← Max Politics
Max Politics
Drew Warshaw on His Campaign for New York State Comptroller
01:32:58
Drew Warshaw, a candidate in the June 2026 Democr…
Loading summary
Transcript107 lines
- [00:00]
A
Foreign. Hello and welcome to Max Politics. This is Ben Max coming to you from New York Law School and its center for New York City and State Law. Thanks for tuning in. Speaking here on Thursday, June 4, 2026 and today on the show, we're starting to dig into the New York State Comptroller race where there are three leading Democrats in the running in the primary being decided this month, incumbent State Comptroller Tom DiNapoli and two challengers, Raj Goyal and my guest today, Drew Warshaw. I'm booking interviews, I think, with Mr. Goyal and Comptroller DiNapoli in the near future, so stay tuned for those as well. Drew Warshaw with me in a moment to lay out his campaign platform and much more. The job he wants. State Comptroller is the state's chief feature fiscal officer, responsible for oversight of state government and much more, leading an office of almost 3,000 employees that include auditors, financial, business and policy analysts, information technology specialists, contract managers, investigators and others. Responsibilities include investigating waste, fraud and abuse to protect taxpayer money, including by auditing state agencies, authorities and services, including things like the mta, providing oversight of the state budget and reviewing state contracts and payments and managing the state's massive public pension fund, which is worth roughly $300 billion, and ensuring that state employees and retirees get their paychecks and pension payments and still more responsibilities for this often overlooked office that has a lot of power and is very interesting. And Comptroller DiNapoli has held the seat with for roughly 20 years and is seeking another four year term in this year's election. This Democratic primary for State Comptroller will be decided as I said this month. Primary day is June 23rd for this and many state and federal level races that are on the ballot, including a bunch of high profile and competitive races for state legislative seats in the Senate and Assembly and for the House of Representatives of Congress. Had a bunch of candidates for Congress here on the show and you can check out those episodes if you've missed any early voting is June 13th through 21st and there's also mail in voting. So as we speak here on June 4, the primaries are happening. This is the only statewide race with a real primary. Democratic Governor Kathy Hochul and Attorney General Letitia James are headed to their general election matchups and we'll dig into those after the primaries. The the winner of this Democratic primary for state comptroller will face Republican nominee Joseph Hernandez in the general election and I'll have him on the show sometime between the primary and the general to make his case. But for now, the question is whether Comptroller DiNapoli will again be the Democratic nominee, or whether one of his upstart challengers can somehow prevail in a race that is not getting enough attention. But we're helping fix that right now. DiNapoli's been state comptroller since 2007, when he was appointed to the position by the legislature after the resignation of his predecessor under scandal. DiNapoli's then gone on to win statewide elections in 2010, 2014, 2018 and 2022. He has not faced a serious primary challenge until this year, and both of his main opponents in the primary say it's time for change, that DiNapoli is not active and aggressive enough as comptroller and they're laying out their platforms while he's defending himself. And it's to be seen whether Warshaw and or Goyle can really be that much of a threat to DiNapoli, especially given that they're both running and it's not a head to head race. But we shall see. There's been no public polling on this race at the time. We're talking here on June 4th and you'll hear Drew Warshaw make his case in a moment in a very detailed and extensive conversation. We went pretty long here, getting into a whole lot of topics. It touches on a lot of his background, his view of government, his platform for this race, his case against dinapoli and issues facing New York. As I start to have the three candidates here on the show, I'll also note that toward the end of May, DiNapoli, Goyle and Warshaw had a debate on Spectrum News TV, likely to be their only debate at the primary, and that is available on YouTube if you'd like to watch it. And very briefly, if you missed any recent episodes of this show, they've included a recent great conversation on the New York Knicks and the City Talking Basketball is the city game, the Knicks long championship drought and the fact that they are on the verge of potentially ending it if they can win the NBA Finals. This year we got into a bit of an NBA Finals preview in the Knicks spurs matchup. We also talked about where Mayor Mamdani should sit at a Finals home game and much more. I was joined by Chris Herring, an NBA reporter and author of the excellent book Blood in the garden about the 1990s Knicks. And we talked about comparisons between the 90s Knicks and this year's team, and also joined in that conversation by Jonathan Fisher, a longtime Knicks fan and former Knicks writer Otherwise, a lot of great episodes in the feed as well on politics, policy and government with excellent guests on other important topics. Plenty to catch up on if you've missed any. For after you listen to this one and after you listen to this one with Drew Warshaw, keep an eye and an ear out for the other interviews to come with state comptroller candidates coming up soon. All right, I'm pleased to welcome to Max Politics Drew Warshaw, a Democratic candidate for New York State Comptroller, running in the primary taking place this month here in June 2026. Primary day is June 23rd. Early voting starts June 13th. There's mail in voting as well. Plenty of opportunities to vote if you're an eligible Democrat. My guest is one of the challengers to incumbent comptroller Tom DiNapoli, who's been in the statewide position of chief fiscal officer since 2007. Drew, thanks for being here. How are you?
- [06:00]
B
Ben, thanks for having me. And I have to say, I feel like a Ben Max podcast on the state comptroller's office is like peanut butter and jelly. I think it's the perfect pair. So I couldn't be happier to be with you and your audience today.
- [06:14]
A
Thanks very much. Appreciate it. Yeah, it's time to dig into this, this election here and I'm happy to have you and your competitors on if the others agree as well. So it's, it's primary month. Voters are really starting to pay attention. Before we get into the nitty gritty of your platform that just give us a little background on you, who you are, where you come from. You know, before this race, a little bit about Drew Warshaw.
- [06:40]
B
Yeah, sure. Born and raised in, in New York in New York City. I live in lower Manhattan, not too far from your Studios with my two boys and my wife. Benjamin and Jacob are 11 and 8. They go to our local public school and really spent a career in all three sectors of the economy, first in the government sector and the public sector. Working for Governor Spitzer many years ago in fighting for immigrant rights up in Albany back when that was not something that even a lot of Democrats were very focused on. Then was blessed to help rebuild the World trade Center after 911 as the chief of staff at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. Just an extraordinary once in a lifetime opportunity. Went to business school and then spent nearly a decade in the renewable energy sector building solar farms and financing them all over the United States. Help address this climate crisis and air pollution and rising electricity rates. And then most recently, I was lucky enough to help lead the largest affordable housing nonprofit organization in the country, Enterprise Community Partners, as their chief operating officer and later as their co CEO before about a year ago I decided to do this.
- [08:06]
A
All right. And generally speaking, have you found it running for comptrollers? So you're going all across the state, you're trying to talk to as many especially Democratic voters as possible, a chunk of the campaign, a big chunk where maybe people who are independents or not registered to vote could register as, you know, as Democrats. But you know, talking to as many Democrats and potential Democratic voters as possible here in this primary. How have you found that? I know you're gonna say it's been great traveling the state and meeting people, of course, but how have you found sort of notion of running for state comptroller? We see the polling where Even though Comptroller DiNapoli has been in office for nearly two decades, people don't really know that much about him. Part of that, as you have critiqued and we'll get into that, is how he approaches the office in your view. But part of that is the office is kind of this less paid attention to office. How have you found trying to get attention on this race and on your candidacy and whether people are receptive or not receptive to sort of like paying attention to what the controller really does or in your view should do?
- [09:10]
B
You know, I've, I've heard two main things and as I travel the state and honestly it's no different from Brooklyn to Buffalo and Binghamton and everywhere in between. It's really these two things. One, no one's ever heard of the New York State Comptroller, despite to your point, the same person in the same seat for 20 years running for a six term in office. So no one knows what it does. And then the second thing is immediately, once they do, they immediately connect the dots. Like, you know, New Yorkers are smart, they understand what time it is. They just haven't been told about this office. And this office has not been energized with a sense of imagination and urgency and experience in a way that impacts their day to day lives. But once they understand that this is not just one of the most powerful positions in New York, but in the entire country, given the levers of power that I'm sure we'll get into, they connect the dots immediately. They, you know, right now New Yorkers cannot afford to live in New York. And once they realize there is a statewide position that can actually do something about the biggest challenge that working New Yorkers face, they Say, let's go, let's do this. And they're thankful that for the first time in 20 years, they actually have a choice and a chance for change.
- [10:34]
A
So you described a lot of your career and working in the public sector, the private sector, nonprofit sector. So you decide to run for office here. Just explain that decision. Why run for office at all? And why run for this position in particular?
- [10:51]
B
Sure. So, you know, I'm. I'm blessed to be running this national nonprofit that every day, 1100 housers wake up and they think about how to address the affordable housing crisis. Every single year I led that organization, Ben, the housing crisis got worse every day. I went to work. We lost. And it got to a point between that issue and the fact that our politics and our country is going in exactly the wrong way, where I just kind of got to this point where if you were sitting on power and you were sitting on money in this moment, and you are not using both of those things to help New Yorkers without those two things, then you have got to step aside. And I realized that the cavalry is not coming. There's no bench of people somewhere that we don't know about with some strategy memo that they're about to. To. To. To publish that's going to solve all these problems. We have to do the work. And that is what my career taught me. Whether it was rebuilding the World Trade center, whether it was putting steel in the ground for renewable energy, whether it was building homes that Americans could actually afford. The cavalry's us. And, you know, we just decided. And I say we because, you know, my wife Charlotte is a huge part of this. And we just decided that, you know, we wanted to stop losing, and if we were going to, you know, truly change the system, we had to get in it. And there is a massive amount of power and a massive amount of money that's been sitting there for the last two decades. And we have a generic generational opportunity to use those two things very, very differently. And you've heard I have a very different vision than the current incumbent controller. And I think we need to go and execute that vision for the New Yorkers who need it.
- [12:49]
A
And we'll get into the specifics of that vision in just one minute. But generally speaking, when you've thought about government, I hear you saying, alluding to some of this, but you've experienced government in all these different ways as a regulate. You've seen the government regulation side in a lot of ways, and the funding side. You've been in government. What's Your sort of general view of government and what's broken is it, you know, are you someone who is a Democrat who sees government as we really need to expand the public sector? I mean, it seems like a lot of your campaign platform is about leveraging the public sector more. But are you someone who sees a lot of, especially in New York, a lot of sort of bloat and inefficiency in government? You know, there's a lot of questions about the size of the state budget, the size of the New York City budget, the spending that goes on, and less bang for the buck. How do you think about sort of government and size and efficiency and how you would sort of broadly approach that as state comptroller?
- [13:50]
B
You know, probably a couple ways. You know, first is that I think, you know, this kind of gets to answering the second part of your last question, which is, why this office. I am not interested in running for any office. You know, there, there, you know, there are choices in this race. There has been an incumbent in Albany for 40 plus years. There is someone else who's been in the state legislature in Kansas and has run for Congress, wanted other jobs. This is the only job I want and I want it because it gets it. Just the question you ask, which is, how can we leverage the enormous amount of power and money that New Yorkers have blessed the state of New York, the government of New York with? How can we actually use those things? Well, for the working New Yorkers who need those things and who depend on those things. And so for my part, I think there are three things in life, three things in this world, three things in government. Hopefully this third thing, there is power, there's money and there's love. I think there is those three things. And I think we can bring all three of those things to bear in a very different way than we have seen over decades in Albany. And I think we have that chance this year.
- [15:20]
A
Let me come back to some of your career before this. I hear you often say chief of staff at the Port Authority rebuilding the World Trade Center. What does that actually mean? What did you actually do? Can you give a couple specific examples of what Drew Warshaw actually did to get the rebuilding of the World Trade center moving and toward fruition.
- [15:44]
B
Sure. Well, when we got there, and I say we just because the executive director and I came in together as sort of a new team in the spring of 2008. So this is nearly seven years after the 911 attacks. And you know, we were basically looking at a 16 acre hole in the ground. You Know, as you remember, very little had been built in those seven years. There was total chaos between every layer of government. There was, you know, warring with the private developer who had certain rights on the site, with insurance companies, and, you know, there were thousands of family members of the victims who cared a lot about what happened on those 16 acres. And we spent the next four years with our heads down, turning it around. I would say the three things we did and I helped lead that I think sparked the turnaround. First was just resetting just exactly what was going on in lower Manhattan and with those 16 acres. And we spent the summer just sort of pulling that project apart and really understanding where were the bottlenecks, what, what were the fundamental drivers, what was critical path, what wasn't. You know, the second thing was we treated the, the project like a, a construction project. You know, for years the, the 16 acre site. That 16 acre site, understandably, given what happened, was sort of treated as everything other than a construction project. You know, it was treated as, you know, hallowed ground. It was treated as a place where political debates were to be had and so on. And what we really needed to do was treat the job like a job, like a construction project, like something that needed to be financed, something that needed to be built, something that needed to be engineered and start making decisions with that at the center. And then once we built it, New Yorkers and everyone around the world could decide how they wanted to think about the site. But first we had to build it and we had to decide to do that. And I would just say the last thing is we built trust. And that's the cliche is like things only move at the speed of trust. It happens to be really true. And whether it was helping to rebuild the World Trade center and turn around that project from chaos to actually getting it built, you know, whether it is putting solar in the ground or affordable housing or even frankly running for office, it's, it's the trust gap that, that you have to fill. And we were able to do that not all at once, but, you know, with, with sort of accomplishment, with singles and with doubles, and we started communicating and bringing people together and kind of open booking what we were looking at so that all the stakeholders could come around the table and see what we were seeing and so they could understand the decisions that we were making. And I think that transparency was critically important. And I guess the last thing, because it's just, it's an interesting question I haven't thought about, you know, that the, the work I did down there in a long time. But simplification, simplifying, whether it is managing a business, you know, a large nonprofit or government, and I think particularly government, and that's why I think the controller's office is such an interesting place to be, particularly with that audit function, but even with the investment function, is when you start to simplify, when you start to prioritize and make choices, you know, a lot of, a lot of things begin to fall into place and you get a lot of stuff done. But that radical simplification sometimes is necessary to move the ball forward, and that's what we did.
- [19:43]
A
There's something in some of the themes you're talking about there that also connect to my next question, which is about your, your housing experience. And you have a key plank of your platform for controller around affordable housing development and preservation that will get into in a minute. But you were running this large housing nonprofit enterprise, community Partners, as you mentioned, for the last five years in a couple of high level roles. And I'm wondering how you think about this idea of, you know, NIMBYism and not in my backyardism, and how it relates to debates that have been happening in New York and debates that you would seemingly be right in the middle of if your campaign platform was executed around, you know, turning the comptroller's office and use of a lot of pension fund dollars into developing and preserving affordable housing. We saw recent battles in New York. Governor Hochul had her housing compact proposal a few years ago. Now that was basically the idea was everywhere needs to be in the game in developing housing to address the crisis. It can't just be sort of optional. That wound up having a lot of battlegrounds in the New York City suburbs. And basically the proposal was defeated because there simply was not enough support in the legislature and beyond for essentially sort of the possibility of overriding local zoning to ensure that there was housing growth in a lot of parts of the state that have not been very welcome to additional housing. How do you think about those battles? Is it that there need to be strong government leadership with community input, but also that government really needs to push forward on things like that when. When the sort of facts are right on the government side, but there might be a lot of local opposition? How do you sort of think about that balance and how you would bring that viewpoint into the comptroller's office?
- [21:43]
B
Yeah, I love this question, Ben, because a lot of the attention on my housing plan is the headline number the $20 billion investment. The largest housing fund in the United States of America. 200,000 homes that we believe we can build and preserve all over the country. What has been less focused on is what I've paired that historic investment with, which is what I call a tenant centered housing table. And you know, I've called for a housing controller. I've not been shy about the fact that I think this is an office and a platform and that could be flexed to address this housing crisis. But the thing beyond money that is missing is trust and understanding and bringing all of the stakeholders along. And I can't think of a better positioned seat in government than the state comptroller, who by definition is supposed to be at a bit of a distance from the politics of what's going on in the governor's office and the legislature and so on, is supposed to be that independent voice and to have someone with experience who can bring, to bear on, on both affordable housing and just building things in, in New York to bring the stakeholders to the table to have that type of open book, transparent conversation that can build the trust that I think is deeply necessary to do the things that we're going to have to do across the state to address this housing crisis, I think is mission critical. So while it has gotten less attention, I am deadly serious about that housing table because I think it is not only what we propose and what we do, but how we do it.
- [23:39]
A
And is that how extremely process heavy? You know, I mean, this is one of the debates as you know, happening in politics and within Democratic politics. Is this question around, you know, are you an abundance Democrat or are you more of a sort of everything bagel liberal Democrat where you want to, you know, have. Meet almost every goal imaginable in each program and it gets bogged down in a lot of process. And that's been a lot of the criticism of some of the major federal programs that have come through under Democratic leadership that the, you know, you can have these great goals of housing development or Internet for everybody, but then you attach so much process to it and so many, you know, qualifying factors and all this that the money never gets
- [24:20]
B
out the door, I guess.
- [24:23]
A
I mean, how do you, how do you think about process cutting red tape, having community input in it, but also making sure that stuff happens and it happens fast?
- [24:31]
B
Yeah, I think I'll just come back to a phrase that I used earlier with turning around the trade center and that's radical simplification. So we need to simplify wherever possible. Now, I think really importantly, I don't think that means by definition we have to sacrifice either intentions positive or Input. I don't think simplification means we don't get input and we don't address community needs and we don't listen to the communities that are most impacted by investment. To me it is the product, it is the sum product of that listening and of that back and forth and of that transparency and open book process that then generates what I believe has to be a far simpler, more streamlined process to build anything in New York, you know, housing or otherwise. So that's how I think about it. I don't believe it has to be. I think the way that this debate has grown up and has matured is it has to be one or the other. And I think what is so exciting about this opportunity to get like a true housing controller into the seat is that we could actually see a different model that doesn't have to be one or the other or even something like mushy in between. It's just fundamentally different on some other access that I believe exists because I've done this over my career.
- [26:08]
A
Let me ask you if you have a view on two specifics within this discussion and then I want you to explain more about your housing plan. But to get very sort of nuts and bolts on this, the state has a new program, relatively new program, a tax credit program 485x that is pretty complicated but has elements to it that at a certain unit count of housing development, higher labor wage standards kick in. And so as a result, seemingly what we're seeing around New York City is a lot of 99 unit buildings and under because at 100 units it triggers more expensive labor standards. Do you think the design of that program was a mistake? Is it holding back housing development? How do you think about the trade off there between housing growth and the labor standards being attached? Because that seems like one of these perfect examples where the goals seem laudable that you know you want, especially from a democratic point of view, you know you want more labor standards, union labor, higher wages and benefits for construction workers and so forth. But then it might be stalling the very housing production that can lead to more jobs and more work and also more homes for people to live in. How do you think about that program and have you look closely at it?
- [27:25]
B
I think it's a problem. I don't think it works. And I think that and many other programs like it are monuments to technocracy. I really think that these programs and you know, mostly well intended, I think, like I'm not even going to question the intent. But again, the sum product is this Technocracy that doesn't actually deliver the thing that we set out to do. And that's where I do think you need to simplify and you need to make choices and you need to say, what are we trying to do? We need to build more homes, A lot more. Like nearly 2 million more homes that New Yorkers can afford. My two boys go to our local public school downtown in the city. And one out of every seven New York City public school students, they don't go home at night because they don't have one. They're homeless. We have a crisis. And it's not just a city crisis, it's an everywhere crisis. So we need to decide if we are going to have a housing policy and a housing plan to build more homes that New Yorkers can afford. That needs to be the priority. That needs to be the focus. We cannot solve every single problem that exists in our society through a housing plan. What we need to do is to give New Yorkers a safe, a decent and affordable place to live. That's what we need to be focused on and center on. And then we can deal with some of the other challenges through other policies. But I think the minute we start conflating those two, those two things, we build these monuments of technocracy and we get a housing crisis where one out of every seven of my kids, classmates are homeless. Right. I mean in the richest city, probably
- [29:22]
A
not, probably not in the downtown schools in the world.
- [29:25]
B
Right. Like that's, that's like, that is shameful. The other one actually have the power to do something about that. We need to do it.
- [29:34]
A
The other one is it seems like there's a real crisis in a lot of the rent stabilized housing in the city that is older and especially in buildings that are largely, are all rent stabilized. A lot of them located in the Bronx, but also other boroughs. And it seems like part of the reason for the struggle in this housing stock relates to the 2019 rent law adjustments that were passed when Democrats took full control of the legislature for the first time in a decade and effectively even longer than that really. But that there were these major changes made again for some, you know, sensible reasons in terms of not allowing rent stabilized units to go out of rent stabilization, as had been seen over decades at, you know, problematically high rates for many people. But now it seems like perhaps that went too far. Do you have a view on that? And if there's a fix to either that or some other back end way to account for that, if you don't want to change Those laws. Are there other ways to sort of save this rent stabilized housing stock that's. That's in distress?
- [30:44]
B
Yeah, I think. I mean, unfortunately, I think what you had there was sort of a perfect storm of factors happening all at once where, you know, if you really want to look at it, and, you know, I happen to believe in good cause, and I think a lot of what was in those 2019 laws were really important to protect tenants who make up more than 50% of all households in New York State and more than 70% here in New York City. But you had this confluence of things where, you know, you had basically 0% interest rates like free money and projects built with that assumption or rehab finance with capital structures with basically free money. And then you had a regulatory change that was pretty meaningful and pretty fast. And I think you had these two forces, and then interest rates spiked post Covid, and you have capital structures that were not built for one, an interest rate environment that moved on them, and two, a regulatory framework that also moved on them at the very same time. And so I think you had sort of this perfect storm of challenges, and now we're sort of left with the results of that. And I think what's really, really important is we cannot wave the white flag on these issues. Like, there are ways to address the issues out there. I think the mayor's plan that he put out last week, and I read all 112 pages of it, I think was an incredibly thoughtful, comprehensive, and remarkably coherent. You know, it hung together really well. But, you know, what was not in that plan, Ben, was money. And it's going to take money to address this crisis. And, you know, I know you want
- [32:47]
A
to talk about your plan, but there is money in the mayor's plan. He's adding. He's adding a lot of capital dollars, but maybe not as many as you'd like to add. So why don't you. Why don't.
- [32:55]
B
Well, I mean, you know, we talk about what was it like $2 billion more for HPD, which was, you know, a 30 plus percent increase on a base of not enough. You know, I think there was a 5. $5.6 billion or so over five years for NYCHA, which is like, unfortunately, a drop in the bucket. So these were. In terms of percentage terms, these were meaningful increases. So, like, not knocking. Not. Not knocking that at all. The. The problem is we don't have this another source of capital, except we do. We just have to, you know, swap out this one person and decide.
- [33:33]
A
I thought you were going to say what was not in there was a real fix for the rent stabilized housing stock, which I was going to say. I agree, but let's, let's move on. Go ahead. So say, say more. You've already sort of given a little bit of the outline of your housing plan here, but say a little bit more about it. And as part of that, why is using $20 billion in state pension fund assets to invest in affordable housing likely to yield a good return? Because it seems like partly related to the conversation we were just having about some of these housing policies and the regulatory environment and, you know, issues around a certain part of the stock. Housing can be a very risky bet to invest in. So say a little bit more about your plan and why such a big investment from the state pension fund is actually a smart investment versus the other part of what you, you know, other big plank of what you want to do with the pension fund, which is move more money into sort of the safer index fund investments. This seems like it's going in a very different direction to get into housing. So say a little bit about the plan and also why it's a smart investment from your view.
- [34:45]
B
Sure. So I think just to take one step back, and we need to remind New Yorkers that the state comptroller is the third largest investor in the United States of America. So put politics aside for a second. One person, one human being, oversees singularly, unilaterally, the investments of our $300 billion state and local public pension fund. And a lot more people have heard of the New York City comptroller was Brad Lander. Now, Mark Levine, the city comptroller, reports to five different boards. Okay? So it's the boards that make the actual investment decisions, not the city comptroller. The New York State comptroller doesn't have a board. He's the, he's what's called the sole trustee. He is the board. He reports to himself. He doesn't report to the governor, doesn't report to the legislature. He reports to 19 million New Yorkers and gets to decide how that $300 billion of our money. Because I say our. Because it's taxpayers that fund the pension fund, along with public school teachers and firefighters and social workers and public employees. We fund this pension fund, and it is up to one person to determine how to invest it. And what I have called for is to invest $20 billion into homes that New Yorkers can actually afford. It would be the largest affordable housing fund in the United States, and it will treat this crisis like the crisis it is. And critically, it will earn a higher risk adjusted rate of return than Mr. DiNapoli's own target rate of 5.9%. That you could go onto his website. He says the job description of the state and local public pension fund is to generate 5.9%. Our fund will generate high single digits. You know, talking 8 or 9%. You don't need to go to business school to know that 8 or 9% is higher than 5.9%. We can do that all day long. We did this for a living. This is what we did. This is. This actually happens out in the real world. It's just, how does.
- [37:02]
A
How does that work? How can you be so sure of that higher level of return? Like, you're essentially turning the pension fund into a lender of more housing dollars, right? To lend to affordable housing developers and others who are going to do the preservation.
- [37:17]
B
Well, let's be clear about a couple things. One is the state pension fund already invests in real estate, right? So to be clear, they allocate about $30 billion in total to real estate. Roughly 10% of the asset allocation is into real estate as an asset class. So this is already done. The difference between my investment strategy and Mr. DiNapoli's is Mr. DiNapoli invests 1 95% of all real estate investments outside of New York State into California and Washington and Texas. So that's like problem number one, because it's our local property taxes that are funding this thing. And problem number two is that none of that money is being invested in homes that we can afford. So what I am really talking about is rebalancing an allocation that's already been made where. Where a bunch of people have said, you know what? We need exposure to real estate. I agree. I just think we need exposure to the type of real estate that New Yorkers can actually live in in New York, not in Fort Lauderdale, in Florida, or in Houston, Texas, where he is investing our money in luxury condos. And that money both debt. You mentioned lending because it would be debt, but also equity as a lead investor is something that I think could be a total game changer, both in New York. But if we did it here in New York, there is $6 trillion of money sitting in public pension funds all across the country. And I think this would unlock billions upon billions of dollars for the thing that we need most in this country, and that is homes that we can afford.
- [39:00]
A
But how is affordable housing, especially when you are requiring there to be lower rents than the market might otherwise bring in? Why Is that a safe and good investment? And how do the economics on it, how are you so assured that the economics on it are going to work for this size of an investment from the state pension fund?
- [39:22]
B
Sure. Well one, because we've done it again, like I said, this isn't a new invention. It's just applying the third largest pool of capital to this asset class. But this is an asset class that attracts capital, is invested in all the time. This is what we did at enterprises, what we did at the non profit and we raised and deployed roughly $2 billion of capital every single year in this asset class that yielded roughly 8 to 10% on that money. So we know we can do this. This is an asset class with a 0% vacancy rate like 0, like we, we have constant demand in a, in an expanding economy and a declining economy. There is always demand for homes that people can actually afford. And in many cases a lot of the rent is subsidized by a very high credit government like the federal government, you know, whether it's the Section 8 program or otherwise. So this is not some crazy risky asset class. This is NASA class that could provide strong risk adjusted rates of return well north of the 5.9%. This is not concessionary capital. This is going to be capital that will earn a higher rate of return than the current pension fund does today. And hopefully we will get a chance to talk about how our pension fund is currently being invested beyond real estate. Because right now, if we want to talk about fiduciary duty, the current state comptroller has underperformed his own market benchmarks by 39% over the last 19 years and taxpayers have had to make up that difference. So you know, yeah, let's get back
- [41:09]
A
to that in just one second.
- [41:10]
B
At some point. Yeah.
- [41:11]
A
But on the housing is this is part of investing in affordable housing? Mixed income housing is, it is part of the way in which affordable housing is a good investment in part because you're investing in mixed income buildings where, you know, there's, you know, stronger economics behind it because you will be able to get part of the building at least into market rate rentals.
- [41:37]
B
I, I think there can be examples of that, but I, I don't think it's limited to that. I think 100% affordable properties can earn high single digit rates of return and have for decades and will continue to for decades. You know, you have to, you have to have the right capital structure. You have to have the right capital structure, you have to have the right cost of money, you have to have the right cost of construction. And that's one of the things that we want to address through auditing the building code of New York City and New York State. And you need to have the right operating costs, which is also something the state controller could do something about in terms of auditing our utility monopolies that are driving up electricity rates. And the Department of Financial Services, which regulates insurance companies, the largest regulator of insurance companies in the country. Property insurance and utility rates are two of the largest drivers of, you know, of cash flow suck right now in affordable housing. And that's something the state controller can also have a say in and do something about. So we are focused on all of those things, not just access to capital, but the cost of capital, the cost of construction and the cost of operating these homes.
- [42:55]
A
If affordable housing is bringing in that kind of return, doesn't that leave the door open to questioning whether the rents in that affordable housing are being set higher than they actually need to be or should be?
- [43:08]
B
Nope. No, these are, you know, when I think of an affordable home, you know, I'm using the classic definition of, you know, no person should spend more than 30% of their income on their rent or on their mortgage or, you know, on the, the expense to be housed. So no, I'm, I'm not talking about rents that would exceed a situation like that. I'm, I'm talking about rents that are, meet the classic definition of affordability, that can earn high single digit rates of return all day long. Now, one of the challenges is if you were to go to, you know, a pension fund today, they might say, you know what, we'll part with our capital, but we're going to, we want 15% rate of return. Now that's the problem, Ben, because no, I don't think that the cash flow or the, the, the affordable rents can pay off money that costs 15%. I think that's a problem. And that's why we would price this capital in the high single digits because we can and still earn north of the 5.9% rate of return that Mr. DiNapoli has said is the target rate of return of this fund.
- [44:33]
A
Say a little bit more about your broader shift in the investment strategy of the pension fund. You, as you just got at, have been critical of the comptroller for using a lot of outside money managers and asset managers to high fees to Wall street banks and so forth. And you want to put a lot more of the pension fund investments into, as I was saying before, more passive index fund investments basically just sort of controlling the exposure more around a broadly allocated across the market and without sort of paying people to do more attempts to bring in a higher return than a broader indicator of the market. Is that fair to say? And why is that a good strategy versus the more diversified strategy currently being used? Sure.
- [45:30]
B
I wouldn't say it's more diversified. It's just more expensive money managers. And we'll come back to that. But if we're going to leave housing, the only other thing I would just say, Ben, is Mr. DiNapoli has called investing in affordable housing a pet project. This is not a pet project. This is a core need and it is a crisis. And if he does not believe that he can earn a risk adjusted rate of return that is higher than 5.9%, then I would love to come on your show and have that debate with him because it will not be close. And he knows that we know that he cannot admit that after 20 years because he would of course basically admit that he had a chance to address this crisis. And now he's saying these are just pet projects and I have no power to do it. But I want to be very clear. We have the power. We have the unilateral power to do it. We just need the person in that seat willing to do it and who has the experience to do it onto the broader investment strategy. And this gets back to simplifying. And you sort of hinted at a more conservative small C way of investing, and I think that's exactly right. What I have proposed is investing 101. I propose to focus on diversification, focus on asset allocation. The things that predict roughly 94% of the return of a portfolio. It's not actually, it turns out, the picking and choosing of the underlying stocks or the or the bonds or the this or the that. It is how you allocate your money across these large asset classes. This is since the dawn of modern finance. We have known this and then gain exposure to those diversified asset classes in the cheapest, lowest cost way possible to the taxpayer. And State Comptroller Tom DiNapoli has literally done the exact opposite of investing 101. He has hired 664 different Wall street investment managers. He has paid them nearly $12 billion in fees that taxpayers fund out of their property taxes and state income taxes to manage our money. And he has outsourced that responsibility to these hundreds of Wall street managers with their value proposition being we will beat the market net of those fees because otherwise why on earth would you give them all of this money? The only Reason is for them to outperform their benchmark. And incredibly, in the financial capital of the world, no one in 20 years has ever asked and answered this simple question of the third largest investor in the United States of America. How's he done? How's he performed? And we ran the numbers. They're all publicly available. Just no one reads those 300 page annual reports. Well, we did. And when we did and ran the numbers, we found that Mr. DiNapoli underperformed his own benchmark. We used his own Standard by 39%. And he made these bankers millionaires to not do their job, to actually underperform their own benchmarks by 39%. He paid them nearly $12 billion in taxpayer funded fees and he cost taxpayers an additional $59.1 billion in higher property and state income taxes in the middle of an affordability crisis. And so my plan is super simple. Cut out the Wall street middlemen. We are going to fire all 664 of those investment managers. Because if you and I didn't do
- [49:11]
A
our job, just to be clear, those are not all. They are not all currently. That's not a current number, right? It's not.
- [49:16]
B
That is a current number.
- [49:18]
A
It's not 664 cumulative over.
- [49:21]
B
Nope, nope, nope. There's nearly 900 cumulative over. And we have the list. We've published the list. There are 664 investment managers on page 123 of his 2025 annual report. There are 371 private equity managers alone. It's in his own annual report. 371 of those 664, Ben, are private equity managers. He's literally paying the most expensive people to not actually beat the market. And it's not just rich people invested in this. It's taxpayers, it's working New Yorkers, it's public school teachers. So we have to make up Tom DiNapoli's underperformance and his banker's underperformance because the pension fund, it turns out, must be fully funded by law. And Mr. DiNapoli brags that we have one of the best pension funds funded pension funds in the whole country. And we do. But what he leaves out is we have to, it's the law. So the question becomes, is it because he's a good investor and now we know he's not, or is it because taxpayers and public school teachers have bailed them out? And that's what's happened is isn't the
- [50:34]
A
roughly the fees that are paid in line with what Other pension funds do. I mean, it's, this is not, I mean, this is not exceptional in New York. Right. It's just, you're just pointing out that the sum of fees could be a lot lower.
- [50:46]
B
Yeah.
- [50:47]
A
If you, if you stop hiring more outside money manager.
- [50:50]
B
Yeah. This is one of the things that he says is, you know, why, why, why are people, you know, so up in arms about this? I, I do it just like everybody else. You know, California does the same thing. Well, guess what? They're wrong too. They should cut out the Wall street middlemen, too. And this is again, back to investing 101. Nevada figured this out. Nevada has gone with an all index fund approach. There are literally two people who invest the money in the state of Nevada. They diversify, they keep diversification, but they, they, they don't pay these middlemen since the dawn of modern finance. Does that beat the market net of those fees? They can't do it.
- [51:30]
A
Does that strategy, though, not leave you more open to shocks to the market? I mean, isn't that a little bit of the strategy that I, you know, sort of call diversification? You know, there's a little bit of an element of diversification to where the money's being allocated and managed there, where you get a, you know, the, the Great Recession, which happened, you know, Pretty soon after DiNapoli came into office as comptroller, or you get Covid more recently and you get these big shocks to the, to the market. Is using those money managers not a little bit of a hedge against some of those types of shocks.
- [52:05]
B
So it turns out it's not a hedge. And I think we need to be very, very precise about this because again, this is one of the, the stories that have been told and have been sold to us by these Wall street middlemen. Right. They have to sell us a story because they don't actually beat the market net of their fees. So they have to justify why on earth we are paying them a billion dollars every single year to manage our money. So they have to say, well, we're going to beat the market net of fees. Okay, well, they don't do that. Then the story changes and it says, no, no, no, no, we're not going to actually beat the market when it goes up. What we're really going to do is we're going to manage your downside. So when the market goes down, you're going to lose less and that's why you're paying us all those fees. Well, we took a look at the down markets because Mr. DiNapoli has been there for 20 years. So we didn't have to cherry pick. He's been the chief financial officer or the chief investment officer through multiple investment cycles. And it turns out, Ben, that our public pension fund performed even worse than his own market benchmarks did during these down markets. And then, of course, they didn't perform better in the UP markets, so they performed even worse when the market did worse, and they didn't perform any better. So this shock absorber that in theory these managers are supposed to because somehow they're so smart and they have these fancy degrees and we pay them all this money, somehow they're able to figure it out. They can't. They can't figure it out on the up, and they can't figure it out on the down net of those fees. And the answer to your question of how you deal with shocks is diversification. That's how you deal with it. Not over money managers, over asset classes. That fundamentally again, back to the fundamentals, investing 101. That's all we're talking about here. You deal with shocks through diversification, not through spreading money through different managers. Also, another thing he said, he says, oh, we have to invest in private equity. He's tripled the number of private equity managers. Well, why, Mr. DiNapoli, do we have to invest in private equity? He says, because, well, when the public markets go down, the private equity managers keep our money safe. Well, that makes no sense because all that's happening in these private equity funds is they are not marking their funds to market. They're just not admitting that the value has been lost. So what they're basically what Mr. Navi is saying is somehow because of this different ownership structure, they have avoided an economic shock because they're owned in private hands, not in public hands. That's an absurd argument. It's called there's a term of art for that. It's called volatility. Washington and that is not the way you're supposed to be a fiduciary and invest your money. You're not supposed to invest in an asset class because it pretends that when the value goes down to the underlying asset, it hasn't actually gone down, even though it actually has
- [55:14]
A
one more on the pension fund. And then I want to get to a couple other things with you. You seem to be taking an approach where you would have a lot more activism around divesting pension fund assets from certain holdings. You've cited Palantir, this now very much, you know, in the focus politically, government contractor, tech company that's used by ICE and other parts of government. You've talked about divesting from Israel bonds. Can you explain, without getting into all the specifics of these, can you just explain what your sort of bar, what your metrics, what's your system for, you know, divestment and picking and sort of choosing what, you know, politically or social issues would influence those decisions? Because there's always, there's always different issues that come up that upset certain people of certain political persuasions or things that, you know, are shocking. And people say, well, why would anybody be investing in that company that's doing all this bad stuff? But you can't really run the pension fund that way. Reacting to current events all the time. Right. So how would you sort of institutionalize those views where in the campaign? Obviously, these things are going to come up politically. But, like, what's your actual plan and approach for making those decisions? As. As state comptroller.
- [56:33]
B
Yeah. First you have to set a very high bar. So, you know, I, I think I agree, you know, ultimately with the premise, you know, you can't divest from the economy, otherwise you, you wouldn't have anything to invest in. But to take divestment off the table as a tool, to not even have that in the investment arsenal, also is too extreme, also makes no sense. So I think you have to be thoughtful and let's just be clear about the three things that I've called to divest from. One is foreign bonds. We invest in Israel, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Canada. I think we have no business investing in any of those countries. I've been very clear that I don't think New York taxpayers should be financing Netanyahu's war machine. I think morally it makes no sense. I think if we want to talk about it from a fiduciary perspective, it also makes no sense. 90% of the bonds that Mr. DiNapoli has bought are illiquid. Like, you literally can't even trade them on the secondary market. And New York taxpayers haven't even been compensated for that risk. So if you want to have just a pure financial. Is this a good investment? No, it's not. But I do believe at some point you have to draw the line. And as I said in an essay, Dainu, it's enough. Enough's enough. And we should not be financing that war machine 6,000 miles away. So that is, I think, a line that we can draw. Fossil fuels, another line that we can draw. These companies are not just killing the planet. Obviously, I care a lot about that. I spent nearly a decade in the renewable energy sector trying to address that issue. But they're also killing our pension fund. I put out a 20 plus page paper on our website that showed that Mr. DiNapoli's investments and his unwillingness and refusal to divest from these companies have cost the pension fund $15 billion. Because these are financial losers at this point. These companies are losers and he continues to hold onto them despite New York City figuring out a way to get out of it. And I have called to divest from Palantir, which happens to be the it backbone of Donald Trump's private militia ICE and the surveillance state, which is terrorizing our neighbors. So that, so that bar to me is, is, is pretty high. And for Mr. DiNapoli to refuse to divest from all of those things and to claim fiduciary duty, well, we know it's not in the fiduciary interest to be investing in these bonds that make no fiduciary sense. We know from the standpoint of the fossil fuels, we've run the numbers. It makes no sense financially, again, even just putting moral and values aside. And then I think Palantir, I think you can make the argument that they are oversold and overtied to a government and they have unique regulatory risk if you want to make a fiduciary argument. But I also think you can make a moral argument, Ben, because they don't elect AI bots to the state comptroller. They elect humans. They elect humans to use their judgment about at some point when is enough enough and terrorizing our neighbors. That's, that's, that's my line.
- [59:46]
A
Put the foreign bonds aside for a second on these others. I mean, a lot of this is getting at holdings that would be part of, of the more passive index fund investment that you're arguing for. Right? I mean, you're, you're arguing more broadly for moving things into diversified index funds. But then you're also saying you're going to start to really take a much closer look, even with a high bar at divesting from certain companies that would routinely be part of these index funds. No.
- [60:19]
B
Yeah. Well, I think, you know, the good news is, you know, for decades now, there are index funds that do not have exposure to these fossil reserve companies. And that's, you know, one of the things that New York City evaluated and made them feel more comfortable making those decisions. So you can have a very, very low cost strategy to expose yourself to a still diversified market without an asset class that fundamentally is a loser. I mean, these companies just for perspective, used to occupy 30% of the market capitalization of the S&P 500, they are now less than 2.8%. All they've done is bled and lost money. And they've shown no willingness or opportunity to adapt or evolve. And Mr. DiNapoli says, well, but if I send them a strongly worded letter, you know, maybe Exxon will do something different. And that's where, again, I think you do have to draw a line. I am all for shareholder activism. I think that is really important. That is another critical tool. But at some point, you know, to ask Exxon's management team to fundamentally change their core business model and to fundamentally change their culture and to believe that it is so risky that you have to get them to do that. Well, if you believe it's so risky that they have to change their core business model, why are you investing New York tax dollars in the first place? Why are you doing that? By definition, you should get out. And that's what we would do.
- [61:51]
A
There was some tension that you were criticizing the state comptroller for not divesting from Palantir, and then you had investments in a fund that had Palantir and then you got out of those funds. Were you sort of caught here not putting those same standards to your own personal investments while you're calling for in your campaign from DiNapoli? And you need to sort of, you know, take a, take a closer look at sort of making sure things are in order at home before you're making those calls for the state to do those actions.
- [62:24]
B
Yeah, well, we did take a look and we saw that we did have exposure to that. And so again, this is the benefit of these low cost index funds is we found an index fund that didn't have exposure to Palantir. And that's what you can do. You could, you can, and even more. And you know, I'm, I'm just through
- [62:47]
A
this new fund though, and make sure that there's nothing objectionable in the new.
- [62:51]
B
I mean, but then I'm just, I'm just a person on the street, right? The third largest pool of capital in the United States of America. They, they could do this themselves. They don't need to go to Vanguard, right, to, to pick a limited set of index funds, of low cost index funds. They, they could do this themselves. And in fact, Mr. DiNapoli brags about having an in house index fund operation. Well, so okay, which one is it? Is it good to have it or is it not? You know, and I think it's Good. And I would put much more of our money in that. And, and particularly if you're managing that in house, then you have much more ability to be able to say, you know what? Like, it's not going to be about Palantir, we're just not going to do it. And you can take that out and you can still get the vast benefits of diversification that all these other, both companies and asset classes provide. The portfolio.
- [63:48]
A
No other companies on your list right now. That's your divestment list. It seems like Palantir became a hot button issue again. Very understandable.
- [64:00]
B
Why?
- [64:00]
A
Because of some of the federal immigration policies of the Trump administration. But it's like that became the current poster child of a government contractor where the, you know, the stock is. Is invested in. But, you know, I don't know, 10 minutes ago, everybody was up in arms about Tesla because Elon Musk was doing doge and he was, you know, taking a hatchet to a lot of the foreign aid and. And the government. And the U.S. government.
- [64:28]
B
Yeah. There's a difference between a person and a company, Ben, and there's a difference between a person and a business model. And the business model of Palantir is to make money off of people's suffering and of death and of targeting and surveillance. You could say what you want about Elon Musk, and I don't happen to be a personal fan, but there is a person and then there's a company. The problem with Palantir is forget the people who are running it, which personally, I might not be a fan of either. The fundamental business model is to make money off of people suffering, and that is a problem. And again, like I said, if they elected AI bots to invest our pension fund, that would be one thing, but they decided that they would elect humans to use their judgment, use it sparingly, not use it for anything out there. But I think where we have drawn the line around foreign bonds, around fossil fuels, and around Palantir, to me, that strikes the right balance.
- [65:37]
A
All right, I have a few more questions for you. We're going to keep going long here, but you tell me if you have to go. I got a couple more questions I want to do.
- [65:44]
B
Let's do it.
- [65:45]
A
So I appreciate all the time, yeah, get. One of the comptroller's jobs is to monitor the budget. We just had a state budget pass quite late. Give me your, you know, good, bad and ugly of what you see in this roughly $269 billion state budget deal. Lots of policy involved. What's what's your overall take on the state budget, the outcomes, the process? What would you be saying if you were a comptroller, you know, in these last few weeks about the state budget?
- [66:15]
B
Sure. Well, one, I would be saying something and you don't hear, you know, nearly a word out of the current controller. It's almost like he's not even there. And I'll tell you more about what I would say. But yeah, I mean, the process is terrible. It's totally broken. And they use a budget which is supposed to budget, you know, revenue and expenses for policy. You know, right now, like we only have a few days left in the legislative session because, you know, governors, and this is not just Governor Hochul is this. Every governor has used the budget process as their legislative session. And I think those two things should be separate. I think we would have much better budgets and much more thoughtful discussions about expenses and revenues if that was the only thing we were doing. And then we had our time, which is how the, you know, framers of the New York Constitution at least envisioned it. It's not how it happened in practice. And then we would have a time for legislation, for policy to get done. And unfortunately those two things have been conflated. I think that's a problem. Two things that I would just call out specifically in this budget. One thing that's there, one thing that's not there, one thing that's not there is a full throated effort to tax the wealthiest New Yorkers in this state. Right. We had, you know, this, this compromise thing on rich people's second homes. And you know, it's a French word that I can barely pronounce, so I'm not even going to try and butcher that.
- [67:49]
A
Pied a terre.
- [67:50]
B
Pied a terre. Thank you. And you know, maybe, and you talk about like complex and all that kind of stuff, like maybe It'll raise like $250 million of recurring revenue or something like that.
- [68:02]
A
They say 500, but we'll see.
- [68:04]
B
Or up to 500, whatever it is. Like it has an M next to it, not a B. We need billions. Okay, and you're not going to get that.
- [68:12]
A
Let me stop you there. What do we need billions for? I mean, what's not being funded that needs to be funded?
- [68:18]
B
Sure. Housing, Medicaid, which Donald Trump is gutting and are public schools. And I think those three things and food assistance that Donald Trump is getting. So fundamentally, in my mind, we have 139 billionaires in New York alone. They can afford to pay more. The State comptroller is the chief financial officer of the state of New York. And when asked whether we should tax the wealthiest New Yorkers, he says he has no opinion. He says it's not his job. Well, again, I appreciate that. Like he is not casting the vote, but he is the independent chief financial officer. For him to not have an opinion on whether or not we need to raise more revenue and where it should come from, that is exactly his job. And that is exactly the problem over the last 20 years. So that's problem number one that I saw in the budget and then something more.
- [69:16]
A
We'll come back to problem number two. Let me stick with that for a second.
- [69:19]
B
The.
- [69:21]
A
I understand more revenue, you can put it into more affordable housing. You know, some of the things we've already talked about, obviously you want to do it, you know, from the pension fund, but there's also, as we talked about, more money could go into state and city programs for affordable housing that already exist. Okay, Medicaid, food assistance, got you on that. School funding. This is like the number one thing that, I don't know, middle of the road to right center to conservative think tanks and budget watchdogs point to as the biggest area of questioning spending in New York. Even a lot of the money that the state spends to sort of wealthier suburban school districts, that it's way out of whack that, you know, the money being spent in the city, again, where there's great need among students, but that, you know, these, the sort of per student spending is just nowhere near what it's, you know, it is anywhere else in the country where, you know, where is the real results for all this spending? And you're just saying you want to spend, send more money into the schools. Can you explain, explain that one a little bit?
- [70:24]
B
Yeah, sure. I mean a couple of things. One, I'm also saying that I would use the audit authority, you know, which is basically the chief efficiency officer of the state, to make sure that the money is being spent well. But I really do think that unfortunately, over decades our brains have been wired into thinking that somehow we are under investing in our public school system, which is literally like the bedrock of not just like democracy, but like this democracy, like our country, like it is the public school system that has built and helped build this country. And the idea that, oh well, you know, we're spending this, we're spending that like that is an artificial constraint.
- [71:09]
A
I should have said, by the way, forget even spending per. Per pupil. I should have said for the results that we're getting right. It's not even. Forget, even. Forget even the amount of money. It's, it's partly the amount of money relative to the results is I think the key question.
- [71:23]
B
Yeah, I understand. And we should always demand, like, the best results, but, you know, we don't pay our public school teachers enough. It's like the hardest job in America. And, you know, my kids go to public school and, and I see, you know, the beauty of public schools is they, they educate everyone. It is the great equalizer in this country. And we have been starving that equalizer for decades under the banner of this sort of artificial constraint. And even if you're right, like, let's say we're not getting the results that we need and we should be getting better. Well, what's the answer? We don't, we don't fund them. We cut funding. Well, I think the answer should be let's use the funding better. Let's make sure that we're auditing those programs. But to me, the reflex of, well, we should just stop funding this thing is literally, if we want to kill the Democratic foundation of this country, we could do that. I think we should fund it. And I think I'm asking about a
- [72:24]
A
call for increasing funding, and I'm wondering what else you would attach that. And you've explained some of it, so. Yeah, yeah, I hear you. Okay. Your second issue on the budget was
- [72:32]
B
going to be Tier six. A lot was made towards the end about fixing tier 6, this new tier or new ish tier of benefits for public employees. And, you know, they ended up modifying it. And, you know, this is, you know, this is like, I think, exactly part of the Albany problem that we need to go and fix. Mr. DiNapoli, you know, stood in front of a whole convention center with all these public employee unions saying that he was going to Help Fix Tier 6 and fund Tier 6 and make sure that, you know, the pension fund was, was fully funded. Again, not admitting that it's the law and it has to be fully funded. It's not actually up to him. And my problem with the fix at tier 6 is it is going to be a giant unfunded mandate that property taxpayers are going to get crushed by in the middle of an affordability crisis. And I would be okay. In fact, I supported fixing tier 6 as long as we also fixed our investment strategy of the pension fund. In other words, you can't both keep the same exact investment strategy that is underperforming, that has engineered one of the largest wealth transfers in the United States. That almost no one knows anything about, from ordinary taxpayers and public school teachers to a bunch of bankers who didn't do their job. If you're going to keep that low performing investment strategy the same and you're going to, you're going to increase benefits and ask the property taxpayers to pay more, that's where I have the problem. To me, if you want to increase benefits, that's fine, but then you have to do something different on the investment side. And Mr. DiNapoli refuses to do anything different. And that's why I think five terms is enough. I don't think we need a six. And I think New York deserves a
- [74:31]
A
change when he takes a stand on something like that. It seems, you know, to be a rare exception. I, you know, as any observer of New York state politics would affirm that the comptroller has taken a very careful approach to weighing in on lots of policy questions. And he says, you know, as you got at, that's not really what how he sees his job. It's to be more neutral and then evaluate the decisions by the executive and the legislature. And as he said in your one debate, it sounds like you and Raj Goyal would rather run for governor or state legislator than comptroller. Now, of course, you both, as you're outlining in this conversation, have a different view about how active and opinionated the comptroller should be. But what is, what's just your opinion about why he would weigh in on that or other things when he mostly doesn't want to weigh in on policy matters? Do you have any assessments considering you're trying to unseat him and you've been studying him closely? Like, what makes the difference when he weighs in and doesn't weigh in, in your view? Well, I'll ask him that same question, of course.
- [75:29]
B
But yeah, I mean, I think this one's like pretty simple. It's an election year. He finally has competition and he's surrounding himself with the leadership of the public employee unions. So I think it's, you know, 1000% political and I think that's a shame. And I think he's, he's politicized that office, something that he maintains he, he doesn't do. And then of course he does it the minute he is challenged in a primary. But I think it's just really important, Ben, you know, he spent an hour on that debate stage basically saying his job doesn't matter, basically saying that he has no power to do virtually anything. And if that's how he feels about the job, I Don't know why he's running for a sixth term. You know, to me, someone said. Said to me the other day, oh, you know, it sounds like you're expanding the power of the state comptroller. I'm not trying to expand the power of the office of state comptroller. I'm just trying to use it. I'm just trying to use it. And for the last 20 years, that has not been done.
- [76:29]
A
If you. First of all, I think. I mean, he can speak for himself, but I don't think. I don't think he thinks that, you know, the comptroller's office is powerless.
- [76:36]
B
He said to the New York Times that his proudest accomplishment after 20 years, his proudest accomplishment, is that he hasn't had to resign. Those are his words. Those are not mine. His proudest accomplishment, he thinks the job is keeping the job. I think the job is fighting for working New Yorkers who need more money.
- [76:54]
A
Point was that he's run an office with integrity while a lot of people, you know, in the governor's office or
- [77:00]
B
the attorney, but, like, that's the. We got to raise the bar.
- [77:03]
A
He can. Yeah, but if you were a comptroller during these state budget negotiations, like, you'd be out there saying, there should be tax increases in this budget and it should pay for this. And you. I mean, you would be like an active voice as comptroller trying to shape those budget negotiations. That's 100%.
- [77:19]
B
He's the chief financial officer in any other organization. If the chief financial officer during budget season stayed out of that conversation, they would be fired. It makes no sense. Like, his logic is totally twisted. Just when we need an independent voice to opine on the finances of our government, he is nowhere to be found at the exact moment where we would want that clarity. He says, well, you know, time for me to go somewhere else for the next few months, because this is definitely not my job. Let's let them do it all, and then I'll weigh in after all the decisions are made. But why don't we get in the room while those important decisions that are affecting the lives of New Yorkers are being made? Let's get into that. That conversation.
- [78:06]
A
All right. Speaking of the debate and pensions, you are unfamiliar in the debate with this pension smoothing plan that New York City was pursuing that would need approval from the state and then need approval. As you got it earlier, the city's pension funds are much more complex in their management than the state needing approval from the unions and the others that make up the pension boards. What's your view of that compromise? Have you looked at it more closely since the debate? I wanted to follow up with you on that because that was, you know, again, a kind of a central piece of what Mayor Mamdani was asking for from the state. It's the biggest piece of how he's closing the city's budget gap. There's obviously still some question marks. But what's your view now on that pension smoothing plan and how it turned out?
- [78:57]
B
Sure. And happy to speak to it directly. But you know what I wanted to do, because we weren't talking about the second largest city in New York, which was Buffalo. And so I chose to use the time to talk about the fact that our second largest city is, is going, quote, unquote, broke, using the words of the new mayor. And the state comptroller has been there the whole time and has not sounded the alarm. So I, I think that's a problem. But just to get back to this amortization question that that's, that's what you're asking about. You know, I think the compromise made sense. I think Mayor Mamdani had a thoughtful approach there. The reality is that amortization schedule was put in place many years ago and did. Was never updated. And so the invest. I think it was put in place like literally in 2010 or something like a couple of years after the Great Recession or 2011, and basically wasn't touched for years and years and years, despite the market performing the way it did. And so you had what ended up being an over performance of the market creating like effectively a surplus that they then ended up amortizing over a period of years so that they didn't have to contribute quite as much as they were based on a schedule that was published In, I think, 2010, if I'm remembering correctly. And I think that's a reasonable. That's a reasonable compromise. I don't think the city in this moment needed to be doing that. I think the mayor took a thoughtful approach. Having said all that, I think the mayor could have avoided that approach if Albany would have given him a true tax on the wealthy as opposed to sort of this, you know, second home thing. And, you know, those types of maneuvers would not have been necessary. But as far as maneuvers go, you know, I think I've seen a lot worse. And I think updating an amortization schedule 16 years into it, now that we know what we know, probably does make good sense and, you know, I'm perfectly fine with it.
- [81:16]
A
Okay, last couple questions. You're challenging controllers. In Apoli. There's a third candidate that was on that debate stage and is in the race, and that's Raj Goyle. Do you want to just give people two minutes on the differences between you and Raj Goyal? I mean, if there's people who are not that happy with Tom DiNapoli or not that familiar with him or looking for change or think, you know, 20 years in the office is enough, and some of the things you've outlined here, what's the differences between you and this other option that's on the ballot? Because often we see these races where there's a long time incumbent and when it's a one on one race, there might be, you know, more of an appetite for change that all then gets funneled into that one opponent. But here we have the potential for sort of splitting that anti incumbent vote. So. And I'll ask Raj Goyle if he joins me, the same question, but what's, what's the differences between you and Mr. Goyal?
- [82:08]
B
Sure. I think, sorry, big, big picture, you
- [82:12]
A
know, not, not every detail of your platforms. But how would you.
- [82:16]
B
I think there are two differences. I think they're pretty fundamental ones. But first, I want to give him and his campaign credit for putting their finger on the fact that there is so much more power inside of this office that can be used, not expanded, but just be used. And I think we share that vision. Where we contrast very sharply is one, our records and our experience and two, our plans for the future. You know, I, we talked about my record and what I've been fighting for, for, for my career. We know what Mr. Goyal does with political power. He has a very public voting record from his time in the Kansas state legislature. And when blessed with political power, he used it to restrict abortion access for women, to vote against gun control, and to sponsor a bill that would make English the official language of Kansas. When running for Congress, he said that he would reauthorize the Patriot act, literally the founding document of the surveillance state that Palantir and other companies are using to terrorize our immigrant neighbors. So, you know, while I was rebuilding the World Trade center here in New York, he was racking up a voting record that voted with Republicans 80% of the time. Again, his words, not mine, his public voting record, not my voting record. So one is experience and then the second is plans. So I'm the only candidate, including Mr. Coyle and Mr. DiNapoli, with a housing plan at all. I mean, we were talking, we were getting into the weeds on some of the details, which, which I love to do, but we're the only ones with a housing plan. You know, this is like, to me, the greatest crisis in New York. And we have all this power and all this money, and Somehow the other two candidates in this race, including Mr. Coyle, have no actual specific housing plan. And I think when you look at the actual proposals and the actual substance behind them, it is very thin on details and very long on tweets. And I've known.
- [84:38]
A
You've known Mr. Goyal a long time. Your paths crossed 20 years ago or so, and you've sort of known each other since. Did you try to get him to stay out of the race? I mean, this seems like the type of situation where you both obviously were targeting this run. But like I was saying, splitting the opposition to the incumbent seems like a pretty problematic issue for both of you.
- [85:03]
B
Yeah, I mean, a couple of things, like, one, again, I really do respect his, you know, putting his finger on the fact that there is so much more that this office could be doing. What I am taking issue with is when you then have the pressure to put detailed plans in front of voters, you don't have them. And when you talk about having had political power and you have a record of doing what he did with that political power, I think that's a problem. So in my mind, I think if voters understood his record in Kansas when he was blessed with political power, voting with Republicans 80% of the time, you know, voting to. To restrict gun control and a woman's right to choose and to make English the official language of Kansas and to say, reauthorize the Bush tax cuts and reauthorize the Patriot Act, I mean, all of that is. Is there. To me, I don't view that as the change we need. So I think if voters are discerning and look at the record and look at the plans, I don't know that they would vote for that type of change. I do think we need change, but not change that, you know, not change like that.
- [86:20]
A
And lastly, what's the path to. To victory here? How do you see, like, the actual voting coalition coming together? I, I understand you're sort of laying out this argument, this very policy focused argument, this very, you know, nuts and bolts of the office, but on the actual political playing field, like, where do you actually get the votes from to win a statewide primary here against a incumbent who, broadly speaking, in some of this polling isn't that well known? But a lot of Democratic voters, you know, have been, quote, unquote Pulling the lever for, for a long time here, how do you overcome, you know, his advantages, all the union support he has and so forth. Where, where do those votes actually come from to win this thing?
- [87:02]
B
Sure. I mean, first, I think just to understand right now, I don't think there's ever been a moment, at least in my lifetime, where voters are so tired of the same, and that's what we are getting, like literally the exact same, to vote him in for a sixth term. So I think New Yorkers want change. I think they can taste it now with Mayor Mamdani. I think they could start seeing some of that change being realized just at least in the early days. And it's still early days. So I think, you know, running against a 20 year incumbent who 63% of New York Democrats have never heard of, you know, despite him being there for decades, you know, I think in this political context is a real advantage. I also think, you know, the good news is hopefully New Yorkers really want to come out to the polls to vote for comptroller. And I hope they do. And I hope they, they listen to this podcast and they go, holy smokes, this is one of the most powerful offices in the entire country. I didn't realize it and now that I do, we're going to, you know, but even if that doesn't happen, Ben, this year we have a unique number, high number of highly competitive congressional primaries that even if they don't come out to vote for the red hot front page of the New York Times comptrollers race, they're going to come out to vote in very, very significant numbers for their congressional members of Congress. In just New York City alone, we have four congressional districts that are in play. We have another one up in Westchester. We have important state races in western New York that are playing out. And so I think there is going to be a strong appetite for change. I think our challenge is both to make sure that New Yorkers know that for the first time in 20 years, they have a choice. And then, you know, back to the, the final question that you asked, understandably to know that the choice is Drew Warshaw, given both, you know, my record and my plans for this office in the future.
- [89:22]
A
And just quickly, in those congressional races, like, are you counting on, you know, In New York 10, the Brad Lander votes or the Drew Warshaw votes, or, you know, how are you thinking about those races? And like, are there candidates you're most aligned with? Are you expecting to be more of the progressive choice among voters or how are you thinking about sort of how some of that lines up? Like, are you, I mean, you don't seem to be making, you seem to be running a progressive campaign. You don't seem to be making that explicit of a, of a campaign for, like, winning DSA votes. How are you sort of thinking about those alignments and those political, you know, ideologies and movements?
- [90:00]
B
I think people are so, you know, I think New Yorkers understand the system is rigged, understand we need to change out these people who've been holding on to power and holding on to money for far too long. And so whether it's in the 10th, the 12th, the 7th, the 13th, the 17th congressional districts, if they vote for any of these candidates, that is going to be a win for us, because I think they're going to bring people to the polls who have had it with the same thing over and over and over again. And I truly believe New Yorkers understand that we cannot keep electing the same leaders over and over and over again and expect different results. I truly believe that. So whether you're going to vote for Brad Lander or Dan Goldman, whether you're going to vote for Michael Lasher or Alex Boris, whether you're going to vote for, you know, and so on and so forth, I think we have a higher chance, so long as you are there, of voting for us rather than a six term of more of the same.
- [91:04]
A
And you are a New York 10 voter, who are you going to be voting for?
- [91:08]
B
I am a New York 10 voter. We're going to decide that in the next three weeks.
- [91:14]
A
All right, Drew Warshaw, I'll let you go on that one place where you don't want to let us know your opinion, but appreciate all the time and thoughts and opinions on a lot of other stuff.
- [91:26]
B
Thank you, Ben. Really appreciate the time. And like I said, it's peanut butter and jelly. With your podcast in the comptroller's office and would love to debate Mr. DiNapoli and Mr. Goyle if, if they, if they'd agree to that. I think there's so much more that we could get into the details of this is too important in office to not know about. And if we can help educate voters that way, the more the better.
- [91:53]
A
I'd be happy to host a debate here on the, on the podcast or anywhere else. But my understanding is the, the state comptroller is, is done with debates after the one televised that you guys did. So. But you never know. We'll see. But Drew Warshaw, thanks again for the time and thoughts. Appreciate it.
- [92:09]
B
Thank you, Ben.
- [92:10]
A
All right, Sam.