STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
I'm Steve Inskeep with a story that took me to Manhattan.
Just getting out of the New York City subway, which I love, although I learned in recent years that it is far more expensive to build and operate than subways in other great cities around the world. New York is an expensive city to govern, and that is the topic of the interview I'm going to do with the head of Mayor Zohran Mamdani's Commission on Government Efficiency - COGE (ph), I think. That's one of the questions I have for Patrick Gaspard, the head of the commission.
How do you pronounce the acronym for this commission?
PATRICK GASPARD: COGE.
INSKEEP: COGE?
GASPARD: COGE. It's - it is exactly what you think it is, Steve. And I know what's in the back of your mind when you ask that question.
INSKEEP: Go on. What is in the back of my mind?
GASPARD: It does rhyme with DOGE.
INSKEEP: Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency led the Trump administration in firing people, gutting agencies, gaining access to sensitive data, disrupting services, violating laws and often having to rehire people who were fired. It's not clear what the chaos saved, as federal spending kept climbing.
GASPARD: This effort is entirely the opposite of that.
INSKEEP: Patrick Gaspard contends that New York's Commission on Government Efficiency will listen to people in a genuine effort to save. He's been holding public hearings. His democratic socialist mayor promised government would do more - free buses, cheaper housing, cheaper groceries. To have a chance at doing more, Mamdani's government would have to make do with less.
When I heard that you wanted to do this in New York City, one of my thoughts was this is absolutely central to what Mamdani is trying to do - that he will fail if he runs out of money.
GASPARD: Well, I think we will all fail (laughter) if New York City runs out of money. We know that we're at a time when there's extraordinary downward pressure on public resources.
INSKEEP: He wants to expand city services, which is not going to happen if they cost two or three or four times what they ought to cost.
GASPARD: If the cost goes up, then it is not feasible that one can deliver on all the things that New Yorkers need. But I'd go a step further, Steve. You know, this is a young leader who is serious about delivering on the promise of progressivism. He made it abundantly clear that he took budget seriously, that he had matured in how he thought about the partnership between the private sector and the public sector, particularly as - in regards to housing, and he understood that his victory as a young, Muslim American, democratic socialist in this city would be watched carefully by people across the country - even on the, you know, other side of the ocean - and that he had to be seen as effective, serious and sober about budgeting, about the coherence of the agencies and on delivering on the things that he made a commitment to in the campaign, but more broadly on the quality of life and the esprit de corps of this city.
INSKEEP: I came to this interview on the subway. Some years ago, The New York Times had an investigation of the cost of the subway and found that not only does it take decades and decades to build new subway lines, they cost something like seven times more than in other really expensive cities around the world. Do you think you have to cut back on things like that?
GASPARD: I think that one of the reasons why I did not hesitate when the mayor asked me if I would join this Charter Revision Commission and then take on the responsibility of chair is he said very, very clearly that we've got to lower the cost of lifting up an affirmative vision for people's lives in New York. And that means mass transit, it means housing, it means child care. It takes too long to build things.
I'll give you, like, one example of a obsession that I have. There are - if you're trying to paint a bike lane in New York, you have to go through the same rigorous process as somebody who is putting up a 20-story building (laughter). And it makes it usually...
INSKEEP: In terms of permitting and everything else?
GASPARD: The whole lot (ph).
INSKEEP: OK. Environmental impact of the paint.
GASPARD: Yeah. And there are arduous processes in the Department of Building (ph) that need to be simplified.
INSKEEP: Do you think public-sector unions are on your side here or a little suspicious of what you're doing?
GASPARD: Look, you know, the president of New York City's largest public-sector union, AFSCME - Henry Garrido - is on this commission, and he and other commission members from different sectors appreciate that in order for the whole ship to be able to sail forward that everyone's going to have to help row.
INSKEEP: Though it might mean fewer union jobs or different union jobs.
GASPARD: Look, you and I, Steve, have lived in a very short period of time through the end of the industrial economy to the construction of the service economy and we still have the whiplash from the digital economy that we're in. And a new god is being born even now that we have no name for.
INSKEEP: A new god - you're talking about artificial intelligence?
GASPARD: Yeah, yeah. Which will have, like, tremendous change across all of the sectors that New Yorkers rely on for job growth and job development. Henry Garrido - I'm going to be careful speaking for Henry and his members, but they appreciate that this thing is coming at them, and they want a government that can shore up the workforce and create pathways for the new kinds of jobs that are going to be available in the public sector, even as they make sure there are protections in place for the current jobs and the current economy that we live in.
INSKEEP: If the political left fails to prove it can deliver efficient government, does the political left just plain fail?
GASPARD: Well, you know, I think that the political center and the political right have proven for a number of decades now that they're not able to deliver consistently on effective government that allows folks to feel secure and to feel as if - that they're getting something back for their taxes. But I think that this mayor would tell you that if you set partisanship aside, he is determined to make people so much more confident about government in general. We've already seen his success on the childcare resources that have been made available for struggling parents in the city. And I will take your point that if he's successful - once he's successful on those fronts - it will create a model of left governance that will put up points on the board for progressives.
INSKEEP: Patrick Gaspard, thanks very much for coming by.
GASPARD: Thank you, Steve.
(SOUNDBITE OF KASIMIR'S "JUNE")
INSKEEP: He's the head of New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani's Commission on Government Efficiency.
(SOUNDBITE OF KASIMIR'S "JUNE") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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