had taken and to be appointed to the supreme court and it would be an honor to meet you that nothing happened and i get a call from someone his office and the justice wants to know if you are free in the next few minutes to pop over i flew over and i spent four hours and the justices chambers and if you have not read the book you have to read my grandfather sun because it traces his life from the time he is born and about to be sworn in on the bench and the stories he told me were heartbreaking that gave me inspiration hours on the right track because he gave a specific story he had won a latin prize and awarded a statue and was so proud then said

when he returned back somebody had thrown it on the ground and smashed it and he glued it back and capped it with him and heather is sitting in his chambers as a model of inspiration. . .

and i thought well that's an interesting thing we have black and white seats but i will let that go. and when president george h. w. bush had nominated than judge thomas, his tone had entirely changed, and essentially accused justice thomas of being a benedict arnold and he doesn't represent us and our community. and again it's the old black-and-white motion. wait, our communities -- she is as black as you get comegys from pinpoint georgia, he came from abject poverty, put himself through school. if that's not the elevation of poverty to a supreme court judge -- >> host: i don't think people have trouble with the ascension. it's we have a problem with the way he spoke on the issues in our interest. >> guest: but since i would challenge you and say what is in our interest? why is it that a judge and a jurist is interpreting the

constitution of the united states in a race neutral manner but somehow are supposed to interpret ways for black people? you don't think people say justice scalia should interpret the constitution for italian-americans or ruth bader ginsburg's -- >> host: atoll and americans don't have the same history -- >> guest: being a student of history as justice thomas is and reading his opinions, i find that they are some of the best written opinions based on history and if you look at the affirmative action cases and some of his opinions from their, people made assumptions about him and assumptions about me and that is why i've written black and white, people make certain assumptions of people of color acting or dressing a certain way that when you look behind the substance that you find that carries substance, and you look at what is perceived to be a tilt towards people based on ideologies or the color of their skin and find it's based in law and fact and that is what we need to move towards as opposed to judging people based on the

color of their skin. >> host: there is one thing i can agree on and that is this is a must read. [laughter] acting white the racial slur the curious history of a racial slur. this is an enlightening, disturbing but yet in hopeful. i've enjoyed it very much. >> guest: thank you so much. thank you. >> jonathan soffer fisa c. tester professor of you new york university polytechnic institute assesses the mayor of new york city from 1978 to 1989. he recalls that determine the year political career and the redevelopment plans that the former mayor put forward throughout his time in office. jonathan soffer is joined by ed koch at an event held by the museum in new york city. the program is one hour and 20 minutes. [applause] >> thank you for joining us a

dislike for the national park service in new york and one of the great treasures of new york city. let me first introduce jonathan soffer. he grew up in albany and had the wisdom to mention manhattan to attend columbia. he joined the broadway democrats, which endorsed ballan in 1977. [laughter] certain things may be forgiven. he got his doctorate from columbia and now teaches history at nyu polytechnic institute. i realize not long ago that if we start with henry hudson's foliage nearly 400 years ago, i've been covering the york city for more than 10% of its record of history. [laughter] they say that journalism is the first draft of history. welcome some journalists admittedly have carried that to its strengths. this is undoubtedly a apocryphal story that there is the story of the soviet union arrived in moscow and three days later he called his editor the renounced not thinking of the story but that he had produced a

full-length book to read a book, the editor said, you have to be kidding. what's it called? to which the reporter totally unfazed replied russia yesterday, today and tomorrow. [laughter] that sort of squares with the history boys, the student asked to find history to which he replied more or less it is just one damn thing after another. [laughter] jonathan soffer's book is important not just because new yorkers often forget our history and then say we are doomed to repeat it. it's important because it tells a lot about the -- new york and provides lessons. the first time i covered ed koch was probably not long after got to the daily news in 1968. he might have still been a councilman doherty elected to congress. he invited a reporter along on a rate of the shelter of town. he was going to expos but cruel

way animals were being utilized except when the shelter officials explained the process he changed his mind. instead of lobbying and easy cheap shot, he was persuaded that he had been mistaken. it was the first time i met a public official willing to admit he was wrong. now i knew then that ed koch was a man of conviction. these days you have to be careful of not describing someone that way, a man of [laughter] but you know what i mean. in 1977 nobody really knew what kind of mayor he would make and he explained later after writing one of his early books i'm not an author, but before i became mayor i wasn't a major. [laughter] a lot of the distinguished mayor's you will hear about them tonight, but another one occurred to me just the other day. ed koch, i think, was the last major who've left.

he genuinely seemed to be having a great time doing his job. [laughter] [applause] he can laugh at himself. i checked the other day i had written 448 articles that mentioned ed koch. which is terrifying to me, not to him. when he was 83 he told me he planned to stay in manhattan for good. he purchased a burial plot in trinity church cemetery. [laughter] and 84 he told me he already installed and inscribed a tombstone and insisted he no longer carries any grudges. well, maybe just a few. [laughter] he issued an apology or two and confessed a few regrets as mayor, and this year at 85 he launched a revolution, a purge of the state legislature by taking aim at incumbents judged to be impediments to change.

[applause] you judge a may year by the mess he inherits by what you hope to accomplish and how close he came to fulfilling his agenda ken jackson recalls nader koch -- consisted among the gold standard of mayors. he writes koch faced challenges greater than any new york mayor at plight century and many of them producing quite simply the greatest turnaround accomplished by any of them. sure he made people angry, too but he writes, quote, that anger should not be allowed to obscure his accomplishments that koch bravely faced one of the worst crises of new york history, restructured the city with

minimal health from the federal government and kelp to growing for generations into the city we all have today. thank you. please welcome jonathan soffer and ed koch. [applause] >> thank you. that's a beautiful introduction. i wanted to start the discussion tonight by reading a few paragraphs from my introduction and hopefully this will tempt you to read more. by the end of his first term he was able to balance the city's budget, a feat that vastly exceeded expectations when he started in 1977. and by the end of his second term he could launch a locally financed $5.110 billion year program to rebuild huge areas of the city including the south bronx and make them economically

viable for the long term. the restoration of credit and the renewed economic growth enabled the city to borrow again and restored to elect officials the power to choose the key projects rather than leaving the decision to the unelected powerbrokers like a partner in the corporation. by the time koch left office in 1990 the population of the city had increased more than 7%. i'm sorry, more than 3% despite the recession and the burden of proof in the south bronx was spilled with houses. apply to those of six new york's population had soared to a record 8.2 million, 16% higher than in 1980, largely as a result of policies laid out by the speed of fenestration.

koch pioneered neoliberalism which privileged corporate capital but also allowed for government intervention to shape and subsidize private enterprise. but he remained diffident about the progress for the redistribution of social and insurance that might burden future expense budgets. the most stunning examples of the housing programs but koch also poured hundreds of millions of dollars into the tax abatements to subsidize office buildings and luxury housing and to keep corporate headquarters from leaving the city. such construction was one of the primary engines of growth left in new york after the long period of the industrialization and had the side benefit of providing a significant source of minority employment. determining whether the city ultimately got its money's worth from the tax abatement program is difficult because few data exists to show whether the incentives actually alter the

behavior of developers. koch was with a free when showman and hard-working policymaker but whose rhetoric and policy did not always come here to u.n. observers tried to sum up his political ideology flexible, they often resort to paradoxes however insufficient. for example one historian maintains speed, quote, talks like a republican sometimes but governs like a new dealer. more precisely, speed's corporate policies made the rich richer even though he tried with less success to avoid making the poor poorer. he trumpeted the death penalty and law and order to can be in the audiences but quietly promoted liberal correctional initiatives in the city's jails. he was a reformer who deprived the democratic machine of much of its patronage and established a long political system for appointing the municipal judges but he made deals with county leaders that he lived to regret when the leaders turned out to

be crooks. he also publicly criticized some of the same judges so herschler he feared that they compromise their independence. he prided himself on his ability to make alliances with the catholics mayor and southern whites and conservative republicans during his years in congress. but he failed to build alliances with many black leaders and his own home town. he was tried as a reaganite when he blamed labor unions and overly generous pensions for much of the fiscal crisis and maintained an opposition relationship with labour but unlike president ronald reagan, and i think to his credit, koch bargaining. koch's contradictions reflected the tensions in governing the reubin populace split along the lines of geography, race, class

and ethnicity. from the start, speed's biggest political challenge could be termed the pothole paradox while financial and labor is worried about selling bonds and balancing the budget, most residents experienced the crisis in terms of their ethnic loyalties and the rising levels of crime and refuge in the city that have lead off thousands of police and nearly all its street corners. many police stations leaked and some were near collapse. patrol cars fell apart and impossibly bumpy streets damage them even further. dirty streets and crime were sometimes used in the popular culture in the tag lines of the 1991 stephen cergol thriller quote come out for justice," set in brooklyn. he's a cop, it's a dirty job but somebody's got to take out the garbage. along those lines, sam ruda a very generous review of my book in the times and one of the

things he said was that raised olympian heights but actually part of the job is someone's got to take out the garbage as david said in the famous commercial it's the second toughest job in america, and so, when my editors said olympian heights, is in that kind of high? i pointed up the highest in the mayor can get is the highest point of new york city which is the top of the land fill. [laughter] all right. that's a start. your turn. >> first i want to thank [applause] first i want to say to sam roberts, not because he was so nice to the two of us but because it is the truth, there

are lots of reporters in this town and some of the evers, most of them hate one another and there isn't any one who doesn't respect sam roberts integrity. [applause] for the many times you covered the administration's, the good columns, bud collins, there were always honest columns and i'm very grateful. >> i don't want to speak more than the author speaks. i will try to do the same time that he does. i've been dealt a wonderful hand. i'm 85-years-old now. i probably have to, three years left. i have no fear of death. i've had many medical the incidents. i've had a heart attack, stroke,

quadruple bypass. when the cardinal began came to see me on the last occasion which was just the year-ago on june, i was in the hospital and they thought i wouldn't pull to locations. i was there for six weeks. five of six weeks' work in the intensive care section which was a very long time, and so the cardinals came to see me and i said if god wants to take me today, tomorrow, he may be need some legal let vice. [laughter] i have no fear. i will go very quietly. he said have no fear. your rates are too high. [laughter]

it was rather sweet. i would use that also to tell you what i've tried all my life to do professionally is to bring catholics and jews closer together. it's been part of my professional life and my personal life. i have gone to st. patrick's cathedral for more than 40 years midnight mass. i'm very proud jew. i'm secular, believe in god. there was a point among the catholics the lie was considering a conversion. i said it's more likely that john cardinal will convert the am i will. [laughter] i had a wonderful relationship with the cardinal as well, and for me, that has always been the

most important part of my professional life to try to bring catholics and jews closer together. but in the interim, i've had the good fortune to be elected to city council. the first job i got was an where he was trying to make a comeback and i defeated him by 41 votes and it projected me because i was the feet beating goliath and so forth and from that point on, i was involved. and i had a marvelous time. there were great experiences, a member of congress, but you can't get things done as a member of congress. it's more a talking shop. things that should be done you're not an executive you can't get things done.

but as mayor, you can. it's the greatest job imaginable greatest job imaginable. why? because people, with respect to the governor, the president, they don't see them as part of themselves as an extension. the mayor is an extension of every citizen of the city. that's the way that they see it. you belong to them and to read and i loved it. i absolutely loved it. and i think that whatever success i had, and i have had success. i'm very proud of what i've done. obviously some failures as well. what made it possible in my

judgment -- i'm not being mr. humble pie because if there is one thing is i am not humble. [laughter] but i recognize my limitations. i am an ordinary guy. i am an able administrator, intelligent. but lots of those people like harry truman i like to think of myself as the mold of harry truman, an ordinary guy rose to the location given that opportunity, responsibility. i said to myself in the course of my 12 years as mayor when things are difficult look, lots of people out there are much smarter than you you could have done a better job as mayor the didn't have the balls to run. those who did run, the people thought you were better. [applause]

so now just give it your best and that's eight. and that's what i did and that's what made it possible, plus a sense of humor. i like to think i not only have a sense of humor but it saves me many times, and when you could easily become depressed -- if you're depressed you can't get anything done. you've got to be constantly aware and respectful. that's the other very important aspect of being a public officer in the sense that we are talking about, respectful of the rights of others. respectful of the rights of others doesn't mean you lee down and roll over. i mean, the best illustration when i was a member of conagra's i used to come in early and look at the mailbags and i would take out 20 letters. nobody else was in the office.

i got to the office at 7:30 but every july had and i would read the mail and i would see what people were interested in. i used to get enormous amounts of mail was a congressman. i met a congressman from the district gulf coast and i was asked to go out to some western state to help a member of congress out there and i spent the weekend on a farm that fattens cows and the farmer said well, what are the issues important in your district whacks i so i can tell you with accuracy because i read my mail. i said the first issue is save the whales.

[laughter] the second issue is save the dolphins. and the effort won this state the jews and in that order. [laughter] so once again, just to give you a feel of what i did and how i love doing, and i don't look and say i miss it, i don't. i have a radio show, a partner at a law firm, have a television show, i write a commentary every week and if you want the commentary it's free. give me your e-mail at the end of this meeting and you will a movie reviewer. i do movie reviews and to get that as well. so good evening and think you for coming. [applause]

>> i want to emphasize self as sam did in his introduction some of the enormous difficulties may mayor koch faced when he took office in 1978. the capital budget of the city have almost been entirely shut off, it could actually pull the figure, it was 380 -- $350 million, which sounds like a lot of money but that was all of the money that there was for fixing the entire repairing anything in the whole city that year. and if you think of how much it costs to fix things in your house and multiply that out by 8 million, you realize that is a tiny fraction of what the city

needed to keep its infrastructure in good shape and even though we have billions now it's still not enough many believe, me and many bridges are in bad shape and we still don't repair things as quickly as we really ought to. and it had been like this for several years. those of us who live in the city can remember anything left alone was working. i always used to marvel the red lights would change. [laughter] and the first problem he faces is how are you going to fund the rebuilding of this city. how are you going to restore the city's credit. he went to congress and asked for loan guarantees and this

didn't actually cost the federal government any money in fact the federal government made a profit of a couple of -- 7%. he went to the white house which was the carter administration at that point. the carter administration said it will never get it. but ed had come from the house of representatives, had made alliances with both parties and showed a certain amount of just sheer genius in the selection of order of witnesses. i thought who's going to go first. i started to read the hearings when i was reading the book. i thought who are they going to have the first? are they going to have

dr. kerry, is mayor koch cui to gophers? the first to people ed gotta go testify, and i'm sure it's because he had personal relationships with these people were two republican congressmen. very, very canny move. and they are testifying before the senate committee. senator proxmire indicated that the onset of the hearing there was no way they were going to let the loan guarantees go through the senate and i think perhaps ed koch's greatest triumph as mayor and aníbal many of his subsequent accomplishments is he convinced them and got it through the house and he got it through the senate and even jimmy carter was completely stunned by this because jimmy carter probably wasn't as good as getting

legislation through congress as ed was. this didn't mean everything was sweetness and light and new york city as we know in the 1970's. we all had to live with the disastrous effects of the austerity and the earlier decisions by the ford administration not to really give the city the kind of capital needed to maintain itself, and in order to restore the city's credit to the mayor had to take the city for four years i'm sorry, three years of additional deep austerity and increase the pain. that's something i hope obviously there are times when budgets have to be cut but that

kind of reduction and firing of the street cleaners. i remember i said to bobby widener, a councilman at large for manhattan, bobby, why do the intersections flood every time it rains? bobby always knew the answer to these kind of questions and he said it's because there is only one catch bass cleaner that cleans out the intersections of the street that's left for all of manhattan and that gives you an idea of levels of government service going down of service delivery going down to levels that are truly disastrous and if we came back another story the police commissioner maguire told me one night he got a call from his deputy that there was only one patrol car for queens.

and he said some over from manhattan but it gives you an idea what the effect of that kind of the budget cutting is. it's not small government, it's not efficient, it's an efficient and it's ugly and it's dirty. and so, as we head into efficacy of for other types of austerity it builds as well to realize the things the government does are not all corrupt and the government provides basic services and what i want to ask, ed, is a lot of people say there was a differential of location of services to different neighborhoods as the city was recovering. i'm sure you heard this one of

the things ed did is venture into every neighborhood of the city and every regular town meeting and let people scream at him and they did a scream. so how did that get -- [inaudible] [laughter] >> i actually had in my 12 years 120 town hall meetings. there are 59 planning districts in the city and i went to many of them at least three times but every one of them one or two times. and there wasn't a district that i wouldn't go to some were very supportive middle class was very supportive because i said everybody wants to be billable class. the advocates who hated me say

she's the middle class mayor. i said yes, that's true. everybody wants to be middle class. i'm going to try to make that happen. but i also said it's important to keep rich people in the city of new york because they have a lot of money and the the entrepreneur is of many respects and we want them to invest and the f2 or three houses they can fly at any time and therefore have to be very respectful of their comfort so when people say why are you fixing the roadbed on park avenue because if we don't fix it they are going to leave. they pay a lot of rent and if they think they're getting shafted and not being attended to and all that we are going to spend money on and they will

leave. in our budget was $13 billion. probably 60. i don't even know. i wanted them to stay. the budget that we had come of the 13 billion, when all of the complaints were coming, and one thing i've always insisted on is on a charge was made by a reporter in a column, a letter to the times, any other newspapers about i thought was unfair on a insisted that we correct the record by a letter from me, and op-ed, and the

reason was if you don't send a letter of some sort with a reporter's column it is just plain wrong. the next reporter will use that column if it's not contested as fact. while many times reporters will not acknowledge their error, the letter that i sent appears which they refer to when they write to their articles and they will let least see our opposition and question what was said before. so probably unlike most mayors i'm used to responding to a fare thee well and i still do if i see something that's not fair i will seek to corrected and when

we repaired the streets you are favoring the rich? i don't know if i'm favoring them but if we don't prepare the park avenue streets with the rent is incredible when they will leave and i was willing to take the heat, but more important than that i had wonderful people and brought in to government. there are exceptional and still won government today. the current mayor brought a lot of them back just as i brought a lot of them back from the lindsay administration. i wasn't an ad meijer of john lindsay also was voted for him but i was an ad meijer of the people who worked for his administration and i look forward every month in the month december, the month of my part day, when the commissioners get

together, the 200 commissioners, deputy commissioners, sitting commissioners, and we have a party, and 200 or included and 200 come and what is so incredible about talking with him this is a remember the days as deputy commissioner as though most vital days of their professional lives. they loved it. and part of it was my management style, my management style was the following. if i appointed you i believe you knew more of what your field than i did otherwise i don't need you. [laughter] and if you in fact no more and you do the job i said to each commissioner you're going to make mistakes and lots of stuff is not going to turn out but i want you to be innovative and i

want you to know that when the press attacks to come as they will, that's the job i don't find fault with that. i will stand up in the blue room with you and i will take the blame. i will take the blame and i would let it crash you and that made them feel terrific. it made them feel in charge which they were and it allowed them to the innovative. i was lucky and i did and i want to make one comment as it relates to what jonathan said. i'm still for the death penalty. let me ask without you having to answer you solve that case up in connecticut where those three people murdered -- this note requirement that to speak [laughter] -- three people, great,

murdered, and they are now going through the question as to whether they should be executed. i hope the execute the one guy, only one guy who tried and vexed shortly. i don't believe the def panel should be used flagrantly. i believe it should be used in very special cases. and i've always felt that way. we've lost the battle and if you ask people today in the doherty in this country support the death penalty, but the major newspapers and lots of people and i don't fault them. you can be done on both sides of this issue and beef -- be moral. they say life imprisonment without parole is worse than death penalty. i don't believe it is worse than death penalty. it doesn't make any difference. it doesn't mean i have to give

up. i'm not. i'm not. so i speak out about, and that is that aspect of that. just one little anecdote and then i will turn it back. the first commissioner that i appointed was the police commission. bob mcgwire. he'd never been in the police department. his father had been a detective. the father was very much involved in cases involving copps and defending them inactions involving shootings they had engaged in and i thought he was just marvelous and when we announced it and i

went to this press conference -- he's still around by the way -- like me, still around. [laughter] [applause] [inaudible] [laughter] i said gentlemen, bob mcgwire, police commissioner, and they say mayor, isn't this just part of the older irish mafia? [laughter] i turn to bonds and put my hand told me you were jewish. [laughter] he turns and puts his arm on my shoulder and says mayor, i didn't say that, i told you i look jewish, in that story. [laughter] of course but i was riding in the book i said did you know your second police commissioner

was the first african-american police commissioner, grew up speaking yiddish fluently and he said no. >> he had a bad accent. [laughter] any way, the problem is as you said you took the heat. but when you fix the pavement on park avenue and you don't fix the pavement on hundred 25th street because you don't have the money and you don't have the money for year after year, people start to get angry, and it starts to meet you -- it becomes a racially divisive issue and it maintains the quality-of-life for the wealthy

and garbage and the pavement, the quality of the streets declined. i'm sorry, basic city services decline in the poorer areas. you can't be accused of shrinkage because when the story was all over you did exactly the opposite. you rebuilt the city but it didn't look that way and say 1983. how did you attempt to deal with that anchor and that division in the city? >> i will just respond to that briefly so you can continue. there were constant attacks. balancing the budget on the backs of poor was the line and

in fact ray horton was an advocate was some other academic wrote a book and in the press release, they said any balanced budget on the backs of the poor isn't in the book. he didn't say that in the book but he said it on the press release. i said where in your book, because i knew it wasn't there, do you support this premise that we balance the budget on the backs of the poor? well, mayor, we didn't say that. so i say but it's in your press release and it is with the reporters are going to use. why don't you go down there and see it's not in your book? well, we are not really good at a press relations.

really? [laughter] and as a result of that, i never, ever participated in anything ray horton was in charge of and he was in charge of -- he was the director of the citizens budget commission. they would have dinners and they would invite me and the big guy on the block i would say no i will not come. so we always have to fight that, but on a positive level what i said to our budget people was priced on the budget and show how much goes for the poor. i had a wonderful budget director, just wonderful came from missouri. in fact i picked him because he was with morgan stanley and had been lent to the city under been and i met all the people.

we had wonderful people in the budget office and i had probably six people i could have picked. i picked him for the following reason. i said the congress much like me because i was there and they got to know me yet tip o'neill said the legislation referred to lending the city $1,650,000,000 they did it because they wanted me to succeed. they don't like the yorkers, the heat new yorkers. the eight new yorkers because they think they are all jewish. [laughter] i mean, it's a fact. i mean, it's not such as on, i'm not making the delegation, but they don't like the attitude new yorkers have. it's too brash for them, and so i said to myself if we won their

cooperation we've got to get somebody they identify with that they are automatically when to believe. and i said at the sky from missouri, they are going to believe him. [laughter] in addition, he looks like a second lieutenant from the british army in the first war. [laughter] so that is aside from his brilliance, they were all the land, there were six or so that i could have taken, he was someone i believe they would automatically believe in the midwest, that sort of thing, and they worked out that way. so i asked him how do we convince the opinion makers that we are not balancing the budget on the backs of the poor? we are allocating as best we can. he says easy, mayor.

25% of the budget goes to education. 25. the school system was 83% black or black and hispanic. whites have fled the system. so 25% of the budget, total budget was going basically to minorities and they were the poor in this city overwhelmingly. he set another 25% goes to the human resources administration. they don't give money to middle class people or rich people. it goes to poor people. so that's 50% of the budget right off the top goes to poor people, and then if you take every get their service liked sanitation, we put more money in the poor neighborhoods because

there's more trash to pick up. they don't have the concierge people, so the stuff is out on the street, or the fire department, there are more lawyers in the poorer parts of this town than there are in the rich parts of this town. copps, you put the cops where the crime is committed a crime is in the poor neighborhoods and it's the poor people being killed and insulted and the cops are there to save them so he went through every one of the approximately 50 services in the city provides overwhelmingly the money is spent going to help support. senior citizens are poor. large numbers of minorities and white.

i ask you to put all those figures together showing that more than two-thirds of the operating budget was spent on poor people overwhelmingly minority. he said we've made the case but nobody's going to believe it because it's not what they want to hear. >> is it just not what they want to hear or is it a difference between looking at the situation from those numbers a and the very difficult cities colin harlem or stuyvesant or on the upper west side for that matter -- the lived experience of having vacant lots full of garbage and the city isn't making the owners clean it up? to the lived experience of not having those services is different from the way it looks on the budget which you know

because you were out there, and it wasn't enough money to do what you and i and the people living in those neighborhoods would like to see done and they never will be. but we did the best we could with the money that was available and of the monies that were available, not enough. two-thirds of that money went to help the poor people of this town and we couldn't do better than that but we never expected it would convince anybody but i wanted it on the record and it is on the record. >> by the way, just on the ray horton thing, as many things, i interviewed reporting for the book and so both versions of the story, ed's and his both say -- >> what did he say --

[laughter] >> i think it's it's not in the press release but to tell you the truth i have to look it up in the index and i don't think we have time to do that. >> i'm telling you he said to me i don't think he would deny it that we didn't put it in the book we put it in the press release and when i asked him to tell the press that he said no we don't feel comfortable with the press, something along those lines, that's what he said. >> let's see. where should we go? >> probably one of the most difficult -- one of the most difficult decisions that ed had to make -- and one of the most difficult agencies to handle and

the administration before it found people who could run the agency went through several people who were phil years of running the agency and it was probably the toughest position to tell of all the agencies and the key one, healthcare, was probably -- one of the thesis of the book was health care costs and the failure of the various art illustrations in the 1970's and 1980's to federalize the cost of health care as ed koch proposed 1980 and as the democratic party advocated in this platform in 1980 really contributed mightily to the cost of the fiscal crisis. now any budget is what we call over determined. that means that there are a whole bunch of factors, even any one of which by itself can push the budget over the limit.

but, if you look at the cost -- and this is documented in my book. if you look what new york city was paying for its share for medicaid, plus the amount of subsidy that is paid to help the hospitals corporation, the city hospital agency, to pay for care for uninsured people, that ran from for every year of the ed koch a strachan that ran 40% of the budget gap and for a couple of years exceeded 100% of the budget gap. in other words, for some years the entire budget gap in the city's financial plan would be attributed to paying for the cost for health care cost for uninsured people. in order to bring the cost down, very difficult decisions have to be made. no politician wants to close hospitals. politicians want to open

hospitals. and some of the city hospitals like everything else the city was running were in a very bad shape indeed. now, there was a hospital in harlem it was historically important in the black community because it was the first hospital in new york city that allowed african-american positions at the dig privileges. and this was a huge milestone, and it was controversial. another historically black hospital, a private one, arthur logan hospital, just closed a few months before under bean. other members kept them open even though the quality-of-care for emergency services was not

great. as ed will tell you, the chief medical officer of the hospital was a dentist, and it wasn't accessible -- the building accessible to the handicapped. so there were managerial reasons for closing this hospital. but in the political context of harlem for various political reasons, and i go into this in the book, a lot of it has to do with the transition from a segregated health care system to an integrated health care system and some of the implications of that for both black patience and the black middle class this was a very politically sensitive topic and so the mayor kept it open, neyer bean kept it open and when ed was running for reelection -- i'm sorry when he was running for reelection in the runoff in 1977 and ed got

the support of the main political leadership in harlem, patterson, charlie rangel and other leaders -- fred samuels -- and in part because he had promised to keep it open. he gets to be mayor and sees the full situation and says this is a terrible hospital. we are going to close at. but this has horrible political repercussions in terms of his relationship with the black political the establishment because they have a constituency to represent, and they had gotten the promise from ed command as they thought he broke that promise. and the result was enormous, not only enormous demonstrations at the time, there was a set in in

the hospital, there were demonstrations around the hospital and eventually it closed. but a created a tremendous -- it created a lingering distrust and bad relations between koch and the leaders of the black community. charlie rangel in the course of this -- the rhetoric got quite over-the-top. charlie rangel at one point compared the mayor koch to