New York City's Post-COVID Future

a fundamental change? A couple of weeks ago, via zoom from my home on Long Island, I spoke to the two people perhaps best able to answer these questions. Tom Wright has both the perspective and the influence to shape New York's future. He's the head of the century old

Regional Plan Association. Many New York fixtures that we take for granted, from a pedestrian Times Square to the George Washington Bridge, came from the minds at the r p A. Every twenty years, they put out their plan, thinking about how the demographics and economy of the tri state area are changing and what policies will best meet these new challenges. The last one came out in two thousand seventeen into a very different world than the one we inhabit now.

Katherine Wilde is the head of the Partnership for New York City. She's on every Most Powerful New Yorker's list every year. That's because the Partnership is the main condudate for communication, lobbying, and philanthropy for New York City's major corporations JP, Morgan, Jet, Blue, IBM, Google, Deloitte, Bloomberg, Blackstone. The list goes on and on. Anytime they want to speak with one voice, it's Kathy they go through. Her career began in nineteen seventies Brooklyn, during what had been

the worst of the city's then fiscal crisis. Despite crime, crumbling transit, and terrible city services, wild helped lead public private efforts that revitalized the neighborhood of Sunset Park. She sees foreboding parallels between New York's current crisis and the last time industry fled the city well in the nineteen seventies, we saw the industrial waterfront literally disappear in the matter of five years. American Can, American Machine and Foundery, Bethlehem Steel,

Rhinold Brewery, uh Domino, Sugar, Revere sugar. They were gone in five years between seventy and seventy five, and Brooklyn shrunk by four hundred thousand people. The city shrunk by a million people, lost half its fortune, five hundred companies, and there was a ripple effect both in the economy in terms of unemployment and at the same time in the city fiscal situation. As you know in v New

York's city went to bankrupt. They were saved by a bailout by the banks and the pension funds, the labor unions, and we got out of that crisis very slowly. It took forty years in vent Brooklyn's population was two point six million people. It did not reach that again until last year, so it took more than forty years to come back. That's more what we're looking like if we don't really get our act together quickly in New York City and the greater metropolitan area and figure out how

to recoup what this pandemic is doing to us. We have almost a million people lost jobs, so we are really facing a crisis that's very similar loss of GDP. It's is of our growth city product of our economic output is what's projected. So we're gonna look very much like we did at the end of the seventies when the city was totally broke and people were out of

work and leaving the city in droves. Yeah. Yeah. The only thing I'd add to what Kathy said earlier was that the million person loss actually would have been twice as much but for the one really successful policy during that time, which was that we were open to immigrants, and essentially for every two people who left the city, one rejoined from somewhere around the world, and it would have taken us even longer to recover if we hadn't

been an open society. Good point in Under current immigration policy, we won't have that luxury exactly now Um described for people you go first time, who you represent, and what they exactly do. Sure Regional Plan Association is a private civic group. We've been around, uh next weekend it will

be ninety eight years. And what we've done for almost a century is look at not just New York City and it's five boroughs, but the entire metropolitan region, all of Long Island, southwestern Connecticut, the Hudson Valley, northern New Jersey, and think about the long term health, wealth, prosperity, growth sustainability UM of that entire region. There is no public

sector entity that thinks about that. At the federal state levels, we have a couple of things like the m t A and the Port Authority that work on portions of it, but there's nobody kind of thinking about the entire region. So our p A is an independent voice has UM once every generation created a long range plan saying here are the major transportation investments, the economic development investments, the kinds of policies that we're going to need, and then

we advocate for them. And we've been around since things like nine eleven and two thousand and eight Superstorm Sandy, and we played a role in the rebuilding and each of those. What is the regional plan that your regional plans are based on a certain level of economic growth, and the bottom seems to have fallen out of there. What are you guys talking about? Yeah, no, you know,

that's absolutely correct. I mean when we released the plan three years ago, it was about how to deal with the kind of catastrophic growth we were facing at the time, and nowadays it's going to be much more about what do we do to get back on the path to growth? The way I think about what's happening right now is that certain parts of life in our economy and society have been on pause, and so nobody's going to restaurants,

we're all staying home and things. But other parts of our lives, changes that we're coming slowly have been accelerated. Um using zoom to do a podcast, distant remote learning, telemedicine, and so things that we're going to happen over time but we're happening fairly slowly have suddenly happened in just a couple of weeks instead, and they're not going to

snap back to how they were before. And so we're going to be doing a kind of planned four point two after this to take a fresh look at that some of the things, I mean, the two most controversial things we proposed three years ago. We're charging people to drive into Manhattan and shutting the subways down in the

middle of the night for maintenance. Um, we're now doing the shutting, and we're going to need congestion pricing even sooner then next year, because I worry that as businesses start to open and people avoid mass transit, we will, like cities in Asia already have see unbelievable traffic congestion. Were there discussions ever along the way about what we're

dealing with now? No, I honestly, we look at we looked at climate change, we looked at energy policy, we looked at economic policy and things, and we've even talked about public health in terms of social determinants and the built environment. But no, honestly, we never did see something like this coming. And I wish we had obviously now Katherine wild to tell us what group you're working with

now and what's their mission so to speak. Well, for many years, I've worked with the Partnership for New York City, and it's an organization that was created at the end of the seventies by David Rockefeller and the other bankers that worked with organized labor and with Governor Hugh Carey to restructure the city these finances and Rockefeller felt that

the city had gone into a tailspin. Business had paid no attention, and as a result, he felt that we should make sure that New York City never have that situation again where no one was paying attention. So he organized the Partnership to work with government, with labor, with civic groups like Tom's to bring the business leadership, the CEOs of the city to the table with their resources

so that we could solve these kind of challenges. Like Tom, we didn't anticipate a pandemic would be the biggest challenge the city would ever face in the twenty one century. But here we are. When did you become involved with the Partnership for New York. Originally I went to work for the Partnership as a volunteer in one when David Rockefeller announced that he thought it was the responsibility of the business community to rebuild the neighborhoods that had burned

down in the nineteen seventies. You were raised in Madison, Wisconsin. I were brought you to New York. They said, people moved to New York because they don't fit in where they grew up. That's I'm not a chiefe head. I'm not a chiefe head, but but I've been at the Partnership. I went there to rebuild neighborhoods. We did over forty

units of affordable housing ownership housing. So if you go to any of the communities of the city that are thriving today but burned down in the seventies and eighties, they're full of owner occupied homes where people moved out of public housing, bought a home at a very low cost on free city land, private bank financing, UH, combination

of resources, limited developer profit. That's the kind of solution that we're going to need again today, where everybody's pitching in the banks, the builders, the community, the home buyers put down their savings as the down payment for the equity before the houses were built. UM, and it's repopulated the city with UH, with middle class families that had fled in the previous decade. It says here that you played a role in the incredible story of New York

City's pushed to make its own ventilators. How did you get involved with that? We have an investment fund at the Partnership that invests in sort of what comes next, And we had invested in a company in the Brooklyn Navy Yard, which is probably the most exciting economic development project in the twenty one century. And so one of the companies, their new lab that we had supported, got the idea when we had not enough ventilators in the city for the number of people coming into the I

c U. They said, let's invent a ventilator. And in four weeks. It was actually built in a factory in Long Island City, and my role in that was simply when they needed a part, to get to the CEO of that company and say we need a part now, and we know there's a long line for this, but uh, let's get it first. You know, there's a lot of uh neurosis and a lot of anxiety uh out there right now. So there's a lot of speculation of what's

going to happen. And I thought people say to me that they anticipated over the next two to three years about a half a million people will leave New York City, maybe even more. Many people feel that that New York in particular is a feted Petrie dish of viralogical threats to them. Now they're very, very scared. We live on eastern Long Island for our weekend slash summer home, and we're out here now, living out here since March twelveth.

We're gonna stay out here through the summer. And we have friends of ours who are here who said told us they're not going back. They're going to stay in their houses here and enroll their kids in school here or do an online thing. Are you worried about that ton. I'm worried about it, but but I think it's very addressable. I mean, we did see after nine eleven there were concerns that New York was going to see continued terrorist attacks,

and we managed to make the city safe again. Um, the barometer of the city, a lot of it is around the transit system. If people feel safe getting on the subway and busses again, then they'll generally feel safe in New York. They'll feel safe going to a restaurant, and they'll feel safe going to school or an office. And so we've been looking at this through the lens of what's it gonna take to make it not just

feel safe but be safe. Do we shift resources towards the transit police and have a lot of transit cops down They're saying, if you don't get a mask on, you ain't getting on the subway. That's it. In London, when the Tube before they invested and it would get overcrowded, they would during rush hour in the morning, they would close the gates and say nobody's able to get onto the system until some people get off because of the overcrowding conditions, and they were worried about people I think

literally falling into the tracks. I think that we're going to have to start to actively manage these systems much more than we've been doing it. And by the way, earlier today, about twelve hours ago, the New York City subway shut down for the first time in its history so that in the wee hours they could do cleaning

and maintenance of the system. It's something we posed about three years ago, and I took a lot of heat for it, um but I think that to make it safe for the the people who use it between five am and one am, uh, you have to shut it for a couple of hours just to just to do that maintenance. So we've already taken that first very dramatic step, and I think more of those things are going to

be coming online. I think the m t A is going to be learning from other global cities about best practices and what they're doing to make the system safe. And I think that wearing masks, more frequent cleaning of the system, making sure that it's not overcrowded. You can't just leave it up to bus drivers to tell people they can't get on a bus. You've got to come up with better ways to do it, and so I

think all of that's on the table. Well, he's brought the governor has brought in Mayor Bloomberg, who's going to set up a contact tracing system, which will be important for transit because if you do come in contact with someone who comes down with the virus, you'll be informed, you'll be tracked. There's going to be a whole new public how regime, and New York will probably do that better than any place else in the world and throw more resources at it than any place else in the world.

So that's what we've got to sell now. On the other hand, I heard about creating space for private officers, for folks to work from their Long Island area if they don't want to be at home with their four kids. Um. I heard the same thing today about Palm Beach, Florida, that they're looking at developing similar kind of facilities, and

we're going to hear more and more of that. And what we've got to start thinking about, which is something the Regional Plan has been thinking about for a while, is thinking about our region from northern New Jersey to Fairfield, Connecticut to Long Island and saying, okay, if third of the people that come into the city want to work from home. How do we make sure that the region as a whole benefits from that, How do we replan

our transportation system to work for those people? And what are we going to do, most importantly within New York City to develop the next generation of jobs, whether it's the folks to wing, public health tracing, or or the other things that we're going to have to develop to reinvent the city. The only other thing I wanted to mention on this note that I'm really worried about that

you don't hear much about, is our universities. So much of our leadership in the innovation economy and of the kids that the talent that stays to New York and grows here comes from overseas to go to our great universities. They're having a terrible time. They had to close down in March, uh complete the semester, complete the year, and summer school online. They've got people suing them to get

their tuition back. They've got horrible time lining up, especially international students for next year, who really pay the freight. So all these are issues that we have to figure out. I think the university situation is something we should be paying a lot of attention to. One thing I was also curious about, is what do you think is going to happen to city, state income taxes and sales taxes in the immediate sense in New York About the state's

projecting thirteen billion over the next year um of lost. Yeah, the city's about UM seven point four billion. Yeah, reduced revenues, So that's what or some substantial yeah. Catherine Wild of the Partnership for New York City with Tom Wright of the Regional Plan Association. Tom has the distinction of being here's the things only two time guest. Hello Tom, How are you good to see you? Tom? I always assumed that, like Paul McCartney, Billy Joel or Barbara streisand would be

our person. We've decided to have pandemic to do it virus. Tom could book you twice. Last year, Tom fiscal watchdog Nicole Julys and two thousand twenty one Marrow front runner Corey Johnson came on the show. The discussion was about how to fix the city's troubled transportation agency, the m t A, which is largely controlled from Albany. Long before the crisis of COVID nineteen, Johnson had strong feelings about Albany's type grip. The m t A is set up

to deflect any level of accountability. So we can talk about all these super important issues on repairing, contracting, and on negotiating with unions and expanding the subway system. But until you get down to the fundamental issue of singular accountability and responsibility, everyone is always going to be able to point fingers, which is why I called for municipal control. For our full conversation text m t A to seven zero one zero one. That's m T A to seven

zero one zero one. This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to here's the thing now. More on the post COVID future with Kathy Wilde and Tom Wright. The New York region's transit agencies, the Port Authority, the mt A, New Jersey Transit, and the Long Island Railroad have received some money from the federal Cares Act, but it's not nearly enough. They are facing a devastating operating deficit. Um

they are seeing, you know, roughly their ridership decline. And we are more reliant in New York on transit fares paying for operations than anywhere else in the country. In Los Angeles they subsidize that. They don't they don't charge people that much and and so it doesn't make as big a difference. Um So, the m t A is losing about two hundred million dollars a week right now because of the loss of ridership on the subways, bus,

is Long Island Railroad, Metro North. Uh. They got some money from the federal government, but it's not enough and they're gonna need They've gone back and asked for another three point nine billion dollars and if they don't get that, the only option for them is essentially to raid their capital budgets and to take They had just approved a fifty one billion dollar mt A five year capital plan. It was the largest and historic plan, funded by congestion

pricing and other things. And if they have to raid that for the operations, it means that the system will start to decline in what all the things we talked about on the show exactly, signals and and everything like that. And so it's really important to protect that capital budget. At the same time, the capital plans were created in

a different environment. Um I was talking to ahead of the Port Authority the other day, and you know they're going to have to take a fresh look and think about whether they can spend the kind of money on on the airports and the Lincoln Tunnel and the tolls and others that they expected. And all of those capital plans were driven by projections of future growth that may not materialize either. So I think a kind of reassessment of the capital plans is going to come. There's going

to be a reduction in them. The key is to make sure that we don't raid them too much for the operating and that we think about what are the new demands that the system is going to have again, making sure that the subway is safe, making sure that

we can um collect tolls efficiently and and things like that. Well, the other piece of this is, though, if we can get the federal government to come up with a rational response in terms of helping us close the gaps not just on the transit system, but the loss of city and state revenues and the expenses that have been incurred by the city and state to get us out of

the hole. Our tax structure is already uncompetitive, but the inertia of loving New York, loving its call cultural activities, its public gatherings, Broadway, all the things that are now gone. At least for the moment, there was, there was a stickiness to New York that kept us all here paying high taxes, putting up with the longest commute in the country. That that is threatened right now, and to the extent

our local government solution is to raise taxes more. That's going to actually have the exact opposite effect, will end up further gutting the city. We've got to figure out how to come together with plans Number one. We should be fighting together to make sure that Washington comes through with at least half a trillion dollars for cities and states across the country, and then make sure that that money is allocated on the basis of the harm done,

the injury done. It doesn't bother you that we're just ladling on more debt for the federal government. Well, since these cities are our city is a response sable for a big chunk of the federal economy. That and we send twenty one billion dollars more in taxes to the federal government than we get back every year up to now. Their vested interest is in making sure that our cities are functional, that we can keep the police going to great point. I don't want to say as goes New York,

so goes the country, but it's true. It's true in that giver taker thing. I mean, you sit there and see you want to say that, McConnell. You want to say, Hey, Kentucky, you guys just live off of all the money you make. Absolutely so Cole and you guys just live off of all the money that you collect. Him of it, and we'll keep all of our money. I'll give you another number. In the two and a half trillion that's been allocated so far under the Federal Cares Act, new York got

five hundred dollars per COVID case. Montana, which had a total of four hundred and fifty seven cases, received two point seven million per case. That's how the politics have worked. And when New York was doing great as an economy, that was okay, we subsidized the rest of the country. That situation is reversed. We are the hardest hit city in the world. We're twenty percent of the deaths in

this country. We're in our city. We have to reverse that conversation and make our case is four more years of Trump and his attitude towards cities and those he used as his political non supporters. Does that terrify you for the future of New York. Well, in the case of cities, Trump's bark is a little worse than his bite. I think he's going to support the city's getting this money. I really do, because because it's in his interests. Even of export imports come through the port of New York

and New Jersey. We are the entry point to the global marketplace. We are the financial services capital of the world. There's no way that they can write us off. So I believe that it is um in Trump's interest to support New York City, and I think he'll He usually acts on his interests. Um Now, tom My question for you is it seems like moments ago that de Blasio was running for president. Now, of course Deplasio is in a lot of hot water and people with a lot

of criticism. But I want to give him the benefit of the debt, even though my attitude abo about him as evolved. What was he thinking Do you have a little bit more of an understanding from your position? What was he thinking that he decided to keep things open

that way. Look, there's been an enormous amount of frustration, to put it mildly, from in our communities with with a lot of the decisions that he's made, um not moving more quickly on on protections, and just kind of not seeming to understand even to this day as he kind of drives around back to Brooklyn to to walk through his his favorite park, without realizing that that when you're sending a message that everybody is supposed to be hunkering down and staying at home, that maybe he should be.

He should be demonstrating that himself personally. Um uh, de Blancio is God. I don't know exactly how to answer this, Alec. I mean, it's you want me to rescue you, you jump in, Cathy. You'll do it more politically than I will, because this is a first time experience for all of us.

And I really think that the governor and mayor have done as much as they possibly could on this balancing act between seeing nine hundred thousand people out of work, children out of school and not getting an education, kids not graduating, closing it. This was a terribly painful decision to make, and I will give them both credit, both of them, have consulted with the health community number one, with the business community and employers number two, with the

educators number three. They've both worked their tails off to get computers to kids who didn't have them. China for a while cut us off from supplies, the masks and the gallons, et cetera. De Blasio set up a whole system. We're making those in the Navy yard. We've delivered as of today, a million face shields to our hospitals out of the Brooklyn Navy Yard. They're feeding hundreds of thousands of people. The city is under Katherine Garcia, the Sanitation commissioner,

was anointed foods Are and she's taken over. They're doing a terrific job of feeding the healthcare workers, of feeding the kids that are no longer getting school lunches. The dimensions of this crisis, and for you know, government often can't walk into gum. At the same time, this has been a crisis on every front. I've been on the phone with them twenty four seven and they're all working their tails off. What would you like to see Cuomo

do in the short term and the long term? The state? Well, Number one is the city and state have to be have to be speaking with one voice. Obviously, I guess you just made my point, which is a very difficult thing between the bassio and Cuomo, so I'm told well, And it was between Rudy and Potechi, and it's all between Lindsay and Rockefell. It's always been there. There's a tension there. Um. New York City is the economic heavyweight, and the upstate has always felt we screwed around with

their politics. That doesn't go away, and there's a natural tension there. But but so far, so good. We had them together announcing the closure of the subway from one to five in the morning. They both had to sell it. It was particularly controversial because it meant getting the homeless out of the subway, and that's a very politically charged issue, and they stuck together on that. Sharing the responsibilities between the city's public health system and the larger voluntary system

that the state regulates. They understand the importance of working together, particularly as we start to re open the economy and bring people back. We have to sell confidence. That will not happen if we're a house divided, if we're a city in state competing with each other. New York historically

has been resilient because we were pragmatic. During Occupy Wall Street, the Washington A f l c I O. TRUMPA tried to get the unions to march with Occupy Wall Street, to march Don Broadway in protest and create a giant outpouring. Organized labor leaders refused to do it. They said, we need the financial industry in New York. We need them to come back. And they rose above the ideological to come down on the side of New York. And that's the moral, the lesson that we have to take forward.

We've got to stick together. I was thinking as you were talking, Kathy. In the seventies, Um, to help the city get out of its financial crisis, the Rooten family and members of the real estate community started prepaying taxes

because they knew that the city needed the seats immediately. Correct, correct, And you know right now, Um, the big companies Bloomberg announced this, some the banks have announced at MasterCard they're paying their vendors within one or two days as soon as they can for the very same reason, just to keep the money in the system and to keep businesses going. Yeah, which makes a lot of sense. I'll also just say on the to take the regional perspective, Cathie will be shocked.

Governor Cuomo has also been instrumental in pulling together the neighboring states and maybe laying the groundwork for creating more of an ongoing coordination between these states on investment policies and other things. Because if all the things come to pass where some people start to say, let's let's leave accounts payable outside Manhattan, well what we like is for

them to stay in the metropolitan region. For for the businesses to see themselves as regionally based, distributing their their workforce across the region as needs and costs make the most sense. And that's beneficial for all of us. And I and I think that we're I think it's been two remendous leadership on the part of the governors up and down the Northeast working together. One question I had

for you, Kathy. You spoke out forcefully against the city's workers Bill of Rights granting sickly even hazard pay for essential workers, which of course put you at odds with the Corey Johnson and so for people like that, why why was that the case? Well, I testified yesterday that it's not a matter of lack of compassion. We all share that, but the burden of some of these um of some of these requirements, and this is focused on

essential industries. Well, essential industries is everything from the securities industry Wall Street, to the healthcare workers to the grocery store workers, etcetera. And there's a lot of difference in those. And at the federal level we have done a lot to get money to workers with the enriched unemployment. There

are issues of resources. Do we have the resources the businesses that they're asking to pay essential workers and the hospitals, by the way, they are all stretched very thin financially. So it's not that you can just pass a law like you could do in the last twelve years when we had prosperity. These businesses have profit margins of five cent or less and a lot of those are gone. Our consumer spending year over year is down thirty in New York City since a year ago, so that money

has disappeared from our economy. There's a tendency to think, well, we can make a law and fix this. A law will not fix this. We have compassion for these workers, we all want to reward them, but you're not going to do that with a law, you have to figure out another way to do that. And in the case of the nineteen seventies crisis, the unions, the workers sacrifice, They sacrifice, their salary increases the public service workers. I

think we can count on that. Again. That's what was my next question, which was do you think that New York unions, which are pretty tough union can be relied upon to sacrifice? Again, I absolutely do, I absolutely do. I think they care about New York. They've got a huge stake in the future of the city. Just as I think everybody has to sacrifice. People have to see

that business is sacrificing. People have to see funds that are being raised by the one percent to support the undocumented workers who don't qualify for the Trump unemployment insurance. That's the kind of thing that's going on in New York, top end restaurants that are delivering meals to poor communities and to healthcare workers. I absolutely believe that everyone is going to make a sacrifice for the city because we

all love it. We've got to get that back. The question is timing and how much suffering is between now and then. Yeah, if I can, if I can agree with that and and one of the things that we do have as an advantage in New York, frankly, is that we went through these tough times over the last twenty years. Between nine eleven two thousand and eight Sandy, the city came together after each of those communities started looking out for each other, started to realize how how

important those connections were. Because I talked to my counterparts around the country, and I don't think other cities and metro regions have that kind of resiliency that New York does because they haven't been tested over the last generation the way we have. I'm trying to focus myself on what we can control, what we have the power to change. You know, one thing we're all very concerned about is Broadway because Broadway is maybe not a big cylinder in

the city's ecind of was one of them. And I've been on the line and talking to people a lot about what we're going to do. You know who I suggest you talk to, Henry Tims, who's president of Lincoln Center. That's a very good point, Todd Haimes from the Roundabout Theater, which I'm on the board of. Not to end on a downer, but the arts and culture even more so than restaurants. I it's really hard to see what it's going to take for Lincoln Center and and and Broadway

to come back. That's going to be really hard. Some of the big ones which have we listen to Philharmonic that I'm on the board of, had reserves that they were piling up in order to do the renovation of David Geffen Hall. And I mean, I think they're gonna be okay in terms of they're going to survive. It's just that they're gonna have to dip into that money that was capital improvement money as operating cash, and that we're gonna we're gonna have to go back several spaces

on the game board in terms of raising money. Listen, I'm very grateful not only for you doing the podcast, but for the work that you do on behalf of the people of the city of New York. Thank you so much, Thank you, thank you. It's always a pleasure. Stay safe, and I'm gonna be sending you my proposal for the funding for therapy for sixty two year old out of work. I'll add it in the fifth Plan.

But you also have an important role as that champion for the city that everybody would enjoy hearing from al Thank you, Kathy Wilde and Tom Wright. At least the private sector effort to bring the city back from this pandemic will be in good hands. This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to here's the thing. Oh,