think when you're just out in the open with New Yorkers, you really get a sense of-- similar to the response to Andrew Cuomo with his daily briefings.

There were New Yorkers who cited that, "I get up every morning and he's on TV. He's telling me to get vaccinated and wear my mask." It doesn't completely surprise me. I think the mayor probably does realize that as well. I would say to Robin's point about his intentions, one criticism about him is, for instance, the way he announced the policy yesterday. He could have easily announced that to the press and have us write the story, or he could have waited until his 10:00 AM press briefing and announced it to all New Yorkers. But no, he chose to do it on a cable news network show. That, we all know, is a national audience, but this policy affects New York City residents, so that's where some of the cynicism comes in.

Brian Lehrer: They love him on that show. I don't know why. I'm not saying people shouldn't love de Blasio. What you think about de Blasio is up to you, but for whatever reason, that show, Morning Joe on MSNBC, they love de Blasio. Joe Scarborough must really, really like de Blasio because they have him on over and over again and give him these kinds of platforms to do these things. It's interesting about the critique that he's doing it in part, at least, for a potential run for governor. You could look at that two ways, I think, Liz, give me your thought on this if you have one.

Yes, you could say, "Oh, that's political. He's pandering to people. He's doing this so he'll get votes." Of course, if you take a position that's somehow against the public interest just because it's popular, that's a terrible thing to do, but it's also the nature of democracy. It's like the point of democracy that politicians are going to respond to what the people want. If he sees something out there that's a desire for vaccine mandates to get us more safe from COVID and he runs to the front of that parade, it's not necessarily a bad thing. It could be called responsiveness in a democratic society.

Elizabeth Kim: Right, exactly. Two things can be true at once. I think what elected officials are always looking for is good politics, but also good policy. Those two things coming together is really what they're after. That's a win for them.

Brian Lehrer: Yes. Of course, on the other hand, the whole point of the Bill of Rights is to protect people from the tyranny of the majority. We could continue to go down this rabbit hole about what the value of public opinion is, and the dangers of public opinion. Here's the Mayor yesterday on the big picture of all this, as he portrays it.

Mayor de Blasio: We've been living with this now for most of two years. We got to put it behind us and vaccine mandates, in my experience, are the one thing that really breaks through.

Brian Lehrer: Again, this is not a de Blasio commercial, this segment, but he is right. Isn't he that he's tougher than most places. Vaccine mandates have pushed the vaccination rate in the city and up above most other places and therefore the COVID rate down. I saw a start over the weekend for the city's COVID rate compared to else are in the state. Those numbers were statewide around five cases, per hundred thousand people. In the city, it's less than one per hundred thousand. I don't know if you've seen those numbers or if you think I got that right. I just circle by on TV. Does he have a case to make here on those grounds?

Elizabeth Kim: He does. There is evidence that once he started implementing the mandates, that there was a surge in vaccinations. I think one of the best examples he can point to is his vaccine mandate for city workers. That's a population of roughly 400,000 people. When he first announced it in the summer, it only applied to healthcare workers and teachers although people understood that he was likely going to extend it to the entire universe of city workers.

That included people who were vaccine hesitant, people that worked in the NYPD and in the FDNY. In the beginning, there was strong resistance from those people in those groups that they would get vaccinated. Look at the latest statistic and you have 94% of all city workers have gotten at least one dose. That by itself, like when the mandate was not in place, that was somewhere in the seventies. By instituting that mandate, he really was able to get that percentage up. When he's saying that mandates work, he is actually speaking from experience as a policy maker, because he's seen it work within one group of people. Now he says, "Now let just expand it, it can work for everyone".

Brian Lehrer: Before we run out of time, let's go to the legal question, because I think this is important here. Does he have the authority to do this with the wave of his mayoral hand? The mayor says this.

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Mayor de Blasio: We have here an immediate set of circumstances and we have the legal right of the health commissioner to keep the people of this city safe.

[audio playback ends]

Brian Lehrer: Katherine [unintelligible 00:33:13] who represents big business yesterday said this.

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Katherine: How the Mayor gets the authority to do this when the president's authority is unclear is a mystery. This does create some pressure, some confusion and adds to the stress associated with return to the office.

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Brian Lehrer: Liz, what's she referring to there with respect to president Biden?

Elizabeth Kim: Resident Biden issued his own mandate for companies with a hundred employees or more. Now, that mandate is actually different. It's not a strict vaccine mandate, it basically requires that people at those larger companies either yet vaccinated or they could submit to weekly testing, but it ended up being stalled in court. What the city's law department has argued is well though the legal questions around that order is around the authority of the two agencies that issued the order, which was the US Occupational Safety and Health Administration and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, because that was the agency that ordered a mandate in all health facilities.

What the city's lawyer is arguing is that this is an across the board mandate. Somehow that should make it more defensible in court. I think we all should recognize that we're in unchartered waters here. I don't know that it's a slam dunk for the city to make this case.

Brian Lehrer: Yes. Quoting from an NPR story on the challenges to the Biden mandate for businesses with over a hundred employees. Dozens of lawsuits filed by Republican states, businesses, religious organizations, and others seek to overturn the requirements, calling them an overreach of government authority and a threat to employers already stretched thin in the pandemic.

In the case of New York City, why would the big business establishment as represented by Katherine Wylde there from the group called The Partnership for New York? This is the Wall Street companies. This is the big commercial real estate companies, as well as residential real estate companies. Why would they oppose this if it's intended to get business back to normal in New York?

Elizabeth Kim: That was a question that I asked her yesterday when I talked to her as well. It's not really clear that they do because I had asked her to direct me to a couple of big companies perhaps on Wall Street or real estate that might want to talk about this mandate. She told me that she didn't think any of them would. She felt that the real hardship was on the smaller businesses who might have-- Those were the ones who might of employees, that might still be hesitant about getting the vaccine. In a lot of the big companies on Wall Street, for example, they've already instituted a vaccine mandate.

Brian Lehrer: Right.

Elizabeth Kim: With business, I think anything that jeopardizes a return to the office that complicates that is very sensitive for them.

Brian Lehrer: Liz Kim, Elizabeth Kim reports on mayoral power for WNYC and Gothamist. She will return tomorrow with two other WNYC and Gothamist reporters as we spend about 40, 45 minutes of show grading de Blasio's eight years overall. Join us again for that. Liz, I hope you'll join us again for that and I'll talk to you then.

Elizabeth Kim: Talk to you tomorrow, Brian.

Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC, much more to come today.

 

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