Badillo Outlines Plans to Resolve Shortcomings With Police and Schools

Here are excerpts from an interview with Herman Badillo, a Republican who is making his fourth attempt to become mayor of New York City. The interview was conducted by reporters and editors from The New York Times, and is the second in a planned series of interviews with each of the major candidates.

Q. What, in your view, are the stakes in this election? What is this election about?

A. This election is about whether we want to continue the progress that the city has made under Giuliani or whether we want to go back to the situation as it was in 1992, and those are very high stakes. Because I campaigned with Rudy, 1993 I ran for comptroller with him. People were telling us that it was essential for Rudy to be elected if they were to stay in the city. And Rudy has proven that the city is manageable. Rudy has proven that standards can be changed. And I’ve proven that we can have standards at the City University.

Q. And what’s the unfinished work?

A. The unfinished work is to, first, to continue what has happened so we don’t go backwards. Want to continue having standards at the City University, continue having the enforcement of the law at the Police Department and then to bring about the same changes that I brought at the City University to the Board of Education. . . . We can make sure that children begin to get help at age 4, when they’re in preschool, and that they get their standards evaluated at every grade. . . .

Q. Is there anything that, in your opinion, was wrong about the past eight years, things that the mayor did wrong, that you weren’t happy with?

A. Well, yeah, but, you know, he has a different style than I do and it’s a question of style. I think that the people of New York City give him overwhelming approval on his job performance. They don’t necessarily give him overwhelming approval on his style of doing things, but everybody has a different style.

Q. There’s no policy difference that you can think of between a Badillo administration and a Giuliani administration?

A. There aren’t significant policy differences, carrying out the policy differences, but the policies themselves, which require performance by every department.

Q. What is your view of bilingual education?

A. My view is that it’s good if done the way I wrote the bill. The bill was for bilingual education for a limited period of time, maybe two years, in some cases even three.

Q. What is the default position if a parent does nothing? Does the kid then go in or not go in?

A. Then the child should be evaluated. I mean, many of the kids you can tell by talking to them whether they need bilingual education or not. When I came here I couldn’t speak English at all. That’s not a big test. But there are some kids who do speak English fluently and really only speak what we call household Spanish, to give you an example, which is a very limited thing. . . .

Q. But when you came here there was no bilingual education.

A. Naturally. That’s why I supported bilingual education, you see, because I came here, I came to live in East Harlem. I was looking at the teacher, the teacher was looking at me and we looked at each other for a few months. And I was able to move ahead. . . . But a lot of my colleagues dropped out of school because they couldn’t move as fast.

Q. Do you believe that there’s racial profiling going on in New York by the New York City Police Department?

A. It has not been proved. I know that the Justice Department conducted a very extensive study; they found no evidence of it. . . . And racial profiling is illegal and unconstitutional, and I would certainly want nothing to do with it.

But I support the idea of having what the Police Department does be verified. . . .

Q. Could you foresee any policy changes that you would push in the Police Department?

A. Policy changes are as follows: Police need better training and we have to move to change the racial composition of the city. We have developed, at the City University, a program in sensitivity training. . . . So far 5,000 policemen have participated in that course. As mayor, I would require every single one of the 40,000 policemen to take that course and I would pay for it, it would be free of charge to them.

But in addition to that, I obviously would like it if Albany would pass a bill to have the policemen live in the city, but they’re never going to do it.

So what I would do is I would expand the program, which we also developed at John Jay . . . and there would be several advantages to that. That program I would expand to 3,000 police cadets a year. Because the people who go to CUNY are overwhelmingly black, Hispanic and Asian, and a majority is women, you automatically have out of the graduating class a large number of blacks, Latinos, Asians and women, which would begin to change the racial composition.

Q. Are you saying that the tension between the police and the community has little to do with police behavior and a lot to do with the racial composition?

A. Oh no. It has to do with police behavior. But it also has to do with racial composition.

Q. Has that gap between the neighborhood and the police grown over the past eight years or has it always been the same since the days . . .

A. That gap is huge. And it’s come more to the attention of the public because of the problems with Amadou Diallo and Abner Louima . . . But those of us who know these neighborhoods know that those problems exist. And, you know, cops are people like everybody else.

Q. So many of your accomplishments have been as a Democrat.

A. Yeah.

Q. I’m wondering — your view on that party now, I mean, looking at it from all the years that you’ve been affiliated now with the Republican Party after running with Mayor Giuliani . . .

A. Yeah.

Q. What’s wrong with the Democratic Party?

A. What’s wrong with the Democratic Party is that a lot of the programs that we supported in the 60’s and 70’s did not work, unfortunately for me. I said then that they did not work. And I tried to change them. And my Democratic colleagues would not agree to any changes.

Q. What are your thoughts on the teachers’ contracts and what would your top priorities be when negotiating that? What would you ask for?

A. Well, Randi Weingarten and the teachers agree with me on the need for standards. And then, as I said, I agree that we have to reduce class sizes. For example, I’m a C.P.A. . . . but you don’t have to figure out — be a C.P.A. — to figure out something doesn’t count properly, because if there are 1,100,000 students in the schools and 80,000 teachers and you divide that it comes to about 14 students per teacher. So how come my wife and all the other teachers in the school have 36 kids? Somewhere teachers are not in the classroom. I would require that there be a written explanation to the mayor and the City Council for every teacher who is not in the classroom. . . .

Q. Would you also require summer school starting in first grade instead of waiting until third?

A. If the individuals are not able to perform, instead they have a choice of going to summer school or taking the course — back, which is what I said up at CUNY. We have the largest summer school program in the City University today, which no one has reported on. And it works and a lot of the kids pass and go ahead. But if they don’t pass, they don’t get promoted. In other words, there has to be a reality to the enforcement of standards, which Chancellor Levy has not done.

Q. You’ve identified public safety as the most important thing. Maybe by implication, education is the second most important. Tell us third, fourth and fifth. And what you want to . . .

A. Well, health is a huge problem. Including health, by the way, for immigrants. Because we have one-quarter of the city that has no health insurance. And that’s because they’re too young for Medicare. And they work, so they don’t qualify for Medicaid. But they work in little jobs — in bodegas, restaurants and other places where there’s no program for insurance. So we have to maintain the city hospitals. We have to expand the Child Health Plus programs. We have to take advantage of the new program that Governor Pataki just got implemented: Family Health Plus.

Because look at what’s going on in the city today. My father and mother died of tuberculosis when I was a child in Puerto Rico. My father, when I was 1; my mother when I was 5. But in those days tuberculosis was incurable — it was an epidemic. We are in danger of having an epidemic of tuberculosis in New York City when tuberculosis is curable because the people don’t have access to medical care. That’s outrageous. . . . It’s important that everyone get adequate health care because many of these diseases are contagious and they’re a danger to all of us. And so health care, to me, is an equally urgent priority because of the need. And it’s not difficult to give it a priority because basically it should be the school system — I mean every child should be enrolled in Child Health Plus and the chancellor and the principals and the superintendents should ensure that every child in the district is enrolled because if they have no money they don’t have to pay.

Q. The city’s been losing jobs in the last couple of months, revenues are now looking like they’re not going to be so robust. How serious a problem do you think this is going to be? And what do you do, cut programs, raise taxes?

A. No, you don’t raise taxes because you raise taxes, you lose jobs. That’s what happened under Dinkins where we lost 400,000 jobs which now have been restored. You lower taxes. The best example is the hotel tax where the hotel tax was lowered, you had more people coming into New York because New York City was no longer blacklisted by hotel associations. And the result was more people in hotels, more income for hotels.

We should lower the sales tax. We should get rid of the commercial rent tax.

Q. How do you pay for —-

A. I was saying — no, you can’t pay for it. I just told you, get more revenue. See, we have to encourage the development of jobs for people who are in the city.

Q. …if you’re not going to raise taxes, give us an idea of what your priorities are for cuts. What goes first?

A. Well, I told you, I’m a C.P.A., I also told you I was deputy mayor. When I came in as deputy mayor with Ed Koch, all the projections for the next 20 years were even worse than they are today, because it always is that way. The next year budget is always a deficit. But you find, if you look at it, that somehow that’s met. Why? Because without giving away too many secrets, there’s always some money stored away, there’s always a rainy-day balance. When there is a problem, as we had with Koch, you reduce the budget of every department by 5 or 10 percent, you provide for early retirement. You do a number of things —-

Q. You would do that across the board?

A. Yeah, you do it —-

Q. Including the Police Department?

A. Well, it depends. Some more, some less, depending on the department.

Q. Would you be O.K. with the level of police going down?

A. It depends — it’s like negotiating raises, depends. You call in each commissioner — which Ed Koch did, he met with every commissioner — and you evaluate how much you’re going to cut. You ask the commissioner, what harm is this going to do you?

Q. I’m looking for specifics here. You’ve already mentioned that you admired or at least liked some of the things in the Giuliani administration. But how, specifically, your administration will be different from that of the Giuliani administration. And similar to it.

A. Well, I’ve given you very clear specifics. I mean, on education I said I would do what I did when I was deputy mayor, change the system. I told you what I did at CUNY. I told you about health care. I mean, there’s a whole new approach and more aggressive strategy to bring about changes, but it’s not having more government, it’s bringing about less government and bringing about more benefits to the people. . . .

And I want to say on housing . . . We know that middle-income housing works because people own their housing. I believe in low-income housing being owned by the people.

Q. The Giuliani administration has been criticized for having an economic development policy — to the extent they have one — that favors subsidies to large corporations — the New York Stock Exchange and possibly building a stadium. Would you continue on that line? Would you do something different?

A. Oh, I would do something different. For example, I think it is outrageous that Michael Bloomberg, to this day, insists that he wants $14 million to enable him to stay in the city as he moves from 59th Street and Park Avenue to 58th Street and Third Avenue. Does anyone believe that Michael Bloomberg is going to leave the city? I mean, that’s a rip-off. But he says “Oh, I took advantage of the benefit. And then he says I’m not going to give it up until I’m elected because if I’m not elected, I’m going to keep the benefit.” A guy with $4 1/2 billion still grasping at $14 million. I mean that’s greedy. . . . I think that’s just an example of the kind of thing that I would be against. There are legitimate situations where you have a stock exchange which needs to expand. And you’ve got to help them because that’s important to the life of the city.

But stadiums are something that is not urgent.

Q. On the subject of Bloomberg, before you get to November you have to make it through September. Why do you think the Republican establishment hasn’t been warming up to your campaign?

A. Well, it’s only part of the Republican establishment. It’s simple: money, money. After all, he gave $150,000 to the state Republican Party. He gave $30,000 to Sal Fontese. I don’t know and I don’t care how much money he gave to the others. Some of the Republican leaders love money.

Q. Are there any commissioners in the Giuliani administration that you would keep on?

A. Yeah. I would keep Scoppetta — Nick Scoppetta. I think he’s doing a great job. Because he has lived through the experience of the kids he deals with there.

I would keep Bernie Kerik because Kerik, I know from the Department of Correction, did a wonderful job.

Q. Would you keep Chancellor Harold O. Levy in some role?

A. No. I would abolish the Board of Education and bring in a new commissioner. . . . I have a problem with Chancellor Levy, as I told you. Because I believe in real social promotion and I don’t see it. In today’s papers, about the Moreland Commission . . . I agree with the newspapers that a capital budget overrun of almost $2 billion is outrageous. Because that could be a hell of a lot of schools that are not being built. And Chancellor Levy says he knew about this. It is unconscionable to do that. I would have private enterprise build the schools with the same penalties that private enterprise exercises.



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