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Now, many including those that are wealthy, are concerned about some of the priorities of incoming New York City mayor. Mumdani now weighing on this was one billionaire who does not call New York City home. We're talking about Citadel founder Ken Griffin. He talked about the city yesterday at a conference in Paris.
I think that New York City is a red flag because people put aside good sense and common sense to luck somebody who is incredibly charismatic, who ran a really powerful campaign on social media, but who ultimately doesn't have the ability to deliver on the promises that he set forth. New York took a big set back during the Deblasio days, and I hope that Mondamie starts to think about how to pivot to a more thoughtful set of policies that
will allow New York City to maintain its position. Not only is one of the greatest cities in America, but one of the greatest cities in the world.
And that, of course was Citadel founder Ken Griffin there with Danny Berger of Bloomberg News. We want to get into our guest, Kathy Wilde. She is president and CEO outgoing president and CEO of the Partnership for New York City, which represents much of the city's corporate leadership. So we're talking about real estate developers, private equity firms, banks, many, many companies. Bloomberg LP, by the way, is a member
of the Partnership for New York City. She's also the part of New York City Mayor Elect Zoroon Mum Donnie's transition team, and we have a lot of questions to ask her. Also with us is of course Bloomberg News senior reporter Miles Mine Miller, all of us here in studio. I told you as you sat down that we have about an hour of question So we're going to start and Kep, we'll talk fest, we will talk fast. Why did you want to be a part of the transition team for the Mayor elect of New York City.
Well, I think to the point that Ken Griffin of Citadel just made and he's one of our members as well, and is a great corporate citizen of New York. In Miami.
He has.
He made the point about the concerns about the high expectations that Mayor elect Mom Donnie gave to his voters, and he, to his credit, brought out one hundred and seventy thousand new voters, mostly young people, in the primary. The cutoff age for his voter his voter support was forty five. So many of us are beyond that point and looking around and saying, oh, dear, does he have
the seasoning to be able to do this? And I think that he's got the energy and the intelligence, and it's up to all of us who have a little more seasoning and to be helpful. And so that's why I joined the transition team and was happy to do that, and then working on the economic development workforce activities there, But in general, I think working with him to capture
the enthusiasm and the energy. We came out of the pandemic very negative and we lost a million jobs, and then concerns about the cuts from the federal government on entitlement programs, whether it's Medicaid and health insurance, that there's the fight going on now. This casts a real pall over New York City, which is very dependent on those funds.
So I think that what he's brought is a positive energy and we ought to capitalize on that, and hopefully he'll be the best marketer this city has ever had.
Your role on the transition team, does it turn into a full time job in the Mamdani administration.
I am definitely not at my age looking for a full time job. I'm trying to get away from.
A full time because you're outgoing as president of the Partnership.
I am outgoing and I do not plan to take another job. But I do plan to help the new mayor if he wants it.
So beyond the transition period.
Would as an advisor, well, I don't know in what capacity. As I say i'm there, I'm certainly going to help Governor Hokeel deal with her challenges. Where I've worked closely with her, She's done a great job, and I think we're counting on her to continue to manage New York's relationship with Washington and the relationship between the state and the city, which.
Is very important.
Our affordability problems will not get solved by the city alone. This is going to take federal, state, city cooperation, and so I think all of us who are committed to New York City in the future. We have to be thinking of all three levels of government and how we work with the leadership at all levels.
You brought mum Donnie to meet with business leaders on several occasions. I wonder if you can talk about what his demeanor is in these meetings. Right, I've talked to Bill de Blasio about, you know, how he works a room, how mum Donnie works a room and really gets the
business community to be comfortable around him. But we'll talk about some of these policy proposals that business leaders wanted answers to What are the things that business leaders said to him, Well, that sounds like a lofty thing that won't get done, or hey, that sounds like something that is much more than we're willing to back.
Well, there's been quite an evolution since he won the primary, so in terms of his having a more nuanced position on a lot of the policies. You know, during the primary campaign there were whole slewer candidates and everything was one liners, and the social media stuff was one liners
or you know, show and tell. When you get into conversation with CEOs, they want to hear data, they want to hear facts, and I have watched him evolve and grow over the last eight months where we had conversations last week, one on housing, one on childcare, where he was there with a pen and a notebook, taking notes, asking questions, and coming back with very substance to responses.
So he has absorbed a lot and is now digging deep on these issues that you know, Ken Griffin expressed concern about the fact that he made a lot, you know, raised a lot of expectations, create a lot of idealistic notions out housing and childcare and how we can do all this for free. I think he's very quickly figuring out none of this is free. Raising taxes creates real issues.
You may raise the rates of taxes, but that may not result in more revenues if you scare people away, or if you scare companies away, or as we've seen lately, we're seeing a real threat to jobs in New York for the first time, first time in my experience over fifty years, are seeing a decline in the number of jobs in our financial services industry. Scary thing. That's forty percent of our state income tax revenues. We don't I mean, these are you know, we've got to pay attention. And
I think he gets that. But we've got to be at the table discussing these issues and helping figure out how to employers help solve the childcare problem.
Kathy, you know, one of the things I think about and I remember, you know, being at milk and years ago and talking with very wealthy investors who said, yeah, it's about time we pay more taxes. So what is the balance? And I am curious among those folks that you talk to who are very wealthy, and a lot of times their wealth is not an income, it's assets and it's investment gained. What do they think, though, should be maybe more of their contribution. And I know they
often contribute in philanthropy and so on. I know that, but I'm just curious, what is the balance of willing to pay more when again, I've had side conversations with folks are surprised that they aren't pay more in taxes.
So what I've found and for somebody who's upper income earned income in New York, which is you know, our biggest taxpayers, we're paying fifty five percent of our income to the federal, state and city government with you all in so we're paying more more than half my paycheck goes to the federal government. So it's not like we're getting away with something for the very wealthy who are capital gains, et cetera. The big problem there is if they move their legal residents out of New York City,
we don't get we don't share or get taxes. They aren't taxed here on the basis of their global income, and so we may get their a piece of their paycheck, but not their wealth, right, And that's a big question. It is. But what I found is over many years, when when business leaders and the big taxpayers are at the table and they see that number one government is doing what they can to figure out how do we offer the most efficient, the most effective services at the
lowest cost possible. How do we make government more efficient? On the one hand, then so then you begin to narrow, so what's the delta in terms of what what do
we need to raise revenues for? So, for example, when Dick Ravage in two thousand and seven, for Governor Patterson led the effort to figure out how are we going to pay to upgrade our subways which were falling apart, we supported and the business community supported creating a payroll mobility tax, where a portion of payrolls of corporations employers who were in the metropolitan region would go to that eighty two percent of the employees who work for our
companies based in Manhattan take the public transit to get here. That was something everybody signed off on we supported. We supported an increase in that tax twice. Same thing with congestion pricing. We supported congestion pricing. Obviously a user fee where you get something reduced congestion more time in your day,
is easier to sell, so it is not. And actually, when Mike Bloomberg was elected mayor right after nine to eleven, the city had to raise real estate taxes in order to rebuild and recover from the nine to eleven shot. We supported that eighteen percent tax increase in real estate taxes. So it's not that we're anti all taxes. Is government doing what they can to keep costs down, to be
responsible in what they're spending. And then what is the contribution and how do we make it that makes the most sense, gets the most bang for the buck.
Just very briefly, because you spent such a big part of your career working on affordable housing, I'm wondering if the mayor is sticking to freezing rent as his solution for affordability, because not one person that we have spoken to over the last few months thinks that not increasing supply and rather freezing rent is the right way to approach the affordability crisis with housing.
Well, the new mayor is very well aware that those are not mutually exclusive options and that if there's no economic return, nobody's going to build housing. He's figured that out, so he has He has said really since pre primary that he understood the private sector had an important role in the supply side, and he was going to work
on that. So I think that again his view is much more nuanced when he says now when he talks about freezing the rent, he says, and one thing that will enable us to do that is if we do reduce property taxes on rent stabilized regulated buildings. So he gets it. He can add and subtract.
So can you come back, I.
Said, you said, we had an hour, had an hour hour's worth of question, barely service.
But we still appreciate Kathy, Thank you, good luck, Thank having Kathy Wilde, President and CEO of Going, President and CEO of the Partnership for New York City, part of the transition team of the New York City Mayor elect, and of course, our Bloomberg senior reporter Miles Miller