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tv   Key Capitol Hill Hearings  CSPAN  February 22, 2014 6:30am-7:01am EST

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e he had an $8,000 salary he died with millions and millions in the bank. his desk which stayed in jersey city has a button on the mayor's side that opens a drawer on the other side where you can drop the money in and hit the button in and it comes back in. it's an amazing invention. we put anytime storage. there is a cultural thing. why that exist in jersey city if you think about it is jersey city is a very large city or a medium size city but it decrunt its own media market. we're in the shadow of new york and philadelphia. and without that transparency and without that huge media market focus on new jersey you have a lot of things happen that wouldn't happen elsewhere. so do i think we could change the culture? i 100% do think.
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so it's never perfect but we work on it every day. i think we have a great team that strives to do the best thing. we've encouraged a lot of new people to get involved in politics and government whether on the board of education or our city council which the majority of those people it's the first elected office they've ever held and i think you will see neem have a different view about public service as opposed to self-service. >> congratulations on election of mayor in jersey city. >> i taught at jersey state college which is a different type of environment. i'm a little concerned and a think history will bear this out. you have something in common with the governor of the state of new jersey action robert secretary of treasury under bill
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clinton and mayor bloomberg. all four of you came out of wall street. it doesn't make sense to me why a young aspiring wall street investment banker didn't list that he was an investment banker at goldman sacks sanford bernstein and it's a very diversified city. the question si have is this going to be a tail of two cities fwaws incumbent mayor in new york city is trying to change the tale of two cities. it's becoming a tale of two cities. could you comment on that? >> on all of my bio it talks about goldman sacks and i'm proud of it because if you understand my background and my family's background. my family is in newark every day
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for the last decade. when i went through college and graduate school and got a job at goldman sacks which is the most pretigeyouse bank in the world. if you would have told me ten years ago that working at goldman sachs would be a scarlet let ner many ways i would have said you are crazy. i don't view it that every single one of them is bad because they work in an industry. it's not fair. i left after 9/11 to enlist in the marine corps. i was happy at my job and i was happy in the marine corps because of any service there. it's not fair to brush every single person who works in a particular field. our track record second to none as it relates to certain policy issues.
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we touched on family sick leave as we're shifting our police department, we're incentivizing other areas of the city, people in jersey city will tell you they are very proud today and they we are working as hard as humely possible to bridge that gap. during the campaign i recognized the fact i have a hill to climb because people have those stigmas and it's ok. i understand that. not everybody is going to vote for me. i understand that too. we work every day to try and earn their trust. in jersey city it's a very progressive place and there are a lot of people who have used financial social securities. i understand that. we work every day to say yes you can have those vuse about some of the people that work there, some of them. and we want to you view our administration as one that works to move things forward and not have that tale of two cities.
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[applause] >> i was wondering if you can talk about the culture and how it's affecting -- the culture of ethics in the marines. >> we try to do our best to interview and understand people's motivations for being in different types of positions because not humanly possible for me to be a check and balance on every single person out of 3,000 employees we are responsible. we have all of our board members and we have our directors and management employees go through ethics training. we do it once a year to make sure that they understand what rirptes are, what types of things therble be looking for, what they need to do as far as responding to that.
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when you put those safeguards in place, people will still make mistakes but we try to create an environment where people understand it's something important to us, leadership there and we want it to be important to them as well. >> i have a question. i read somewhere jersey city is the most diverse city in the state and one of the most diverse in the united states. i was reading you were futured in the new jersey monthly magazine and it was saying the longest established working class families and the younger professionals and you are not originally from jersey city. how are you able to appeal to those people and the working class families and how are you able to appeal to those people
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who might view you as an outsider since you are not from there? >> you cut on some of the dialogue in the campaign. i was painted as a wall streeter. i was painted as an outsider. i was painted as somebody who wasn't born and raised in jersey city despite the fact i was there for 14 years. our position in the campaign was we did our best to be as granlar as possible on information, on policies we intend to i were meant once elected. if you think about most campaigns at all level, they say we intoned hire more police and make the streets safer. they don't get into how you do that. our police plan was nine pages, how we're going to pay firt, everything we were going to do. not that everybody cared to read nine pages but we wanted you to understand we had a plan and we
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were willing to take a risk. most people politically don't put out those plans because once you put it there, there is exposure politically. our take was if we give you more information and you take the time to read it, they'll understand whether you are in the born and raised area or hispanic area or pakistan any area that we have a plan that limb packet them day in and day out. that ended up being the difference where we ended up getting a lot of support because we put forward meaningful ideas in detail and people understood how we were going to get from where we started to where we wanted to end in four years. and i think that made a huge difference for us. >> my name is sam and i'm a student at the college of new jersey. i'm a mercer county resident. and the recent conviction very
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problematic for a lot of reasons. one being to a degree it could have been seen through the election of 2010 if voters were more careful looking at some of his personal and political decisions in the past, these are things that possibly could have been tracked. so i think it begs the question on the municipal level of why do people vote? why do people vote for a specific candidate? is it because they are qualified for the job or remember them as captain of the basketball team 25 years ago? the real question is what is a municipalty's obligation to make sure that citizens value civic responsibility and making sure not just putting out the information, but making sure they take advantage of that information and make sure they hold their government accountable. >> so couple of components to
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that. let me talk about board of education in jersey city. somebody touched on the education system earlier. recognized about four years ago to improve jersey city we needed to focus on the education system because a lot of people moved there and once they had families they felt they needed to leave because of the education system. we organized voters around the board of education. you could win a board of education seat with about 2200 votes. it's a city of 300,000 people. you could win a board of education seat that impacts a $600 million budget with 2200 votes. we started organizing around candidates that were parents. didn't have the same conflicts as somebody with a political motivation or somebody with a motivation because their child
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is in the school and they make decisions around what is best for their individual child. it took a while to find candidates and create a screening process done by other parents. i would do the best to raise money and to organize around those respectable candidates. we changed the dynamic there wuled be getting elected now with 6,000 votes. doubling the voter turnout by energizing the people door to door, having better candidates, communicating better. that said, i tell you it is still only 8,000 people out of a city of 270,000 people. in my election we won with 21,000 votes i believe was the number. and the mayor at the time had 16,000. unfortunately a lot of the times in municipal races people vote not based on ideas, they vote
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based on who they know. it's a very personal relationship as it relates to the mayor. so it was a challenge we had there. who is the better singer? who is the better person out there in the public? i'm not a good singer. my opponent was. those things impact somebody on a personal level and a lot of times ideas don't matter and what you'll see is the personal who is the best candidate doesn't always win. you'll see it in other places around the state. you'll see demographic racial politics factor in. you'll see that personal factor into it that shouldn't matter but that is what impacts it. >> thanks for joining us tonight. just this morning in our class was wrestling with the idea of
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transparency in politics. i think we were very gratfide and appreciate toif hear about your reforms in terms of transparency and the police system. what we were discussing this morning was transparency in not just the policies themselves and the data but the process of passing legislation and setting which reforms to pursue. my question to you would be in terms of this kind of transparency, what level of transparency would you believe is appropriate to present to the public? >> my personal belief is that the more information i could push out, the better. and we're exploring different partnerships right now. for example, talking about police with how we communicate police infractions. if you think about it today, many people still listen to the police scanner. they'll wait for the local newspaper to see what happens in
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their neighborhood. we're working with technology to explore ways when you enter different shonse in the city it will push out to your phone the types of crimes that happen there almost in real time so you will know things that are happening there. initially you go to the website and check off the different types of crimes you are concerned about. and the way i looked ate the person is going to check off everything and their phone will go crazy. and they will pair down what is relevant to them information wise. it's information that is accessible today anyway. so we might as well as be more forth coming with it. my personal view is the more information i can provide you, the better. >> i'm a teacher at lincoln high
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school in jersey city. my question is considering the fact that i'm the department chairperson of two departments this being my third year, i'm capped as where i can go. what can i do in your administration to get involved in my community? and if there are no specific ways right now how can we ensure young people with bright ideas and a lot of energy have an opportunity to go about making change? >> that's a good question. our best asset in that last campaign, we had less money and less endorsements. we had a tremendous volunteer base. hundreds upon hundreds of people that dedicated their time to moving us forward. despite the endorsements on the other side and money you saw a grassroots movement that pushed us forward. we are putting together an office in our resident response center that will focus on volunteerism knowing there are a lot of team that want to be
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involved in the community. and creating a place where they can come understand what opportunities the city has where volunteers can get more ack tiffly involved, whether it's shoveling a senior citizen's show or doing something at the humane shelter. there are a lot of opportunities and we're putting it together right now. an office that will act as a clearinghouse for all of that. we sent out e mails to get people to sign up for this and we had 100 volunteers that signed up initially that speak to people that are willing to donate their time for a good cause. and i 100% intoned capitalize on free labor. >> >> i am involved with the league of women voters of new jersey. i'd like to go back to the comment you made a couple of questions ago when you were talking about looking at why
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people vote for the candidates that they vote for. what in your view are you doing in jersey city and what could we be doing statewide to make sure that voters are are in fact infered about the issued and vote, that's the first thing, and also vote with the knowledge of the issues. >> if i had the solution to, that i think it's a real challenging issue everywhere. it's a challenging issue in jersey city. we spent probably $2 million on our side alone of the race and voters turnout was what i mentioned earlier. it would be hard to be a resident in jersey city during the election and not know there was a may recall election going on from a house to house
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standpoint. i think people vote on things that areless of substance and the more we try to educate them, people try to gravitate towards things that aren't meaningful and move the dialogue forward, sometimes gender or race or geographic location or who their neighbor is. i don't have a answer for you long term. >> we are working on it. >> i'm a former organizer with food and water watch. i want to thank you for your opposition to the pipeline that is now in service between jersey city and manhattan, a 42 inch gas pipeline going under the hudson. i know that jersey city attorney is going to argue now -- >> yesterday. >> there are some arguments coming thursday. but the regulatory commission is approving these pipe lines right
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and left all over the country for natural gas and oil. and very destructive projects. how can municipalities and what is your attorney arguing? how can we reform the process so that localities have more of a say in these projects? >> i don't know what we can do on the municipal level as it relates to municipalties having more input in the process. there is a federal board called ferc which decice and aproves these pipe lines throughout the country. when you talk about ethical government ferc is a great example of conflicts that exist. every single person on that board serves formally in the oil and gas industry. so there is an inherent conflict there to begin with. when you look at last year's approvals of pipe lines in this country, it was close to, i don't think they rejected one. it was 100% approval rate.
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when you think about conflicts and where to start on reforming the process, it would be creating program terse around who and what can serve on those types of boards. they can be honest brokers looking at a project based on need and not for whichever company is applying. that's the starting point and that is one of our arguments in front of ferc that we're in front of now. >> i'm a social studies teacher. i want to go back to your comments about school board politics. there is a newark race heating up now. there is a lot of contention over the state superintendent and so as the mayor of another large city i was wondering about your thoughts on that. would it help newark if they got
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local control back? >> i don't get too involved in newark dynamic. the jersey system was the first to be under state control. we had part of it delivered back to us four years ago and we hope to get the remaining portion of it. about a year and a half ago we hired a new super oaf schools. we have -- new superintendent of schools. we're working to be the first to be building public prek facilities which we are very proud of. we are working hand in hand. and i think jersey city has a lot of terrific stories on the education front. one data fact i bet you many people in this room don't know. the best high school every single year in the state of new jersey is in jersey city. we go back and forth. [applause] >> we usually go back and forth
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with mill burn actually. there are a lot of great stories in jersey city. i think that local controls as it relates to jersey city would be a huge benefit. and the reason i say that is because i think it would be an affirmation from the state that we are making progress. we have more parnts engaged than ever as i touched on from a voter standpoint. we are short spaced. we are the only urban district in the state of new jersey that is growing and we're seeing 20% growth projected in the next five years. it is a great story on a lot of fronts. it would be hard to get into the details of newark. but we are pushing for local control in jersey city and we think it's important and we are on track. we think it's attainable. there are other things the state government has been focused on. it's a conversation that the
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time is right for jersey city for that. >> i want to do a time check. we've got about five minutes left. >> thank you for coming and i'm glad you mentioned mcnare in education. i'm a former resident of jersey city. there are schools like lincoln and insider that are not the same caliber. i've recently learned there is a loophole with tax abeatments given to corporations that the municipalty takes a lion's share and the counties get very little of the funds. wouldn't you think that schools ought to be a priority in allocation of funds with
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anything collected? because given the institutional design of education, the municipalty has in funding schools. >> the funding formula in places like jersey city and what was formally known as the abbott district is different than melbourne. how we deal with the state, what requirements are there. when you look at the funding for places like jersey city as an example, it is amongst the highest per pupele cost in the state of new jersey. you are talking in excess of $22,000 per child to educate them in the school ssm. i think many would say still needs work and we are working to improve it. it would be a hard pressed statement to say the reason we have struggles in the jersey city school system is funding. there are a lot of sose owe economic issues that impact students that we struggle with.
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you think about out of school time we are working aggressively to adeal with. after school programs we are working to deal with. one thing we're working on is expanding our summer youth initiative partnering with the corporations on the water front. when you think about how we are incentivizing development and the impact on school systems i would say there hasn't been a direct impact from one to the other and if you look at the funding formula, it would be a stretch to say that dollars are the cause of the problem. >> that th will be our last question. >> ok. >> i downloaded your app. it's fantastic and i believe everybody should take a look at it because i live in monroe. it would be wonderful to have
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this technology available for us. >> i'll give that you payment we discussed later. just kidding. ethical government. >> speaking of ethical government. i'm in technology. what parts of technology would you like to implement and what things do you believe technologically are unethical such as spying or web cams or cameras around the city? >> things that are discussion drones and those sort of things i wouldn't be supportive of. we have an aggressive camera system throughout the city. it's something we invest in where possible. we haven't seen that type of investment in the last two or three years but we've seen it works as a preventative tool for crime. we are exploring what is going on with our red light cameras whether it's something we want
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to continue to implement or if we think it's been misused as more of a revenue generator. we are exploring that. outside of that, i will tell you data is something we continue to push and to share as much as possible. we think the more open we can be from a technology standpoint, the better it is. that's why we have a whole team that digs into that open government framework i touched on, the dash board i touched on earlier. those are things i think the more we can share and open from a technology standpoint is better for the city and better for the residents. i want to say again thank you for the opportunity to be here. thank you for taking time out of your busy cal ders. i really -- cal dars, i really pleesht it. -- appreciate it.
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