Alan Hevesi
[Question: What would your approach be as mayor
to meet the needs of the city's large and growing
Latino population?]
Thank you everybody for showing an interest in
this, because this is deadly serious business. It's
not about slogans, it's not about charisma, it's
not about celebrity, and it's not about dramatic
re-statements of problems that everybody in this
room knows about. You should expect from us specific
answers to the questions we are being asked, how
we are going to do it, what's the affordable housing
program, what are the school reforms we are talking
about, what are the strategies for economic development.
To specifically answer your question, my first
priority is massive reform of the public schools.
There are three tiers on which you build. Very simple
formula, very hard to accomplish. One, Smaller classes.
It is geometrically better for education to have
nineteen kids in a class than twenty-five or thirty.
Two, a certified and qualified teacher in every
class, that's really h ard in a growing public school
population and a lot of teachers about to retire,
2,100 out of 78,000. And three, parents trained
to help their children learn by creating a learning
environment in the home, by helping with homework,
by having expectations, by being able to navigate
the school system and having programs where parents
are not skilled with this are helped to do that.
Economic development. We have 508,000 more jobs
in this city than we had in 1993. That's pretty
spectacular and at the same time you have the second
highest unemployment rate of any city in America.
What's the contradiction? The contradiction is that
if you have credentials, a profession, if you have
technological training, there's a job waiting for
you. If you are a school drop out, you're unskilled,
if you're poor, if you're an immigrant, there are
many fewer entry level jobs than we once had. The
next mayor better be very sophisticated about reviving
our job training to the service economy and the
information economy that's New York. We don't make
things any more. There used to be a million and
a quarter people that did manufacturing, now it's
200,000. We are a city of brain power and technology
and creativity and so a web-worker is better off
taking computer training than working in a park
where there is no career at the end.
We have to open up 200 store-fronts all over the
city that are computer learning centers that people
can walk in right off the street just like a library,
start at the beginning, then take the sequence of
courses that when you are done , there's a job there
that's in the same room in the same building, Chase
Manhattan Bank's back-office jobs.
This is about sustaining the fight against crime
and dealing with issues of misconduct. I probably
should stop now and say that that may be a question,
ask about it. But this is about substance, this
is about serious business, this is about who has
the experience and who has the qualifications to
lead the city, in the most incredibly complex technological
society. We're in the information technology revolution
and we have an equally incredible mix of people
cause we're the most ethnically diverse city in
the history of cities.
[Question: A major issue facing Latinos across
the country is under-representation, especially
when it comes to decision making levels, and New
York City is no exception. How would you specifically
address this issue? What are your thoughts about
city affirmative action?]
In the Dinkins administration there was an affirmative
action program which I'll use as a model to answer
the question for the private businesses that the
city contracts with. The city expends $7 billion
a year hiring private firms to provide all kinds
of services from building buildings, to providing
food for our schools, to providing foster care,
and the Dinkins administration had a program training
women-owned and minority- owned firms to get into
the mix. How to apply, what kind of requirements
to meet, who to hire, what the detail were. The
program raised from 4 percent to 17 percent, in
those four years, the number of firms that were
minority and women owned businesses and I endorsed
that when he did it and I endorsed it when Mayor
Giuliani killed the program. In my own show, as
a model, I sustained to the extent that the mayor's
policy permitted, affirmative action in the hiring
of the firms that market the city's debt. If you
did it solely by Mayor Giuliani's way , then the
hugest largest firms, Merrill Lynch and J.P. Morgan,
would be selling the City's debt for $ 4 billion
dollars a year. We insisted that they produce for
us, before we hired them, their affirmative action
partnerships and in the first thirty firms that
we hired back in 1994, nine were minority owned
and women owned firms.
So there are substantial advantages to the firms
themselves, not just because they represent the
Latino community and the African-American, but because
they're good for the city. The more people that
are trained and qualified and experienced to do
business with the city, the more people who are
hired from the community to work for the city, the
greater the competition, and that means the higher
the quality and the lower the price. I have committed
to that from day one of my political career and
public career ,and will do so as mayor. We will
have a government, under a Hevesi administration,
that looks like this city and that recruits from
every community the best and most talented people.
That's the only way to govern.
[Question: What role did you personally play,
how did you respond, not just after serious incidents
like the Anthony Baez police brutality case, but
the infamous Seinfeld and Law and Order episodes
on the Puerto Rican Day Parade and the David Letterman
insulting remarks about the Columbians?]
Fortunately there are many ways to answer this
question, because essentially this question is how
much bigotry will you tolerate if you're mayor.
The answer for all of us has to be zero. So for
example, there was a gentleman, who was actually
identified with the Giuliani administration, who
volunteered to help in my campaign, who happened
to be Jewish. A few months ago he tells a Jewish
newspaper that the candidacy of Fernando Ferrer
would be bad for the Jewish community, that it would
restore a bad coalition that would be bad for the
Jewish community, and his language was stronger
than that. I immediately removed him from the campaign.
He had no official position. He had volunteered
to do some fund-raising and had not done it, but
I cut him off, I denounced him. No bigotry in any
way, in governance or politics in my operation.
His statements about Freddy Ferrer were just absolutely
irresponsible, wrong, and terribly damaging to the
city in general. When Julia Harrison, a member of
the council, made anti-Asian remarks, the community
she partly represented in Flushing, we held a rally
to denounce her bigotry.
When the Ku Klux Klan , two years ago, marched
at the court house, I went down to the court house
and joined the 7000 other New Yorkers and maybe
the people on this table to denounce those sick
bigots. 4000 of them, I believe, wanted do bodily
harm to them, which I'm not recommending. In every
occasion where there is a hint of bigotry, we have
to speak out.
My maiden speech, my inaugural speech, as New York
City Comptroller in 1994, on the steps of City Hall
was not about deep discount bonds and variable rate
debt, as important as they are, it was the denunciation
of any form of bigotry in this city, cause here's
the lesson for us all, and I'm not going to repeat
what I've said in church's and synagogues all over
the city. I'm Jewish and I've said in synagogue,
it is not enough for us as Jews to target the anti-Semites,
the bigots who focus on us, and attack that bigotry,
and destroy that bigotry through whatever means
are necessary and then at the same time accept the
racist who is sitting next to us cause it's our
uncle and our cousin. It's not enough for African-Americans
to target the racists that are focused on them in
this country for 300 years in a condition of slavery,
and Jim Crow, and apartheid, and lynching, and destroy
the bigotry that focuses on them and tolerate the
anti-Semites that sit next to them or any other
form of bigotry.
It is our obligation, everyone in this room and
in this city, zero tolerance for any form of bigotry,
no excuses, we don't tolerate it, we don't allow
it, we have to be the most tolerant city in the
world ,and we have to revel in our incredibly culturally
rich differences that will make us the strongest
people, the strongest city in the world.
[Question: What is your campaign strategy for
reaching Latino voters?]
To be very clear and articulate in a program of
school reform, of job development, of strategies
to bring jobs to the city, to provide the revenues
that will allow us therefore to meet our mission
which is to provid e good education to every child
in the city , and affordable housing, and an opportunity
for everybody. And to say to everybody that will
listen, that the job of the mayor and the mission
of this mayor is to provide opportunities for the
40 percent of New Yorkers who are immigrants, so
they can live well, so that they can prosper, that
they can develop professionally and that they can
raise their families in a decent way. And convey
that message to every Latino in this city, and to
every other person in this city, in every way possible,
on television, on radio, and through mailings and
through endorsements. By the way I have been endorsed
by 51 elected officials.
[Question: What are the most critical problems
you think are faced in the Latino- immigrant population
and how would you address them as mayor?]
You asked the question about immigration and the
Latino community and Freddy's right, we should explain
what we have done, because it is a sign of what
we would do. I have an immigration advisory council
made up of the leading advocacy groups. We've been
meeting regularly and organizing an agenda which
includes lobbying for an extension of 245-I, to
allow permanent residence to immigrants who have
been left behind, and fifteen other projects, including
providing social services for immigrants, connecting
them to lawyers when they need that kind of assistance
and lobbying for the restoration of benefits that
have been eliminated by the federal government.
I have a Latino advisory council with similar issues.
Angelo Falcon has spoken on the census and the impact
on our communities.
But more significantly, when there was a hurricane
that devastated the Dominican Republic and Haiti,
I arranged for the military to provide airplanes
and helicopters to bring 240 tons of supplies and
food material, and health care, and medicine both
to the Dominican Republic and Haiti and took that
material down to those two devastated islands.
The bottom line here is for immigrants is that
I want to fix the schools, provide affordable housing
and create jobs in the cities. The schools have
th ose three elements. You have to pay teachers
more, they are paid 25 percent less than in the
suburbs. There are 21,000 teachers that are eligible
to retire in the next two years. My idea is to pay
them 50 percent of their salary plus their entire
pension to keep them on for three years or five
years by contract so the new teachers who recruit
are dealing with the shortages. A longer school
day, a longer school year.
If a fifth grader doesn't have a B average, he
doesn't go home 3 o'clock. They continue to work
under supervision until 5 o'clock. Teachers work
longer and they get paid more.
And I have a flash that the board of education
doesn't understand⤲not every kid can go to college,
some kids come from poor families, they need to
go to work right away after high school, and there
are jobs out there. 2000 electricians needed today
at forty dollars an hour and we're not training
our kids for that, or a mechanic, or a construction
trades. A core curriculum, massive amounts of reform
for public schools.
I'll tell you the final point, I'll tell you something
that's really bad politics and good government.
I don't think we need to now because we still have
a surplus and we have a Campaign for Fiscal Equity
court case which will result and that will bring
more state aid into the city because we have been
systematically cheated to the tune of $40 billion
since 1987. But the bottom line here is that we
have neglected to focus on the financing of the
schools until this court case.
I'm the only candidate as mayor that is willing
to say that if we needed to, as a last resort, I
would support a restoration of the income-tax surcharge,
raise the income taxes in order to pay for the reforms
so that we don't lose another generation of kids
because the economy has gone sour.
[Audience member asks a question about police
misconduct]
Street sweeps unconnected to a crime are illegal
and there should be no street sweeps. It is absolutely
appropriate to do crime profiling. A crime is committed,
a witness says that " I saw it happen, the perpetrator
is a six foot white man with red hair," it is appropriate
for the police to stop white men with red hair.
What is not appropriate is the racial profiling
that was featured by the Street Crime Unit in which
40,000 New Yorkers, mos tly young Latinos and you
African-American men, who were rounded up unconnected
to any crime , harassed, stopped, frisked, humiliated,
and many of them arrested and then released a day
later.
It is unacceptable, it is illegal, there are standards
called reasonable search and probable cause. Let
me respond in context how I have responded to this.
I have gone on television in this campaign. My first
add was a biography, my second add was about education
as a priority, the third said zero tolerance for
crime, zero tolerance for misconduct including profiling.
I used that word in the TV add and mayor Giuliani
went bonkers, he went mad and ordered his staff
to punish me any way they could, because he took
this personally. My response had to be, and I'm
not qualified as a shrink, but I did use the term,
the mayor is in denial. And if he doesn't believe
me, ask the deputy mayor, Rudy Washington who was
in the New York Times for being stopped and harassed,
and profiled, or ask my deputy Comptroller.
There is another measurement that I think is as
powerful as any, and it's my experience, I'm the
claims officer for the city. When somebody sues
the city I have to make a judgment with the Mayor's
lawyers that there is a settlement to be made. In
1998 the city of New York paid out in police misconduct
claims, $28.3 million, in 99' it was $42 million,
in the year 2000 it was $36 million. $106 million
in three years. Now Freddy's right, we have a great
police department and the majority of cops are decent
caring professional people. Some are racist, some
commit acts of misconduct. It's not to damage the
police department, the we suggest we don't tolerate
misconduct, it is to make the great police department
even greater. And you do it by a systematic program
of holding police precinct commanders responsible,
not only for crime reduction, but also for the bad
cops in their own precincts.
[Question: What initiatives would you take in
city government to address the problem of AIDS and
HIV in the Latino community?]
Very good question, we've sort of been lulled into
a sense of calm over the AIDS catastrophe because
there are now these programs of medications which
are sustaining HIV positive patients in the city.
But it turns out that those who have been on these
medications for a long period of time are finding
that the results start to shift, that there are
side-effects and so on . There's been a change in
behavior that has hit hardest in the Latino and
African-American community. This is now a people
of color problem that is very dramatic. We have
to provide additional resources for research, for
treatment, for development and focus on the communities
that are hit hardest which are the African-American
and Latino communities. We have to clean up the
absolutely poorly run Division of AIDS Services.
I believe that they have to get computerized. I
remember a couple of years ago the Latino Advisory
Council people told us, and the Gay Latinos told
us that 13000 paper files had been lost of patients.
We recommended some technological changes and administrative
changes. We have to make this a highest priority.
This is life and death.