Q & A
What made you interested in politics?
I was always interested. I was a driver for my congressman when I was 16 years old. ThenI had internships in Albany and Washington, D.C. My college thesis was on the bankruptcy ofNYC and later on during my career on Wall Street I worked extensively with State and USregulators.
What is your background?
I’m one of 10 kids. Dad was an immigrant from Argentina. We were 7 kids and 2 parents in a tiny 3 bedroom/1 bathroom house, Dad’s medical practice in the basement. On my mom’s side we had 20 cousins; on my dad’s side we had 3 uncles who were priests, 2 aunts who were nuns.
Mom and Dad pushed us to study; the international exposure of my uncles and aunts educated me about socialism’s depravities; and my 30 brothers, sisters, and cousins taught us all about the variety of human nature!
Like everyone, I was stunned by NYC’s demise in the 1970s and impressed by the turnaround led by Lazard banker Felix Rohatyn. This led me to Harvard Business School and a career solving complex problems all over the world for big and small companies.
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What did you learn in business that would be helpful in politics?
Most important is the core interaction of a customer with an organization – is there a clear purpose which creates value? Second, is the activity and does the organization prioritize its functions around this transaction? Third, is the business ready to evolve in the future?
A good example is the global risk insurance business.
This sector’s core customer interactions were flawed: business clients were looking for someone to sue, not to purchase insurance. $200 billion questionable claims bankrupted the industry. The leaders didn’t prioritize solving this, they gambled that 14% investment yields could hide their core problems. When specialty challengers emerged the older companies got completely wiped out.
These weaknesses revealed themselves after the 9/11 attack on the WTC, Hurricane Katrina,and the global financial crisis. Yet these disasters prompted change. This is the lesson for the Democrats from 2024.
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Speaking of 2024, what is your perspective on the political events of 2024?
We’ll see that 2024 actually helped the Democrats by revealing distortions in their ‘product’.
The core Democratic product was defined in FDR’s New Deal and LBJ’s Great Society: daring roads and schools infrastructure, jobs, unions, tax incentives, and legislative accomplishments. LBJ delivered the voting rights act. Clinton delivered equal rights to the LGBTQ community.Obama delivered Obamacare.
The Democrats’ product was making structural changes which improved people’s chances – but no real ‘giveaways’. But by 2024, the giveaways have become the issue. The party in NYC has moved into offering more and more marginal (permanent) benefit programs with no apparent way upwards.
We are handing out fish instead of teaching people how to fish. That’s not our core product.
Handing out fish has several bad by-products.
First, it leads to more people migrating towards the handouts. They migrate from all over the world to get to NYC.
Second, as programs’ complexity beyond the comprehension of all but the experts – the administrative costs spiral and those who don’t get support seethe quietly – for example, those who paid of their student loans diligently. The NYC budget is basically undecipherable.
Third, and most importantly, as in a business, the cost, complexity and resources involved distract leaders from the basic job of government – as enshrined in the Constitution, i.e.,ensuring our basic rights are protected (e.g., our right to safety in public spaces).
The reason the subways are not safe is because resources are diverted elsewhere; our leaders off-track presiding over a maze of programs none of which are related to ensuring our right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. On top of this -- $6 billion more was diverted to dealing with illegal immigrants. Our leaders should re-read the Constitution!
2024 hopefully can turn back the New Deal party from morphing into the Spew Deal party of escalating permanent giveaways. It was always bound to end badly. We should not waste time mourning for 2024. In 2025 it can be morning in NYC again
What is the role of Public Advocate?
Public Advocate is NYC’s number 2 or number 3 job. The charter is to monitor the agencies and commissioners to make sure that they are doing their jobs fairly. The PA should have a
system of organizing and synthesizing feedback about what’s not working in NYC.
You are supposed to advocate for the people as a whole on issues which may fall between the cracks of the City Council districts which are arranged geographically.
The Public Advocate role is unique to NYC, and only 30 years or so old, it is still being defined. There is a great opportunity to sharpen the role of the PA.
What are your concerns about the role of the PA currently?
The current PA is a member of the Democrat Socialists of America and, as you would expect, has particularly advocated for equal rights for minorities. This is laudable, since DEI is a
core Democratic Party franchise, embedded in the Declaration of Independence.
However, the current PA’s admirable focus on equal rights has unfortunately restricted his ability to address the core inter-related public safety and quality of life issues facing a complex city of 8 million people.
The PA sat silent as out of control college protests took over the city. The PA has not advocated for simple quality of life issues such as safe subways, bike lanes, retail stores,sidewalks, rampant crime and bail reform. Conditions on Roosevelt Avenue deteriorated so badly they became front page news; the PA did not once appear to join our coalition. When our
coalition finally was able to appeal to a functioning police commissioner it took only one week for the National Guard to appear.
There has been no advocacy for the obvious issue of lower taxes – despite 500,000 taxpayers departing to lower tax states. There has been no PA leadership on investigating the corruption in the current government – despite indictments and resignations one after the other.
The PA has not advocated against the impact of illegal immigration -- rather he has argued in favor of an illogical sanctuary city policy, invisible as 200,000 illegal immigrants bused in and $6 billion diverted from other agencies.
The PA has not advocated effectively for better results from our schools, nor for some coherent long-term plan for NYCHA. In fact, under the current PA’s watch NYCHA residents have
claimed in a lawsuit that NYCHA did not advocate for its residents to receive the COVID era easements on evictions and rent moratoriums.
The PA has been unhelpful to the businesses which are central to NYC’s success – there is a tolerance of red tape instead of a focus on expediting jobs. The current PA did nothing to stop
Amazon being turned away from providing jobs in Queens, for example.
Basically the PA, along with the Mayor and Comptroller, has failed to grasp their core constitutional duties: providing an umbrella of public safety and support for the personal and
business communities to protect our citizens’ rights to enjoy their lives. Public trust has been destroyed by so many shocking failures on the basics of good government.
Assuming we can re-focus resources on the basics, and rebuild public trust, it could THEN be conceivable that we could get back to the core principles of what worked in the New Deal and
the Great Society: infrastructure, transitional not permanent support, novel tax and incentive schemes, legislation on equality, and programs to allow people the chance to improve their lives.
What would be your focus as Public Advocate?
First, we need to provide an umbrella of public safety and sanitation which supports OUR people: our families, small businesses, taxpayers. We need to advocate for day-to-day quality of life improvements to our citizens on our streets and subways. And this isn’t just about statistics – we need to OVERDO it with police, sanitation, and other resources until people feel not just a little comfortable again but very comfortable.
Second, we must reduce costs and taxes. Our taxpayers have had enough. The middle class can move out to other cities now. The PA should explore every means possible to reduce taxes by reducing the complexity of NYC’s programs. NYC also has outsourced 20% of its budget to independent contractors – fair enough – but with literally zero supervisory rights. NYC’s
budgets are not transparent – many of today’s budget costs are to make up for previous years.
We should look into itemizing expenses so New Yorkers can understand where their tax dollars are going.
Third, we need to stand for municipal excellence. This means we have to advocate for the highest quality commissioners, department heads, and standards of performance. This also
means we have to move away from distractions such as illogical sanctuary city policies and getting involved in international wars or disputes that are the domain of the Federal government.
Fourth, we need to improve communication and improve / tighten the feedback loop from our citizens. For example, there is no unified calendar of community boards, no group coaching of community boards, no systematic feedback from community boards. With 50 community boards meeting monthly there should be regular feedback from the PA’s office and then there
should be much more rapid response and monitoring of local complaints.
As far as complaints go, the sooner the better: if your shoelace is untied, you should tie it quickly, before you trip!
Fifth, we need to develop more awareness of how NYC’s image is perceived and how overlapping agencies’ concerns can influence business decisions. NYC should prioritize
businesses; the PA should be the chief revenue officer and not a Debby Downer. We should cut out red tape that makes property owners go crazy with permits. We should prioritize
investments which support business – for example, fixing the most visible subway stations first. We need to clean up the look of the city.
What symbolic changes would you seek in NYC?
NYC is a richly cultural team. We should re-name, proudly, our community boards by their local names: the Corona Board, the Bay Ridge Board, the Spanish Harlem Board. Our community board leaders should be compensated and trained together. We should instill pride and teamwork in our communities.
It is NYC’s 400th birthday too. Yet this has gone almost completely unmarked. We should find a way to recognize our achievements and celebrate our bright future.
We need to think harder about the signals we send with our public facilities. In the old days immigrants arrived under the shadow of the Statue of Liberty. Today, our 60 million visitors see a mental hospital as they cross the Triboro Bridge. They experience unsafe and chaotic public spaces such as Times Square and subways without safety doors. We need to improve the presentation of the city dramatically and quickly.
We should embrace the business and tourist communities. Businesses are our lifeblood. Tourism contributes $2,000 per household to the NYC economy. Yet tourists can easily go to
other destinations. We should weigh much more heavily the opinions of the tourism and
business communities.
Finally, we should create more specific benefits for NYC’s residents, whether this is discounts on subway passes for property taxpayers, or priority for bike riders. NYC residents should have some specific benefits so they sense that they are a priority.