Walking up to the guard’s booth at the entrancE to City Hall Park in Downtown Manhattan, one notices immediately that there is a new man presiding over New York City: Eric Leroy Adams. The friendly sentry who asks me to show him my identification is not wearing a mask. Under the previous mayor, Bill de Blasio, he would have probably been wearing two masks, or perhaps even more. Adams, who was sworn in shortly after midnight on January 1, 2022, has demonstrated a commonsense approach to running the city that has garnered support from many New Yorkers. Unlike his predecessor, Adams has taken a tough-on-crime line of attack and reintroduced a plainclothes unit of the police that was disbanded by de Blasio. He has also made efforts to reverse the decline in the city’s standard of living that occurred under the previous administration, including implementing a zero-tolerance policy on homeless people using subway cars as their living quarters.
Perhaps the 110th mayor of New York City has empathy for commuters riding the crime-ridden subways because he served as an officer in the New York City Transit Police and then New York City Police Department for over 20 years, retiring with the rank of captain. Adams is no stranger to politics or to the needs of Brooklyn’s Orthodox Jewish community. He served in the New York State Senate from 2006 to 2013, representing the 20th Senate district in Brooklyn, which includes Crown Heights. In November 2013, Adams was elected Brooklyn borough president, the first African American to hold the position. He was reelected in November 2017. Then on November 17, 2020, Adams announced his candidacy for mayor of New York City, and he went on to defeat Republican Curtis Sliwa in the general election in a landslide victory.
Adams’ long trajectory from abject poverty to City Hall is most admirable. Born in Brownsville, Brooklyn, on September 1, 1960, he was raised in a rat-infested tenement in Bushwick. He recalled that his family was so poor that he often brought a bag of clothes to school just in case his family was suddenly evicted. At age 14, Adams joined a gang, the Seven Crowns, and would hold money for local hustlers. Together with his brother, he once stole a TV and a money order, and the two were later arrested for criminal trespassing. While in police custody, they were beaten by officers of the NYPD and were then sent to a juvenile detention center for a few days before being sentenced to probation. He later said that it was that experience that motivated him to enter law enforcement.
Adams graduated from Bayside High School in Queens in 1978, where he had struggled to maintain good grades. He went on to attend college, where he was diagnosed with dyslexia, while also working as a mechanic and a mailroom clerk at the Brooklyn District Attorney’s office. Despite his learning disorder, he received an associate degree from the New York City College of Technology, a BA from the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, and an MPA from Marist College. Adams credits his academic turnaround to his diagnosis of dyslexia in college: “I went from a D student to the dean’s list.”
Meeting Mayor Adams last week in the flag-draped Blue Room of City Hall, which is located on the southwest corner of the first floor of this historical building, was a thrilling experience for more than one reason. Named for the color of its walls, which were painted blue during Mayor John Lindsay’s administration, it is currently used for press conferences, meetings and receptions. Containing one of the few remaining original architectural details of City Hall, a black-and-white marble mantelpiece, it is in that room that Mayor Bill de Blasio would hold his COVID-19 briefings. I am personally glad that another mayor is now in charge and handling the recovery.
I tell him as much after we shake hands and sit down for a candid interview.
Thanks for meeting with me so early into your tenure. Were there any surprises or disappointments when you took office?
There was only one real surprise: that I’m not scared. People always say that being mayor of New York City is the second-most difficult job in America. It makes me wonder—when does the hard part begin? Because this hasn’t been difficult for me.
I’ve watched what you’ve done since entering office, and it seems that your no-nonsense, commonsensical approach has resonated with many New Yorkers.
I think that that’s what we’ve been missing. A lot of times people think it’s about dollars and cents, when it’s really about common sense. We just need to reinfuse a commonsense approach into what we do. We sometimes forget that cities are run by agencies, and if those agencies aren’t responding to the needs of the people, our tax dollars are going to waste.
But the agencies are just one slice of the pie. There are so many other pieces, including the fight against crime. You came in at such a challenging time. I’m not sure if any other mayor has entered office with so many problems. How do you cope with so much on your plate?
The challenges are many, but I’ve learned that a large problem is an accumulation of a group of small ones, and if you try to solve the large problems without going in and looking at the small problems, you’re going to be overwhelmed. I’m not overwhelmed by the challenges we have in front of us, because I know that we need to solve the smaller problems. When we look at the state of the city, we have a crime problem. That’s a small problem that’s inside the larger problem, as significant as it is. Unemployment is also one of the smaller problems within the large problem. Educating our children, housing… All of these are part of the larger problem, but you have to have a plan of attack for each one.
How do you define the larger problem?
The larger problem is that the city is dysfunctional. Then you have to ask yourself why. It’s dysfunctional because we’re spending $38 billion on education, yet 65% of black and brown children aren’t reaching proficiency. Those are the same children who fill our jails. Forty-eight percent of the people on Rikers Island have a mental health issue. Eighty percent of them don’t have a high school or equivalency diploma. If you don’t educate, you’re going to incarcerate. You’re going to create crime. Unfortunately, we’ve gotten used to being dysfunctional.
Did the dysfunction start because of a lack of coordination at the top before you took office, or was it a buildup of all of the smaller problems?
That’s a great question, and I like the way you phrased that. This goes back to what I stated about what we really miss about cities: the fact that there’s a covenant between taxpayers and government. Taxpayers pay their taxes, and government is supposed to give them goods and services. How do they do that? Through the agencies. You pay your taxes, and we have to pave your streets, pick up your garbage, have police protect you, have teachers educate your children, and build housing. What we have noticed over the years is that these agencies have been too bureaucratic and aren’t operating together. They are siloed, isolated from each other, and we are now going to unify our agencies to work together for one common cause.
Let me give you a perfect example: You are a dishwasher who saves up enough money to open a restaurant. You’re paying $30,000 a month in lease costs. The Department of Small Business Services is saying they want to help you get open, but the Department of Buildings is taking two years to give you a C of O, or National Grid is taking three years to turn on your gas, or Con Edison is taking two years to turn on your electricity. That’s what you call not operating towards the mission of getting that restaurant open.
And pushing the person out of business.
Eventually, because without actually having people in seats, your entire investment is destroyed. I can show you example after example of how the agencies that are supposed to help you have become harmful.
As the mayor of this great city, how do you take on all of those bureaucratic problems and solve them?
Think about this: If you get on a plane and peek into the cockpit and notice that there are no instrument panels, which means that the pilot doesn’t know the windspeed, how much fuel he has, how fast he’s going, if the landing gear is up or down, do you know what you’re going to do? You’re going to get right off that plane.
I would take a parachute if necessary.
(Laughs.) That’s what we’re doing in government. That’s what I mean when I talk about real-time government and dashboards. My day has to begin with making sure that we are flying this plane called New York City, and that we know how we’re flying it. We should know how many permits the DOB has allowed. We should know our crime numbers and how our students are doing—not annually, but in real time. We have to transform this city into one in which every commissioner and deputy mayor has a dashboard, and even every family should be able to go onto an app and know what’s going on in their communities.
Do you want to bring the city back to where it was two or three years ago, or do you want to bring it to a place that’s even better?