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Brian: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. We'll begin today by looking at what's in Mayor Eric Adams's first annual budget proposal. Now, if the word budget makes you think this is a dry topic for accountants and bank tellers, not at all. A mayor's budget tells us what he thinks is important enough to spend your tax dollars on, and what isn't so important to him. It shows whether he's putting his money where his mouth is, our money where his mouth is, on his campaign promises, and who has the power to influence him to spend money on their priorities, and who doesn't.

For example, after all the talk about public safety, he is certainly not defunding the police, but he is proposing a budget that's being called flat or a slight decline for the NYPD with no additional police officers to accomplish his ambitious law enforcement goals. He is increasing the number of Summer Youth Employment Program jobs by many thousands. What about mental health services and specific ways of addressing homelessness? We'll ask about those. Funding for public schools, a little bit down.

For composting, down when he promised it would go up. Layoffs of city workers, no, but for many agencies don't fill those openings when current employees leave. He's asked most departments for a 3% spending cut but without letting any current workers go.

After a really big increase in overall spending during the de Blasio years, Adams's first proposed budget is mostly flat, a little bit down or a little bit up depending on what you count, but in line with Adam's claim of being a fiscal hawk more or less, and there's more. With me now, Gothamist and WNYC, People and Power reporter, Elizabeth Kim. Hi, Liz. Thanks for coming on.

Liz: Hi, Brian. Thanks for having me.

Brian: First, for some perspective, New York City spends a lot of money relative to other places. Probably a lot of people in the city have no idea. Adams's whole budget is around $100 million for the city's 9 million people. The state of Florida spends about the same, but that's for a whole state of 20 million people.

Massachusetts has about 7 million people compared to New York City's nine, but its budget is less than half of the city's. Los Angeles has less than half the people of New York City, but its city budget is only $11 billion compared to 100 billion in New York. Are those fair comparisons, and what does New York spend all that money on?

Liz: Those numbers are all true. New York City spends around $100 billion in its budget, but you have to think about the huge safety net and array of public services that New York provides that other cities and states do not. Just to give you one example. New York City has a right to shelter law. It's one of three municipalities in the country that have a law like this, that means that the city is obligated by law to provide shelter for the unhoused, and that is around over a $3 billion expense.

You have to think about what's the cost of labor, what's the cost of real estate? That is just one example of a service that the city funds. We can go down a list of items like universal pre-K, for example. Yes, the city spends a lot more money, but our costs are higher here and we're also providing a lot more services.

I think people might argue whether or not, debate whether or not which ones are valuable and how well or efficiently they're provided, but I think if you were to compare our services to another city, like even a big city like LA, you'd see a much longer thicker list for New York.

Brian: There could theoretically be a debate, but nobody here is really having it in the political sector of whether it's worth spending all the money that New York City government spends and whether the people of the city get the bang for those bucks relatively, but the mayor calls himself a fiscal hawk. Is this a fiscal hawk's budget?

Liz: That was how he presented his budget. When talking to experts, what they say is the mayor will have his own narrative on the budget, and then there are the numbers. The numbers are sort of what the experts, or not sort of, the numbers are what the experts dissect and determine what kind of budget is this? It is not a leaner budget. If you look there've been several experts who have analyzed it. I spoke to an expert at the IBO yesterday and he told me that it's actually [crosstalk]

Brian: The Independent Budget Office [crosstalk]

Liz: Yes, I should say that.

Brian: It's like a watchdog over the city.

Liz: Yes, and they're obligated to produce a report on the budget. They've been very busy crunching the numbers, and he says that if you look at it, it's actually relatively the same, but it's actually spending a little bit more than the current budget. They're able to say that it's a leaner budget by doing a little bit of creative accounting.

If you want to get into the details, basically they took some money from this year's budget to pay down expenses for next year, thus artificially making next year's budget smaller. If you take everything into account, that's not true.

I think the Citizens Budget Commission though did give him credit for doing this, what they call a 3% cut across most agencies. They really like that as a fiscal exercise, it didn't result in any layoffs, but it's about a process in which you try to find savings and efficiencies. He does get credit for that.

Brian: The budget went way up under Mayor de Blasio. That's another story that doesn't get told very much, but the city was in pretty good times for most of the de Blasio administration. Revenues were up so he was able to spend more and some of the watchdog say, "Hey, we can't maintain all the commitments that Mayor de Blasio made to permanent programs, but he was lucky during his years that revenues were so strong and he used those money to spend and spend and try to do stuff."

Liz: Correct, and that's a question I had. Immediately after the budget came out, I was asking the Citizens Budget Commission was that's-- The big question for the mayor is what is he going to do when the stimulus funds dry out? How is he going to continue to fund programs like universal pre-K? From what we know as of now is that question has not been answered.

There are a lot of question marks. A lot of it will depend on how fast the city recovers, but there was one pretty alarming statistic that the mayor cited during his budget presentation which is that the city's economists are projecting that employment levels pre-pandemic, we will not get back to pre-pandemic employment levels until 2025. I spoke to one economist who told me that is really, really, alarming.

Brian: Let's talk about the NYPD budget political issue in recent years, obviously, the mayor is holding it about flat at around $6 billion in his proposal. That means around 6% of the city's budget goes to fund the police. Is that a lot? Is that like the largest single expense or if not, what is?

Liz: It's not the largest. The department of education makes about a third of the budget and that's $28 billion, and that's followed by the department of social services which is around almost 11 billion, and then you get the NYPD. The question of whether is that a lot? Is that sufficient? That has been something that has been debated, and the debate that's intensified in the last few years.

Brian: Education is much bigger, social services, which of course includes so many different things. Much bigger.

Liz: Yes, and that's what I think you would expect to see in a budget. Like you said, he did not reduce it, he kept it flat, and I think that was something that everyone was looking to see, that particular line item on the NYPD. He's placed so much focus and his mayoralty is really staked on reducing crime. There were a lot of questions about what is he going to do? Is he going to increase the budget?

As a candidate, he had always said that he could streamline government and get agencies like the NYPD to run more efficiently, and I think he's hewing to that line. He basically said the same when he was talking to reporters about the budget. He says he thinks he can do more with the same resources. He's going to deploy officers who have desk jobs and get them patrolling the streets. We'll see how well that works.

Brian: Here is the mayor speaking on Wednesday about why he's not funding the police more as he makes public safety, including new police deployments his top priority.

Mayor Eric Adams: We're going to redeploy our manpower, we're going to make sure that everyone who is supposed to be on the streets doing their job, they're doing their job, then we will make the analysis if we have to put more money into it.

Brian: Listeners, we invite your questions and comments on mayor Adams's first budget proposal at 212-433 WNYC 212-433-9692 or tweet @Brian Lehrer with our reporter Elizabeth Kim.

Also on public safety, as the mayor talks about intervention by law enforcement, coupled with a prevention program through social programs, one of the headline items is definitely what you call a dramatic expansion of the Summer Youth Employment Program. How dramatic?

Liz: We're going from 30,000 jobs to 100,000 jobs, and that's going to cost the city about $236 million. That is a significant investment. I was very interested in this policy idea. If you talk to experts, I think the question that the city will have to answer is what kind of jobs is he going to fund and how do these jobs translate or do they translate into a career? Where does college fit in?

My understanding is that there have been-- this is something that the city has talked about for decades, is youth employment and getting young people employed in good careers. There've been a few successful programs but the problem has always been scaling them up. This will be very interesting.

The mayor has indicated that he wants to do a partnership with the private sector and through the private sector, give young people meaningful internships. He's not talking about just like a low-wage job, working at a summer camp or something, or at least that's what he says, but I think we still have to see that those programs take shape and then what happens after the summer is over.

Brian: Here's something for you to keep your eye on, maybe you're already keeping your eye on it. The mayor's stat and the blueprint to end gun violence says there are 250,000 kids, teens who need summer youth employment. His budget funds 100,00 and it says, or the blueprint says that the private sector, actually he said on the show that the private sector is also going to step up and provide a lot more jobs for teens.

We had a guest yesterday who to some degree represents the business sector and said, yes, he believes that they are going to step up. I don't know if those plans have been announced. It's something to keep our eye on with corporate New York as to whether they're really going to expand by tens of thousands or another 100,000 Summer Youth Employment Programs. Have you seen anything on that yet?

Liz: No. I'm anxiously awaiting the details. One question about a lot of these programs is the ones that are successful are competitive. It raises the question, are they reaching the at-risk youth that Mayor Adam sees as being vulnerable to joining a gang? I think that [crosstalk]

Brian: Also on that, the budget doesn't get officially passed until around June 30th, same time that school ends for the year. Will kids be able to apply for these Summer Youth Employment Program jobs soon so their families can plan?

Liz: I think his promise was that it would get started this summer. If it doesn't, I think that would be seen as a failure on his part because it was projected to be this summer it would kick off.

Brian: Also on the violent crime prevention track, what about mental health services which everyone seems to want expanded?

Liz: It was certainly referenced in the mayor's presentation although I didn't see him highlight it as a line item when he was doing his address at city hall. I think in part he's hoping to get money from the state. He made mental illness one of his central requests when he testified before Albany lawmakers earlier this month. In particular, he wants to expand the number of beds in hospitals for the mentally ill.

Brian: Homeless services per se with crimes committed by people experiencing both homelessness and mental illness in the news so much even though, and it's always important to say this I think, most people experiencing either are entirely peaceful.

Liz: Correct. Today he's actually expected to make an announcement on mental health outreach in the subways. It'll be interesting to see what scale, how much that scales up from what's currently being, the outreach that's currently being offered with social workers working alongside the NYPD in the subways.

Last month, he and Governor Hochul also announced a similar joint effort in which she was going to hire more social workers to work in the subways. The question with such policies is always how much are you going to spend and how many more people will it result being deployed in the city subway system.

Brian: Is anything else new on what the mayor calls upstream contributors to violence?

Liz: He did commit around $14 million to children aging out of foster care. That is very consistent with something he talked about on the campaign. He felt that this was a very vulnerable population that the city wasn't doing enough to mentor and take care of and ensure that they have a safe and decent future. I think with that commitment, he is coming through on a campaign promise.

Brian: Let me take a call coming in on the Summer Youth Employment Program. Do we have that call already on line five? Screeners, there we go. John in Brooklyn Heights, you're on WNYC. Hi, John.

John: Hi. Thanks very much. I think the point that was just made about the jobs, Summer Youth Jobs Program, very important, that the targeting, it reminds me back in the 1990s when they talked about midnight basketball as a means for encouraging youth not to get involved with crime, but I think it's not the number of opportunities I think, it's the targeting that I think is very important maybe towards youth that have had past involvement with the justice system. Thank you.

Brian: Thank you. Is that in the budget, how they would target in that respect if at all?

Liz: The budget is like an over 600-page document, I haven't poured through that, the particular line item, but I think the caller's point is exactly right. I think we really have to nail down. The mayor really needs to develop a very detailed strategy and also take into account that this is not a new idea. The city has been working on such programs for decades. There have been task forces dedicated to exactly this issue.

The other thing that I think the city needs to keep in mind is we need to develop a better system of metrics to measure these programs because I think if he decides to fund a variety of programs, let's at least have benchmarks so we can see the following year like which program did the best and which didn't do the best, which had the best retention and tracking where some of these graduates go after they go through the program. Those are the things that experts tell me that they would like to see the mayor do.

Brian: Here's another one on that. Raymond in the Bronx, you're on WNYC. Hi, Raymond.

Raymond: Hi, good morning Brian, good morning ma'am. My question is this, okay, we have a lot of developers in New York. You see skyscrapers growing up all the time and we give them incentives. We give them tax breaks and everything else like that. Where is that money coming from? You got 300,000 maybe more youth in New York city. 13, 12 years old are carrying guns and not carrying groceries delivering with Grubhub and other things like that.

We have to really look at what we are doing. If these developers are coming in, they want to expand, let's make a contract with them saying, "Okay, we won't give you the tax break. We won't give you that, but hire our youth, hire our college students, hire our high school students, give them an opportunity. We want that in your program when you come here to develop in New York City."

Brian: Yes. For businesses that are here too, it's a great question, Liz. I don't know if the mayor has expanded on this yet., it sounds like not, but the business community can say they want to participate in this, but are there any carrots like the incentives Raymond is talking about or for that matter sticks, either for businesses that are looking to locate here, especially if they're looking to get tax breaks to locate here, or for those businesses who are already here?

Liz: Those usually are negotiated through re-zonings, zoning approvals. Typically, you will see something like it's not unusual to say that this development, in addition, we're talking about in addition to having certain X number of affordable units, there have been projects where the community says, 'We need a school," and that will be part of the deal, or if they're going to bring in some kind of supermarket, "Pledge that you're going to hire X amount from the community."

That is not unusual. I think that's been an ongoing practice in New York City as to whether the mayor can speak more about it. I think that that's a fair point. I think there was a little bit of rumbling that there wasn't more in this budget about affordable housing for example.

Brian: We're going to take a break, we're going to come back and continue with WNYC and Gothamist People and Power reporter Elizabeth Kim, who's crunching the mayor's budget. She's gone through 30 lines a page, 600-- Well, she's done as much as anyone human can do without being a computer and we are getting a lot of detail from Liz on Mayor Adams's first budget proposal. Is he putting his money, taxpayers' money where his mouth was on the campaign trail?

When we come back from the break, we're going to talk about one place where he's definitely not doing that and people concerned about the environment will not be happy about this. Then another place where we will ask if he is something that he and city council speaker, Adrienne Adams have said is a top priority, but does he have the budget line? Stay with us.

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Brian Lehrer on WNYC. We're talking about all the interesting things in Mayor Eric Adams's first budget proposal with Elizabeth Kim and Roland in Manhattan has a complaint that we're starting to hear a lot since this budget was unveiled on Wednesday. Hi, Roland. You're on WNYC.

Roland: Good morning. How are you?

Brian: Good. Go for it.

Roland: I saw that the mayor in Albany on earlier this week. He talked about bail which I thought was wrong, and if I'd known he was going to have a budget that makes the impact is going to have on curbside composting, I would have addressed that as well. We fought for so long to get composting in the minds of the people that run the city, that finally, we got an end and de Blasio had to curtail it in part because of the COVID issue and the impact on department sanitation, but now the mayor wants to remove it from the sanitation department program. That absolutely makes no sense at all.

34% of the waste in New York City, residential garbage, is organic waste. Putting food in plastic bags on the Upper West Side only enhances the population of four-legged New Yorkers that we want to get rid of, rats. I don't know why the mayor would roll back the composting program but his rationale was that it isn't working well. Well, if something's not working well, you make it work better, you don't end it.

Brian: Roland, thank you. What would Mayor Adam say to Roland from the Upper West Side about the composting program? Is this explicitly a campaign promise made and now broken?

Liz: I would argue that in principle, it was a campaign promise that he made. He said that he wanted to do universal composting. I think if you look at the fine details, yes, he did say he wanted to pay private companies to do the pickups and his argument against this program which Roland talked about was that it's not being done very efficiently, there aren't enough people who have signed up for this program. I think it's like roughly 100,000 people, and it's more costly for us to have sanitation trucks going and doing, expanding the pickups.

I think the argument that environmental advocates make is that what is the long-term cost? Are we fulfilling our goals of get to zero waste which I think the previous mayor said the goal was that we were going to cut the waste sent to landfills by 90% by 2030 and we're not going to get there if he doesn't expand this program.

The other question is the savings that it's generating is really a lot, in the scheme of things, it's saving the city around $28 million. I do wonder whether this is something that the mayor might actually reconsider and put back in given the fact that there has been a fair amount of pushback from environmental advocates and because he did pledge to be a mayor that would have a robust climate change agenda.

Brian: Interesting and Roland, thanks for the call. Call us again. Here's another climate and environment-related one from Twitter. Listener writes, "Is Mayor Adams underfunding enforcement of the landmark Local Law 97 to retrofit buildings? This is a major component of New York City's environmental program going forward," writes the listener.

Liz: I don't know but I know there were questions about that even going back to de Blasio whether the city was spending enough resources. That's a good point and we'll look at that.

Brian: Another listener, hearing Raymond's call tweets, "The caller is correct. The city has made it very difficult to participate in the composting program. Our building wanted to participate and was rebuffed for 'lack of interest'. Try fixing the program first," says that listener.

Anything else climate-related that you would cite in the budget?

Liz: No, I think that's the main thing. I thought there might be a little bit more about climate, particularly because of the flooding from Ida and its impact, and the mayor, he was incoming mayor at the time had spoken about how the city needs to do a lot more to prepare for situations like that. It was the first time that we had a flood that resulted in people drowning in their basements. I'm a little bit surprised but I don't know if that detail is there and like I said, it's like more than 600 pages and it's just something we missed, but he didn't talk about it.

Brian: Here's another one, "The final budget," and this is by way of background, listeners, if you don't follow the nooks and cranny of New York City budgeting. The final budget is negotiated by the mayor and the city council. The council speaker, whoever it is, is really influential on how the budget comes out. I want to play an exchange that I had here with City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams, last month discussing something that she and the mayor have both said is a high priority and that is the universal childcare program to fight poverty and unemployment. She refers first in this clip to some money for that proposed at the state level by Governor Hochul.

City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams: The proposed investments in childcare in the governor's budget are very positive and we're grateful for that also. We need to work together, the governor, the mayor, the council, to advance these solutions for a better system of childcare. That system has to aim to meet the unmet needs of our working families. We're going to work together, all levels of government to do what we can to actually pass a universal childcare system for New Yorkers. I think we deserve it and it's way, way overdue.

Brian: Universal or for lower-income people?

City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams: I think that it needs to-- Well, lower-income families are certainly the priority to look at first, but overall, we have families that need this system. We need families that need childcare. We've seen through COVID, low income, middle income, across the board, families need childcare. It's something that's been overlooked. We've stepped on it. We've just kicked it to the curb but we need to bring it out in the open. We need to talk about it. We need to get it done.

Brian: That was Speaker Adams here last month. Liz, does Mayor Adams, no relation, propose anything approaching universal childcare in his first budget blueprint?

Liz: I don't think it would approach universal but he does have two items or at least two items that address it. It addresses building out an infrastructure so that we have more childcare providers and that would be he's proposing that the city offer property tax rebate for property owners who are willing to retrofit their properties for childcare providers. Then he also would like to propose a tax credit for businesses that provide free or subsidized childcare to incentivize parents to get back to work.

For policy experts I've spoken to, this is a very critical space because they see this as integral to our recovery. That basically, the cheaper we can make childcare for a lot of working class families then the easier it is for them to get back into the workforce.

Brian: Of course, this is a big sticking point. At the federal level now too, that's one of the main components of President Biden's Build Back Better Plan that Joe Manchin won't sign off on money to help approach universal child care across the land. If that comes through then there'll be federal dollars to help the city get closer to that, but that of course remains very much influx.

Here's an interesting caller, a former member of city council. Maybe we'll get some independent thinking that she couldn't give us when she was an elected official, but no elected official ever admits that they can't do that. Former City Council Member Helen Rosenthal who just got term-limited out of her Manhattan seat. Hello, council member, or should I just call you Helen from Manhattan now? You're on WNYC.

Helen: You have to call me Helen from Manhattan. I want to compliment, this has been a great episode. Liz has done an amazing job going, flogging through the 600 pages. There's one thing that I was very vocal about during my eight-year tenure which is peeling back the onion one more layer and we can talk about these wonderful services, a better SYEP Program, Summer Youth Employment Program.

Brian: Summer Youth Employment Program, yes.

Helen: More mental health services, more social workers in the subways or on the streets to help the homeless, but if we're not paying our social service programs, those nonprofits that get the contracts to do the work, if we're underpaying them and the running number is about 80 cents on the dollar. If we're underpaying them to do the work, then at the end of the day, it's not going to be done as well as we would hope.

When we talk about implementation, that's the piece that I think you have to go from soup to nuts on social service programs. You have to make sure it's being implemented well, the providers are being paid enough to provide the services, and there's the second part of that is you have to pay the provider on time. So many of these nonprofits say get told to start working July 1st but they don't get paid until January or March, and they have to pay those dollars, pay the workers, pay for rent and overhead. First, on July 1st. They can't wait till today [crosstalk]

Brian: Can I ask you Helen just for a full disclosure. I don't know what you're doing now that you're out of city council. Are you working and representing people in this sector in any official way?

Helen: No, not at all, but I will say Brian that I've read two books, first time in 10 years, and I'm following your #BLTrees very closely.

Brian: Oh good. You've adopted a tree near your building to follow through the year.

Helen: I have, but it's just so important. We worked for eight years. This was the first thing I talked to Mayor de Blasio about at our first budget review in 2014. I think people have tried and this administration says they want to get shit done and I believe them. I think they will but this part of it is incredibly important to really [sound cut]

Brian: All right. We had to take Helen off for a word that you're not allowed to say on the radio so we got to follow the rules there, but do continue to call us nevertheless. I know you won't do that again, but Liz, she brings up some real stuff that somebody in her position would have reason to know about. If providers of jobs aren't getting paid well and on time for social service programs of various kinds to work.

Liz: Yes she does and talking about childcare, that's an issue in that particular industry as well. Is that traditionally, a lot of people who work in daycare, for example, haven't been paid enough, but it's such a critical part to want a recovery to children's development and education that people really see that that cannot continue if we want to build out a fair and just society but also one that also aids our economic recovery.

Brian: I wonder if you talk dirty to a tree will that make it grow a bit? Well, I don't know. Maybe we'll find out next time Helen calls in. Last couple of things. One, you told us that maybe the biggest or one of the biggest progressive items in the budget as we talk about childcare is an expansion of the earned income tax credit. Explain what that is to people who don't know it and what Mayor Adams's doing with it.

Liz: That's essentially a federal program. It's a federal program that the city matches. What it does is for working low-income people, they get a direct subsidy into their paycheck. It's a policy that economists have widely embraced as being effective for putting money directly into the pockets of the working poor.

It was something that I followed closely because Eric Adams promised that he would expand that program as a candidate. Now as a candidate, he promised a huge expansion. He said he was going to fund it by $1 billion. He doesn't do that with the budget but you have to give him credit because he is expanding something that has not, that the percentage of the city's contribution has not been expanded in 20 years.

He is going to bring it up. It's currently at $100 million. He has committed to add another $250 million, plus he's asking Governor Kathy Hochul to kick in another $250 million, so we'll have around $650 million for this program. I think that was one of the big-ticket items of his budget, and I think he should also be seen as one of the bigger progressive policy agendas, that it was something that he's talked about on the campaign trail and that he has in fact fulfilled through his budget.

Brian: I'm glad you underlined this because we talk about this with respect to the federal budget and then maybe forget to talk about it with respect to the city budget. How many times have we discussed on this program how the childcare taxpayer should say the earned income tax credit has been discussed as cutting child poverty in half in the United States for the period of time that it's been in effect temporarily at the federal level during the pandemic.

That's another part of Build Back Better that is dying for the moment at the hands of Senator Joe Manchin, and so that program has expired. Here are Mayor Adams and Governor Hochul trying to do what they can in pursuit of reducing child poverty at the local level.

Last thing, the public school's budget under the mayor's proposal. I'm not sure if I'm reading this right but would the public school's budget go down under Mayor Adams from what it was under Mayor de Blasio?

Liz: That was a conversation I had with the independent budget office yesterday. Their reading of the line items is that even though it does appear that the city is directing less funding to the department of education-- In fact, what it's doing is it's substituting federal stimulus funds for that city funding that it's removing. It doesn't really seem as if there's really a significant reduction in education, but I think the caveat is with every expert I speak to is, "We're still looking at the numbers. We're still asking for more information," so just take that with a grain of salt too.

Brian: Interesting, and because Mayor Adams has said a million times as a candidate and now mayor, "If you don't educate, you will incarcerate," and so I guess we'll wait to hear from Chancellor David Banks and we'll wait to see from the mayor what's really going to be new there.

I guess if it's relatively flat, the mayor is making a statement that in order to educate more effectively, and remember he says if 65% of white kids weren't reading and doing math at grade level, it would be considered a national emergency and everybody would rally to do something about it. When it's Black and brown kids as he puts it, not so much but there are a lot of advocates out there who would call for smaller class size, which would mean a lot more teachers and therefore a lot more funding and it doesn't look like something like that is being proposed.

Liz: No, and you're right about the smaller class sizes. It was very interesting that immediately after his budget presentation, the head of the teachers union, Michael Mulgrew issued a statement that with $6 billion in reserves, the city certainly should have enough money to do something like smaller class sizes. That has been something, as you said, education policy advocates in New York have called for decades.

Brian: We will leave it there. A deep dive into Mayor Adams's first New York City budget proposal. What happens now is a negotiation that lasts into June with city council. We'll hear their response soon and we'll come back and talk about all these things again. This is where the rubber hits the road with policy where campaign promises and rhetoric wind up in the question, is the mayor putting his money where his mouth is, his policy priorities in dollars and cents where his rhetoric is? We've gone through a lot of the complexities of that with WNYC and Gothamist People and Power reporter, Elizabeth Kim. Thanks so much.

Liz: Thanks, Brian.

 

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