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Brian Lehrer: It's the Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. Well, it's Tuesday, and Donald Trump hasn't been arrested yet like he said he would be today, but it's early yet. We'll see if the Manhattan grand jury acts to indict or not indict. Remember, that's a possibility too after hearing all these witnesses. Whether that comes today after hearing from what are believed to be the final two witnesses yesterday, we'll see. We only asked one guest one question about this yesterday, and again today, we've decided not to join the media circus by obsessing for two hours over speculation where nothing has actually happened. We hope you like that decision.

Near the end of the show, we will touch on some of the unique legal issues facing this grand jury right now with Andrew Weissmann who used to be the FBI's general counsel, and he was on the Mueller team. He has an op-ed in The Times today. If there is Trump indictment news during the morning, we will, of course, cover it as it happens, but we're not going to do what if all morning. Here's one good reason. It's speak to the speaker time. New York City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams is with us. There is so much going on that she matters to right now, largely because City Council and Mayor Adams, no relation, are negotiating the next city budget right now.

Yesterday, Comptroller Brad Lander released budget numbers showing the NYPD spent $2.2 billion in overtime last year. He says it was 93% more than budgeted. They've already exceeded this year's overtime budget, and it's only March. At the same time, the mayor is proposing that funding remain flat for public defenders. There was a protest yesterday over planned cuts in the mayor's budget to the city's libraries. On that and more, City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams, whose own district is number 28 in Southeast Queens, joins us now. Madam Speaker, always great to have you. Welcome back to WNYC.

Madam Speaker: Thanks so much, Brian. Thanks for having me back on. It's great to be with you.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, it's always your chance to speak to the speaker when Adrienne Adams comes on the show. You're invited to call in at 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. Let's dive right in, Speaker Adams, on the budget and the comptroller's report, which the council I believe her testimony on yesterday, $2.2 billion in NYPD overtime last year, 93% more than you budgeted. Is that okay with you?

Madam Speaker: No, it's not. It was actually my first question to the NYPD in the oversight hearing yesterday to try to get to the bottom of it once again. It seems like they're just bursting through this overtime spending. It doesn't look like there's any end in sight. Again, it's something that the council is very, very concerned about. We asked very pointed questions. The answers we got pretty much pertained to the things that they were doing to remedy the situation for overtime, not what really got them there for the last fiscal year. We're very concerned. We're going to have to take a serious look at this.

Brian Lehrer: Can they just decide on the amount of overtime that they spend at will as the year goes on? Can any other agency do that? I'll give credit to NY1. I was watching their Inside City Hall program last night, and somebody raised the hypothetical question, "Gee, what if the education department decided, 'We're going to let every teacher take as much overtime as they want to stay until six or seven o'clock at night to make sure that every kid gets the individual tutoring to get up to grade level.'" Can they just do this at the NYPD at will? Could other departments including the education department do it?

Madam Speaker: I saw the same interview you did last night, Brian. My mouth actually dropped also because it was quite the hypothetical now and quite the what if. We've seen historically NYPD pretty much having carte blanche when it comes to overtime. It has been extremely difficult to, A, get an explanation on it, B, to rein it back in, and C, to really, really get them to have a coherent plan to get this overtime spending in check. I dare say that no other agency could possibly get away with this on the administrative side. NYPD, as we know, is extremely influential. They're very large. They're huge. Over 36,000 officers. The largest police department in the entire country. They do have a special place as far as the administration is concerned. No, I don't think any other agency would be able to do this.

Brian Lehrer: You noted yesterday that the NYPD has a low absenteeism rate. That's a good thing on its face, I presume, but it raises more questions to you about the extent of overtime, right?

Madam Speaker: Correct. It really does. I can say that the work of the NYPD is extraordinary. We know that. The protection of our people in this city has to be at top performance. We know that. I commend them for the rate of attendance that they have. Again, when it comes to the overtime situation, it is very extreme, and it has got to be reined in.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, let's remember that fact about a low absenteeism rate in the NYPD. Put a bookmark in that, listeners, for when we get to our Rikers Island sequence of this conversation. I should say, Speaker Adams, at the same time, we're reporting that the police are actually transporting fewer mentally ill apparently homeless people to hospitals than before Mayor Adams' new policy to increase involuntary hospitalization. It was so controversial when he announced it. He said it's in the interest of the people who can't take care of themselves. Other people had backlash, "No, this is just for the convenience of other New Yorkers who don't want to have to look at them."

It turns out from the stats that we're reporting that there's actually less involuntary hospitalization taking place at the hands of the NYPD. It further begs the question, what's the NYPD spending all that overtime money on?

Madam Speaker: Yes, it really does. Again, this is something that raised our eyebrows in the hearing yesterday as well. What is the overtime being spent on? Again, it still begs the question that we continue to ask and we're going to continue to ask that. We will be taking a hard look at that in our budget.

Brian Lehrer: I guess one way to defend what's going on there would be to say crime has gone down in the city, so should there be an attitude of, "Well, something is working, so let's not pull in the reins too much right now?"

Madam Speaker: I think we can look at both sides. Again, I do commend the NYPD. Crime is definitely going down in the city, which is something that we all need to celebrate. The perception again is that crime is rampant. It really is not. It is just the way that crime is being reported and still being reported in the media, unfortunately. Again, to the credit of the NYPD, crime rate in the city is definitely going down. We're happy about that.

Brian Lehrer: As our WNYC news team reports the numbers, the NYPD's $5.4 billion allotment in the proposed budget from the mayor for the next fiscal year stands in sharp contrast to the flat funding proposed for the city's public defenders who also testified at your budget hearing yesterday. Would that $5.4 billion be more money for the police next year?

Madam Speaker: Again, we're going to take a look at that. The note that you just made for the DAs and their offices who are in need of more funding, we're going to have to do that comparison once again and take a look at those numbers to see what we can do to make more equity. That's another word that's used a lot by myself and by my colleagues. We're going to have to try to take a look at how to make things more equitable across the board.

Brian Lehrer: Would it also be accurate to assume that public defenders are more needed than they were a few years ago because if the NYPD is making more arrests, if they are making more arrests in the current crackdown, then presumably there are more poor people who need public defenders being arrested, and so that budget should go up proportionally? That sounds like common sense to me, but do the numbers bear that out?

Madam Speaker: The numbers say a lot of things, actually. You're right, partially. I think when we talk about public defenders also, we have to take a look at the numbers that are not there as far as we need more public defenders. How do we increase that pool of those individuals that are needed right now to very, very high levels? How do we bring folks in with the talent we've lost public defenders to law offices and other places? We're going to have to take a look at, again, bringing in that workforce that we need. We've got a backlog right now that doesn't seem to want to give us a break also when it comes to the log jam in the court system, in getting these cases through.

That's another reason why the population at Rikers is high. It's because the courts have not been able to move these individuals that are detained, that have not seen a trial date on Rikers Island for far too long. We've got a lot of critical areas to take a look at when it comes to our attorney, when it comes to our DAs, when it comes to detainees. The whole gamut. The system is just very, very stretched.

Brian Lehrer: I guess one other aspect of that, according to the public defenders, is that they get paid so little that many of them leave for the private sector when they can get a better-paying job. We're going to be doing a related segment later in the show about advocates for children in family court being paid so little. Sounds like very similar problem there but that's for later. Let's take a phone call. Here is Helen in Forest Hills. Helen, you're on WNYC with City Council Speaker Adrian Adams. Hi, Helen.

Helen: Hi, there. Thank you for taking my call. Good morning, Speaker Adams. [crosstalk]

Madam Speaker: Good morning, Helen.

Helen: [chuckles] Thank you. I'd like to know your opinion on the mayor's plan for forcing city retirees into the Medicare Advantage Plan and how you are planning to vote on it.

Madam Speaker: Thank you for the question. Another hot topic. We had a very, very extensive hearing on this. I received, personally, no less than 10,000 emails, I can't even count the phone calls, into my office at City Hall, at my district office from retirees that were emphatic about the council not considering legislation or waiting for us. That hearing on the legislation to change the administrative code and the retiree group expressing, wanting the council to hold off on legislation to preserve their legal position in court if the city actually moved forward on Medicare Advantage. Now that's happened. As a council, we're going to follow the next steps of any legal processes and court decisions.

We have to respect collective bargaining. One of the things that I felt as speaker is that City Council should never have been in the middle of this argument. We are not the body or a body to get in between collective bargaining for unions. This was just not an issue for the council, but as the charter state, we have to get involved with this. We right now are not looking at considering legislation. We want whatever court procedures to go forward. It would definitely be a dangerous precedent for the council to set in a knee-jerk reaction to this. The retirees have a representation in labor union. It would be shortsighted for us as a council to ignore that, so we're going to allow the parties to collective bargain and sort this out.

Brian Lehrer: Would it be safe to assume, though, and we get so many calls on this issue, like Helen's, from so many city retirees who don't like the plan to move them into Medicare Advantage. Would it be safe to assume that you see both sides of this? Otherwise, you would take a position that you understand what the retirees object to and why they think it will limit their healthcare choices, but on the other hand, you see the ballooning costs that the city says it has for retiree health, and it has to do something to keep them covered, but not bust the budget. Is that where you are or if politically it was more clear to you whose side you wanted to take, you would take it?

Madam Speaker: Again, the whole situation, we took it so seriously and still do. We have to see the whole thing through, but we respected what the retirees were saying to us for months. They made it very clear. They came in guns blazing in the hearing and they knew. I believe they knew that they had the support at the council to do whatever they asked us to do at that time during the hearing, which is what we held back. Their leadership said, "Leave us alone. Don't touch this thing. Give us the right to go to court to fight for what we want." That is the message that the council heard and that is the message that the council stood on.

Brian Lehrer: Now that a caller raised city retirees, how about current city workers? I gather there's a shortage in some agencies. It surprised me when I first started seeing this because I think, "Wow." Traditionally, and you know this from probably your mother and other people, your mother, I gather was a correction officer, it's a path to the middle class for so many people who are trying to grab that wrong on the economic ladder in New York City. You would think that there would be a lot of demand to take New York City government jobs. I read there's a shortage of people applying for the positions who are qualified in many departments. To what degree is that the case?

Madam Speaker: Oh my goodness. This is something that the mayor and I definitely agree on. He and I have talked about this. We've got to do a better job of advertising. The city historically has been the top employer. We have got to make it known to our New Yorkers that there are jobs available. These are great jobs. There are so many areas that need to be filled right now across the board for the City of New York. We've just got to do a better job of advertising the fact that we've got jobs available and we need folks to fill them. He and I have agreed that we're going to continue to work together to hold job fairs together and calls out for folks to come on in and apply for these positions.

Some positions, I've spoken about this in my state of the city, which we haven't touched on, but I hope that we touch on that because we've got a lot of good ideas. I also mentioned some levels that we can bring down for folks that don't necessarily have college degrees, people with high school diplomas. We need to call them on in for some of these positions. We've got jobs available. Brian Lehrer listeners, please, please, please, check the nyc.gov website. Take a look for employment opportunities. We need you to come on in and get to work.

Brian Lehrer: Is Mayor Adams' call for civil servants who have office jobs to work in office five days a week discouraging applicants because they have other better hybrid places that they can apply to?

Madam Speaker: Well, I can't really answer for the applicants. I would imagine though that that may be the case for some who maybe are used to working in a hybrid fashion now, because that's definitely a popular way to go. I would hope that people would still take a look at various positions across the board. I'm not sure whether or not all of these agencies in the administration really do have a restrictive five-day week or whether there are some hybrid opportunities available. That I don't know. There may very well be.

Brian Lehrer: The mayor did back off that a bit recently, his five-day in-person mandatory. Let me take one more call and then we'll get explicitly to some of the proposals in your state of the city speech. Liz in the Bronx, you're on WNYC with New York City Council Speaker Adrian Adams. Hi, Liz.

Liz: Hi, how are you? As I was telling the person I spoke to, I live in the Bronx. I haven't visited Fordham Road in a while. I don't live in that area, but I went to the library and I drove and I parked my car about two to three blocks away. I parked behind a police car that had one of those orange barriers that they just put there. He was on the corner, and I thought it was strange, but I just walked away. Four hours later, I come back and the police are still there. It's two young cops. When I looked in their eyes, I saw they were really, really uncomfortable. I'm in my 60s and I'm looking at them. They knew I wasn't from the area, I guess.

What they did just before I came up, they just got on their blue horn from the car and yelled at these guys to just-- they were just standing and talking and laughing, and they made them break up. My point is, you're talking about how much money has been spent on the police. Why is there a unit that just sits on one corner and just watches that four corners? They're not going around the neighborhood, walking, seeing what's happening, policing, making sure everything's nice and comfortable. Fordham Road was just a few blocks away, they're not walking up and down that busy commercial area.

I just felt really uncomfortable. Uncomfortable for the police, uncomfortable for the neighborhood. It's just a situation that could blow up. It was cold that night, and these police officers are standing there for hours. Why is that there are units there? I've been born and raised in New York. I've lived in Brooklyn, I've lived everywhere, I've visited everywhere and I've never seen this before. What is Adams doing by placing police officers on one corner just watching [unintelligible 00:21:05].

Brian Lehrer: Yes, and I don't know if the speaker can answer so specifically that particular posting, but I guess you could also generalize from this that other people may be seeing similar things and thinking, what are they doing?

Madam Speaker: Yes, and thank you for the question. Unfortunately, I think you have the wrong Adams on the show this morning to adequately address the staffing of the NYPD. I'd be puzzled also to know why a unit or a car or cars would be staged just sitting in a particular area. I can't even deign to guess why. Each borough has their own issues. All of our boroughs have specific issues. I don't know if that may have been a "troubled section," quote-unquote, where the NYPD would be staged there to watch out for the areas. There may have been a history of trouble there. I don't even want to guess, but it sure is a good question. Again, I don't think I'm the right Adams to answer that one.

Brian Lehrer: Well, as a follow-up to that, on police funding, you have a big rift in City Council right now. 15 of the 35 members of the Progressive Caucus quit the group as you know over the caucus' latest mission statement, which calls for reducing the, quote, "size and scope of the NYPD." As speaker, you are on every caucus, but I see you did not sign that new mission statement pledge yourself. Do you support or not support reducing the size and scope of the NYPD?

Madam Speaker: Speaking of the caucuses, I'm glad you brought that up. I'm ex officio on every single caucus of the New York City Council, from the Jewish Caucus to the Black, Latino, and Asian Caucus to our LGBTQ+ Caucus, and every caucus [unintelligible 00:23:05] the Italian Caucus, all of them. For me to choose a pledge on one caucus to be actively involved, it would set a precedent for all of the other caucuses that again, as Speaker, I'm an ex officio member, but I don't involve myself in their inner deliberations, not any of the caucuses. The council is united behind-- [crosstalk]

Brian Lehrer: Go ahead. Go ahead, sorry.

Madam Speaker: No, I was just going to say the council is united behind the major budget priorities that our city agencies have the capacity and staff that ensure essential services are delivered to New Yorkers. Some things are missing from the mayor's preliminary budget. When we take a look at the budget right now being underway, pulling back funds, putting in more funds, our focus is to ensure that we prioritize investments in essential services that keep people healthy and safe. I'm going to support further investments in many of the safety solutions we fought for in last year's budget, like trauma recovery centers and crime victim services. We spoke about it a lot.

Youth employment programs and a lot more, but this budget needs to prioritize investments and services like that, that help New Yorkers and making sure our agencies are functioning to deliver those services.

Brian Lehrer: That sounds like you agree with the premise of the Progressive Caucus statement, which is that budgets are finite, so your priority should be community investments, like in housing and mental health, which I know are in your state of the city and education, more than they are to stop the cycle of marginalization, which leads to crime, which leads to the need for more police, which leads to more mass incarceration. You'd agree with that premise.

Madam Speaker: I would agree with that, Brian, yes.

Brian Lehrer: All right, State of the City. You get a speech called State of the City just like the mayor gets one of those. You reemphasized, among other things, the plan that is already law to close the Rikers Island jail complex by 2027. The mayor has been casting doubt on that because with crime higher the last few years, there are more arrests and there won't be enough cells in the borough jails to close Rikers on time, he argues, do you argue that Rikers can still be closed?

Madam Speaker: I do. Rikers is undermining safety in our city. It's a place that no longer serves our city. I've mentioned many, many times, and you just did. My mom, who was a correction officer in Rikers, and it was clear, she believed that Rikers should have closed a long time ago. The city has to close Rikers by 2027, and the contracts have to align, meet that deadline. We do expect the administration to work constructively with all of the stakeholders in taking active steps to ensure compliance with the law, but there are steps that we have to take to help ensure closure that are also critical to improve public safety in our city.

We know that the growth in population is being driven by detainee [unintelligible 00:26:23] on Rikers, which I mentioned a little while ago, it's a lot longer. We need to address the court delays that keep the detainees in jail longer than necessary before their trial. Over half of people detained have a mental health diagnosis, which you mentioned at the top of the show. We have to ensure that people are getting appropriate treatment by working with the state to expand mental health courts and treatment diversion programs that keep people out of the jail, like getting the right intervention to help them.

We have to have investments in reentry programming that transition people into jobs and supportive housing. We need to talk more about supportive housing. Other opportunities that provide stability are also critical to reduce recidivism. Yes, we've got some work to do. I do absolutely believe it's possible.

Brian Lehrer: We talked earlier about NYPD absenteeism rates being low. I said to remember that stat folks, right? They do show up at work, in other words, but one of the problems people cite on Rikers is ramping correction officer absenteeism, which their contract dependently allows, and critics argue that allows more violence and more neglect of incarcerated people's basic needs to occur there. Do you agree absenteeism abuse is an issue there and can the City Council do something about that by passing a law?

Madam Speaker: That's a great question. They've admitted. In oversight, they've admitted that absenteeism has been an issue for a number of years. Because of the way that they deal with absenteeism, a lot of it is allowed, and it's gotten to critical proportions. I believe the new commissioner says that they are getting better at it, but that was one of the requests that the council denied as far as their budget request last year was to increase headcount. Well, our stance was, your absenteeism. There is your headcount right there, make your people come to work. We've done our due diligence as far as disallowing additional headcount for correction officers. We would prefer for their own internal oversight and management to get it together as far as bringing the officers back to work who have been in an abusive pattern in remaining absent for far too long.

Brian Lehrer: Another focus of your state of the city speech was housing, obviously a perennial top priority in New York City. The mayor and governor seem to have a unified housing plan that's being debated in Albany right now. Mayor Adams appeared at a WNYC event on housing at the green space yesterday. Here's something he said about how he defines affordable housing.

Mayor Adams: Affordable to me, is market, middle, low income, because I need my middle income and my market individuals in the city as well.

Brian Lehrer: Would you define affordable housing the same way as that, or differently, and what have you got coming from City Council on that?

Madam Speaker: For the most part, I would tend to agree. I take a look at the way that we've been doing "affordable housing," quote-unquote, in the council last year is nothing short of phenomenal. We have opened doors that have been closed for a long time. Last year, the council approved with over 40 land-use projects to create more than 12,000 units of housing with more than 60% being affordable. Affordable again, I would tend to agree with the Mayor, those that traditionally have not been able to live here in New York because of the cost of living, but we know that our efforts have to expand to meet the scale of the challenge.

In December, I rolled out my housing agenda, which focuses on increased housing production under a Fair Housing Framework. It's also focused on deeper affordability and preservation of existing housing and restoring the capacity and resources of our housing agencies. Yes, we are looking at a bill. Through my Fair Housing Framework legislation, I'm seeking to ensure that an equitable distribution of affordable housing production across this city before the people. Because every district has to contribute to solving the housing crisis, we can no longer sit by and say, "Let that borough, that district handle affordable housing." The crisis belongs to New York and New Yorkers have to solve it. We're going to be introducing legislation pertaining to my Fair Housing Framework in the coming weeks.

Brian Lehrer: I know you got to go in a minute. Open mic to end. Anything else from your State of the City speech or anything else you want to draw attention to that I didn't ask about or a caller didn't ask about?

Madam Speaker: Well, thank you. Thanks, again, for having me. It's always great to be with you. My state of the city this year, we spoke about people over everything and we chose that theme because my agenda is focused on meeting the needs of everyday New Yorkers, our workers, our families, our children. The essentials that the people of our city need include access to economic mobility, affordable housing, which we just spoke about, and healthy and safe neighborhoods. For our city to succeed, we have to ensure equitable investments for all communities with a focus on those historically underserved in our city.

Brian Lehrer: Well, it's certainly going to be interesting, as it is every year, to see how the City Council and Mayor negotiate a next city budget. Budgets aren't just about numbers, as many of our listeners realize, they really are about policy and resources and the direction and future of the city. Every single year, the budget year begins July 1st, so between now and then, these negotiations are going to get real. New York City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams, we always appreciate when you come on. Thank you so much for today.

Madam Speaker: Thank you so much, Brian.

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