welcome to represent n y c the manhattan neighborhood that work thanks for joining us i'm new york state controller tom tenafly state controller i serve as new york state's chief fiscal watchdog because new york city is such an important part of our state and an important part of our state's economy my office keeps a close eye on what's happening in the five boroughs today i'll be discussing topics that affect the city with two people who have deep roots here we'll start off with one of manhattan's newest council members new york city council member keith powers was elected last november and took office this january representing district four on the east side of manhattan he congratulations on your election and thank you for joining us today thank you for having me us that's incredible so just give us a sense that you're suddenly into the position what what are your priorities as you start who are first of all thank you for having me and it's great to be here with somebody who i admire so much as a public servant and also as you know has been for the last twelve years a great advocate for the city and my community so i kind of picking up where dan leaves off a few priorities that i see just like he saw as essential to my community one is the ongoing last of living in new york city particularly around house saying and protecting and creating new new affordable housing in the city ensuring that a small business is particularly my district but they need a lifeline they need they need a way up they  know that they have a future here in the city so dan did some work around retail vacancies in protecting small businesses so i feel like that's just going to be continue ongoing issue homelessness is homelessness and and the addressing both  intergenerational poverty in this city and giving giving people comfort that there's a that the city's has a real plan for moving forward in homelessness and we hear it every day and then and then finally it's hard not to talk about congestion and traffic in the m t a at this particular moment so in my district we have big priorities like the second avenue subway we want to see funded we are the most congested part part of this probably state and we have the train shutting down as well so we have a few congestion pricing will probably be on the table do you have a sense that compared to when the bloomberg administration of in supposal that there's a greater likelihood that some version of that might might be embraced or in fact the opponents particularly from the outer time the time when we when the first proposal came forward and i think that it demi and looking at it now as a council member i do recognize that there's a difference one is just at times sometimes makes it easier to do policies as people get better acquainted with what the policy might look like and how it impacts them i recall back into the thousand and eight i think it was when he put his proposal forward that we were looking at the dividing line of sixtieth street at the initial proposal and people were literally talk about making a turn out of their garage and ending up in the zone and having to pay so there's a lot of logistics that go into this so i think time will be will be helpful and supportive to the plan and i think we spent more time in those coming in those last years putting together a proposal that i mean i think the move to your plan and other plans have spend time actually working with the stakeholders to build a plan that addresses so staten island for instance would have lower fees on the verrazano bridge lower tolls so you see you see some support coming out of places like that but ultimately i do feel i fear but others i believe that there will be a will be a tough political fight to get it passed because of the the dynamics of of in the city versus out of the city so i do think there is an uphill battle that it's another well that change the way that the the relationship in the tent in the landlord some cases so we talk about the rent regulation laws so to me one of the easiest fix is a low not so easy politically is to really strengthen the regulation laws in albany we know  a tough ikes it's been a tough fight for decades but that's really where the heart and soul of it lies in the city i think the city has tried to step up and play a role where tat so even just last year the city council passed a bill to allow for low income new yorkers to have legal counsel understanding that that is the difference in for some cases of staying in your apartment which might be a good affordable partment or ending up on the streets of new york city and that those types of issues are really the thing that has led to a some of those support systems really prevent our our homeless population from growing even more than having to put more money into it there's a ongoing debate i think in this city about whether we should keep building and building and adding housing and whether we should be building you know new types of programs around housing or we should be doing something  different my approach here is particularly is we should be looking at the low and middle income housing is we should be looking looking at city owned property as much as we to be prioritizing housing we should be looking at strengthening protections in the city where we can and in the  state around regulation and around programs we should be taking advantage of programs like to senior citizen right increase exemption adding more money into it so seniors feel like they can stay here and then what we did cooper is we had the city made an investment to do preservation there and to make sure that the existing tenants didn't feel ongoing pressure from their landlord to kick them out and that there was going to continue ongoing affordability there from the city's role some of just resources putting money into as the some of some some neighborhoods and communities to ability it provides it provided a good middle class a lot of it was in manhattan near my district where you know hotspot communities where we do have a land in this city i do want to look at these types of programs that are really for the middle and lower  working class new yorkers the one challenge that expires you know and that was the big challenge of it so we have it's going to cost more money to do it if we don't want it to expire but those type that type of private public partnership made sense and it worked for a long time unfortunately a lot of expired so we have to look for ways to do it for the long term in the community services sidey the city controller and others have come out in support of this plan as well so i think i did we can find a path towards a post election november twenty sixth and people are very concerned that our political system our political process getting more people involved the influence of money in new york city which is for them what we have in the state unfortunately for us is that you have public financing of campaigns and i think that's a great advantage of terms of leveling the playing field providing competition incentivizing small donations and so on but i know that you're one that believes we need to do more to open up the process have more sunlight more transparency more accountability talk a little little bit about your reform agenda and gems of the city's election and political process that i think there's two parts of it one is the financing and one is the actual operations of it so i talked about both in my campaign because after that election where some people didn't like the results of the election obviously but everybody has sort of seemingly had a frustrating experience going to vote long waiting long lines to wait no early voting you know people showed up they weren't even registered to vote or they're at the wrong place they found their polling place changed so that that sort of essential part of our of our process of democratic process voting should be easy it should be accessible it should be something that people feel like they they wanted to give an inch of and not feel like they have to go the city's role can be in improving the elections process and making it easier to vote the city council just passed a bill earlier this year late last year to do early voting started to do online registration so that's a good step we had to find where the city's authority lies work with those in albany to make sure that we can open a process and then here in the city the campaign finance board some people complain about i think it's a model agency for doing for running our elections i did i was a beneficiary of it i am not you know like many other cancer running somebody is independently wealthy i really relied on small donations to help myself get elected and to raise the money i want to offer that opportunity everybody so we want to constantly look at where we can strengthen the process to make sure more people get into it so whether that is lowering the threshold for getting in expanding the amount of money that's available for public running so whether we can offer more matching funds to people particularly in larger races i think it's a good model i think it's a good system we're going to focus on and hopefully the next four years of improving that system and finding ways that city can make voting and the democratic process a lot easier so you're starting out the city council and the year began with a lot of changes and there's a quite a competition for speaker of the city council so you were thrown into the middle of that one of your manhattan neighbors is see the council coming together of this point i think couple observations one is you know it's so it's a fifty one with member body and we vote for speaker amongst a fifty one to fifty and and plus one member so it's a weird process because you don't go out to the voters  priorities to the public in these forums and then also talk to your colleagues but what they want out of the institution what they want for themselves in their districts i think i think we're doing well so far i think that our new speaker demi has demonstrated capacity to sort of put this together get people on board  not everybody is one hundred percent happy but that's the way these things work and everyone everybody should walk over away feeling like they have an institution that works there on the committees they want to be on and they'll be able to do the work for their community so couple observations for myself on the chair of the criminal justice committee riker's island is going to be so he's interested somebody like me to be able to do an important issue my colleague carlina rivera is overseeing h and h knew a lot of a lot of the freshmen members are getting really important roles and a lot of the members that were already on committees whether transportation committee consumer affairs general welfare oversee the homeless are staying put it will be continuity so i think that it's he's empowered institution in a real way and he so i do know a new oversight function which i think will be of interest to a lot of people to see where that goes and how that develops but i think he believes in the institution and he believes that the speaker's role should be empowering the members and leading through them and i think that's a good i think it's a good way to be as a speaker you have a members they got elected with the mayor four years ago was really a progressive wave state came in with bought into speakers well obviously the progressive caucus played a large role in that and so there was a really a true moment city now i think for four years later members are looking at their own both forty something members are going to be out for election to be looking for their own futures they're going to looking at what their priorities are relationships change in the meantime we have a new speaker some are new committees i think for certain is going to change we're not sure how much yet but i think that with certain big ticket issues i think you're going to see the council you know exert some independence but we'd be foolish to like look at look at the relationship on the other side of city hall and not believe it's important to us the city agencies that we work with the mayor himself the mayor's staff those are important to our they're important to our communities because they have we have a lot of work to do with them so we're i don't think it's going to be a wildfire i think it's going to be i think it's going to be a process where we you know we want to show the councils an independent body at the same choice in your city council representative we're going to take a short break and then continue discussing new york issues with my next guest so we will be right back welcome back to represent and why c m new york state controller that happily my next guest professor douglas museo is widely known as an expert in new york politics and new york government he's an invaluable resource at a source of insight and inspiration for members of the press and for his students at brook college doug thank you for being here you are a new york treasure and we've switched roles for years i was on your side and i don't now access number one quality equal to access give us a quick up to how you feel all you love association with killing how important is that to our city and state today it's literally vital to the life of the city and  state i mean we have twenty four campuses they enroll five hundred thousand plus students of all gender class ray seth and it is just incredible and they all are institutions that not only deal with the five hundred fifty thousand students but they are anchors of the community for example  community college as an anchor for activities are not entertainment sports so they are cultural facilities and they have exhibits and speakers and  and it's the life of the city is there and then the court did the nature of the law students who are you know often first generation and we mean that's why that's why i've stayed in county for thirty seven years a that opportunit to moved but it's wonderful you see the you know the newest immigrants in your classroom almost as soon as they arrive so it has tremendous and it's sentiments educationally it's one of the finest institutions in the country i mean my my on institution group college is ranked among the best dressed colleges in the country the business school we regularly be cowed carnegie mellon and berkeley it is very highly regarded the school of international affairs is is wonderful at peru so brut is only one example and there are others of the system so and and our students stand any five percent that and i'm going to work forever i learn from my students well you talk about diversity immigration hot hot topics at the national level here in new york though we are still fighting and i'm supportive of this to enact the dream act in the state to provide financial assistance to all students including the children of undocumented families when when when you speak to those students what what sense do you get are they are they fearful of what's going on in this country or of they have the whole range of emotions they are they are fearful some of them legitimately because of this that is are they are they are hardworking and they are worried about getting they're worried about housing there they're worried about getting to work on on a subway system that operates there and there was a word about pain for school even though it is it is an an immense bargain and the quality plus the price and increased demand on the institutions of the institutions feeling a lot of pressure and then the standards are going up it's incredible  you don't have that anymore we miss that but i still see your your comments in the newspapers i hear you on the radio since november two thousand and sixteen everything's upside down everything that we all thought we had just about politics just speaking for myself is it is so unpredictable and chaotic though predictable it is it is said institutionally is a political scientist i look at it and he is assaulting all the major underpinnings of american society are relatively unified culture a a a judicial system in the media the the bureaucracy new york is definitely the crosshairs the federal reform the health care changes the budget cuts go down a long list we were really going to be separate world we're already sending you know we did a report up there that morning report we had ninety one cents back for every dollar we said a few years ago now it's down to it doesn't seem to me that his base minority though it is has really not if they're still there you know and what will happen to those that are outraged will they sit on the sidelines will will the opposition the democratic party stay divided and not unified what you know ken ken the house flipped this year in the senate flipped this year yes sure asked me to do you know the easy question us i mean it is conceivable that the senate and the house flip in is republicans from the really well i mean there are more democratic seats up there are more democratic seats that war one by trump and conservative you know we the southern or mountain states so it's problematic and to win twenty five or twenty six house seats is not impossible it's happened in my lifetime in the post watergate election i don't know i'm not saying one because  i don't see the democratic party and a leadership merging that it gives us gives the democrats coherent direction on the national phase of the campaign and then you need quality candidates now you've got you've got and influx of women candidates you've got an influx of young candidates they're in there  positive signs out there that that dead dead might negate any kind of speculation at this point but it's january or early and look up polarizer become you know we talk a lot about california new york jersey connecticut those states already that have mostly democrats in the house i think connecticut has any republican house now any more jersey might have one or two california got some so if if those seats are probably the most vulnerable if they lose some of those states just becoming so completely blue and completely red and how do you how do you have a national consensus again if you don't come that you don't international consensus and it looks like the national consensus that we thought we had was only partial i mean you look at the thirty five or the thirty to thirty five percent of the trump voters you know how do you talk with them  travel around and you see this all the time in school young people are i find they are either incredibly engaged in what's going on or incredibly turned you have no middle ground up and if we lose that vitality of that youthful interest  motivation i really fair for where we're headed i you know why i am fearful of where we're headed to you know whether the young people are active or not but you have this divide you've always had t divide between the engage in a much larger number of the disengaged because they're worried about you know transportation and jobs and everything else in this school work so you always had that  some sense and not necessarily in direct political action but what i would call social good work and it's hard sometimes to get their opinions you know you do surveys but it's not like the old days everybody was home to answer their phone about fifty percent of our sample from cell phones or you know yeah you know you have to i mean for the very reasons that you suggest i mean if you are not doing cell phones you're losing you know you would be a teen too you know