GABE PRESSMAN, Host: -- The mayoral election of 2005 is nine months away. And while there have been no official announcements, Mayor Bloomberg and five Democrats, Fernando Ferrer, Virginia Fields, Charles Barron, Gifford Miller and Anthony Weiner, all have their eyes on the prize. A major issue is the mayor's campaign to build a new stadium on the West Side for the New York Jets, partly to lure the Olympics to New York. Later this month, members of the International Olympic Committee will be visiting here. In December, the mayor journeyed to Croatia to make a pitch to sports leaders there and the mayor and deputy mayor, Dan Doctoroff, are unleashing an advertising blitz to tout New York as the best place for the 2012 Olympics. As he gears up for the mayoral campaign, Mr. Bloomberg has stressed his educational reforms and his efforts to achieve fiscal stability for New York City.

Announcer: From Studio 6B in Rockefeller Center, this is a presentation from News Channel 4, Gabe Pressman's NEWS FORUM. Now your host, senior correspondent, Gabe Pressman.

PRESSMAN: Good morning and welcome, Mr. Mayor.

Mayor MICHAEL BLOOMBERG (New York City): Thank you.

PRESSMAN: The proposal to build a new football stadium on the West Side for the Jets has generated a lot of controversy. Assemblyman Richard Brodsky, who's from Westchester, says that the MTA is shortchanging the riders by negotiating with the Jets over the price of land for the stadium. Mr. Brodsky says that the price would be better settled in court through condonation proceedings. Is there a danger here of fleecing the taxpayers or the riders?

Mayor BLOOMBERG: Well, it's up to the MTA to get the best price they can. They need the money. They are getting nothing from the air rights over the yards and haven't since the yards were built decades ago. It's always been sort of a vacant area, which is why they built the rail yards there to begin with. The Jets obviously are trying to get as low a price as they can and they've got to come up with a procedure to get a fair price. When you have two parties that disagree, typically what you do is you call in a mediator who listens to both sides and they both agree to follow whatever that recommendation is. They've got George Mitchell as a mediator. Nobody questions Mitchell's honesty.

What has to happen here, however, is the MTA needs money. They need capital money for this mass transit system that is woefully out of date. Forget about new projects. They need a lot more money than the state and the city can possibly provide to get what we have now up to speed. You saw that terrible fire which, fortunately, did not turn out to hurt the mass transit downtown as much as it was first predicted. Remember, we went from five years to a couple of days. But nevertheless, the MTA needs the money. The city needs what you describe as a sports stadium. It's part of the convention center. The Jets are willing to put $800 million into it and use it 10 days a year and it's probably the best investment the city and state could make.

PRESSMAN: There's no danger here that the taxpayers are going to get fleeced?

Mayor BLOOMBERG: Well, the taxpayers are going to suffer dramatically if we don't have jobs for our people and we then won't have any tax revenues to pay our municipal work force and provide good services. In terms of setting a fair price between the MTA and the Jets, that's what the MTA's supposed to negotiate.

PRESSMAN: Public opinion polls have indicated that there's a large number of voters who don't like the idea of the stadium.

Mayor BLOOMBERG: Now I think that's true. When you say, if it's going to cost money, will--are you in favor? And you're right. Then a number of people are against it. If you say it will pay for itself and, in fact, the Independent Budget Office thinks it'll make a lot of money over the next 30 years, then people are 70 percent--some number like that--in favor. This is the most important economic development thing. It will create construction jobs. It will get conventions here in the offseason. And if we were blessed enough, honored enough to host the Olympics, it would transform this city.

PRESSMAN: Now your own--your opponents--potential opponents, all the Democrats, seem to be dead set against it. Are you taking a political risk here?

Mayor BLOOMBERG: I don't make decisions. You've known me long enough, Gabe. The last thing in my mind is what's a political decision. I don't lead from the back. I was elected to make the decisions that I think are best for this city and then, four years after I come into office, the voters are going to have a chance to decide whether they would like to continue with my decision-making. They won't agree with everything, but on balance, they have to decide whether they're comfortable. And I'm very comfortable that they will like it.

PRESSMAN: Recently, sitting right here with me, one of your potential opponents, Fernando Ferrer, was here and he said this and I'd like you to comment on it.

(Excerpt from January 23, 2005)

Mr. FERNANDO FERRER: The mayor, I think, has an obligation to take that argument out of the back room and put it before the voters. Now late last year, the mayor appointed a charter revision commission to investigate the fiscal health of the city. In my view, there's nothing that more profoundly affects the fiscal health of this city now and in the generations to come than the expenditure of untold hundreds of millions of dollars on a West Side stadium.

So the mayor has an obligation, I believe, and I call upon him to do that--I hope he's watching this broadcast--to call upon his charter commission to put this measure on the ballot this November for a vote.

(End of excerpt)

PRESSMAN: Well, what do you think about that idea?

Mayor BLOOMBERG: Well, number one...

PRESSMAN: To let the people vote on it?

Mayor BLOOMBERG: Number one, look, this is on state land and it is a state and city project. It's the kind of investment that this city makes all the time. We have billions of dollars in capital investments. You don't put every single one of those on the ballot. You could never do it. That's not the ways to run government. This is just a ploy to go and deliberately lose the Olympics for this city. He knows and everybody knows if you don't get the stadium going now, we are not going to get the Olympics. And even if we don't get the Olympics, this is just a way to try to court favor with a handful of people who don't understand the difference between capital investments, which we have to make, and tax revenues which come in, which we use to pay our municipal work force. People say you shouldn't be building projects like the water tunnel or the Nets Arena or the Bronx Terminal Market or any of these big things. You should take those monies and go and give our municipal work force a raise. You can't go borrow money and give them a raise. Quite the contrary. Our ability to give them a raise is a function of our tax revenues.

PRESSMAN: So you think this is just a ploy on Mr. Ferrer's part?

Mayor BLOOMBERG: I--he has to speak for himself, but let's get serious here. This is, by any measure, something that this city needs. We are a city of 8.1 million people with no place to put together more than 30,000 people under a roof. I mean, we are hopelessly behind other cities in convention business.

PRESSMAN: The consequences, Mr. Mayor, if this is not built, if this stadium is not built are if--we lose the Olympics?

Mayor BLOOMBERG: It would be a very disaster--disastrous isn't the right word. It would slow down our growth dramatically. The West Side, all of the rezoning which has been voted on, which everybody knows was a prelude to building this stadium. So when you say it wasn't based on--it wasn't something that was a vote on the stadium, this stadium has had more public review than probably any capital project in modern memory. But if you don't build the stadium, nobody's going to invest in the West Side. We can expand the convention center, which the Legislature approved doing. We could possibly build--extend the Number 7 line over, although if private developers aren't coming in to that area, we're not going to have the tax revenues to pay the interest on the bonds we need to finance the Number 7 line extension. The fact of the matter is, no private developer's going to go in there if you have--there's open rail yards. And there's probably no other project that would get you the monies to cover the rail yards.

If you want to build housing, for example, which we are trying to do and this project has 4,000 moderate-income housing, affordable housing, and lots of other housing in it as well--if you want to go do this over the rail yards, there's no money to do it. The state and city would still have to build the platform, but housing doesn't pay taxes for the first N number of years and so there wouldn't be any revenues to pay the bond, so the city and the state can't do it. Why would you go build a building where you wouldn't be able to rent? Why would you rent the building when your employees walk out the door to an area where you can go five blocks and not find a bodega to get a cup of coffee? You can stand on a street corner at night and wait for half an hour and not one cab comes by. You need the catalyst, Gabe. This is like a three-legged stool. The extension of the Number 7 line, the convention center and the stadium together, which will get people over there, and the parks that are all part of that, and then getting private money to come in. And a three-legged stool, I don't know which leg is the most important. I just know whichever one you cut off, the stool falls over.

PRESSMAN: And you feel it's vital to the economic development of New York City?

Mayor BLOOMBERG: If we were not to get it, we would continue. It would just make my job in a second term that much tougher. It would limit or postpone the kind of growth that we could have. It would be very tragic. I don't know how to measure the number of people that would have had jobs, the revenues we would have had to pay our teachers and firefighters and police officers more, the monies we would have had to do lots of other things that everybody thinks is desirable, but clearly, it will be a lot tougher without this project and many of these other projects, the same thing.

PRESSMAN: Let's talk about Social Security and New Yorkers and other matters after this.

(Announcements)

PRESSMAN: The president's plan, Mr. Mayor, to divert some Social Security taxes into private investment accounts for people, you've said that it doesn't make a lot of sense. Why?

Mayor BLOOMBERG: Well, I think the president is right that Social Security has a problem. And whether it runs out of money in 2018 or 2020, or whatever the year is, isn't important. It's clear from the demographics that we are going to have fewer people supporting more people down the road. And there isn't really a trust fund. When you pay your money into Social Security, the federal government uses that money elsewhere to pay for its expenses, balance its budget. So there isn't this pool of money that would just have an obligation down the road. When it comes to individuals, I'm very much in favor, and I think the president is as well, of IRAs and 401(k)s. For those that have extra money and want to save it for their retirement and invest, I would encourage them to do it. I think they should do it intelligently and reasonably conservatively if it's a small amount of money, but they should do that.

But I don't think you want to take away the social safety net that was created many decades ago. Worst case, if you have nothing else, you want to make sure that everybody has some savings. And it's like gambling. You know, there's nothing wrong with you going to a casino and if that's what you enjoy, gambling. But you don't do it with your rent money. You do it with your entertainment money. And I don't think that you should be doing this with your rent money. I think you should be doing it with extra money, if you want to save and invest those ...(unintelligible).

PRESSMAN: Do you think this could well hurt many millions of Americans?

Mayor BLOOMBERG: I don't know whether it will hurt or not. You certainly don't wish that on anybody. But I just think that, if you ask my personal advice, for you, in terms of what you should do for your retirement, I think you should make sure you have something that is absolutely 100 percent safe and not--and if you had to live on it, it may be a struggle...

PRESSMAN: Right.

Mayor BLOOMBERG: ...but you'd have something so that, the worst-case scenario, you can survive.

PRESSMAN: Now you're a Republican, but you disagree fundamentally with the president on this issue, on the issue of gay marriage, choice. Social Security is one of just many issues. Are you having a political identity crisis?

Mayor BLOOMBERG: Well, I don't know. Some of those issues--you know, every one of them is complex. There's no right answer and wrong answer in a lot of cases. It's a question of--for example, with Social Security, if you have the extra money, I think you should be able to invest. If you don't--but I don't want to take away that. I think, look, no two people are ever going to agree on everything. You and your spouse don't agree on everything. That doesn't mean you don't love each other, in the case of a marriage, or aren't friends in the case of a friendship or whatever. You know, the president and I don't agree on everything, but not all--no--you'll never find two Republicans or two Democrats that agree on everything. And that's normal--I don't think any of us--nobody would respect you, Gabe, if you automatically did whatever the other person said. They expect you to have an honesty and say what you really believe and be willing to listen to the other person, but have your views.

PRESSMAN: But this is an issue that the president has set in stone. It's like education in your administration, which you...

Mayor BLOOMBERG: I would urge him to fight for it if that's what he believes. I don't have any problems with him promoting the things that he thinks are right and fighting for it. And I don't have a vote on this. This is done in Congress.

PRESSMAN: I know.

Mayor BLOOMBERG: But if I were in Congress, I would be hard to convince, is the nice way to phrase it. I think that we should have something that is--the basics that give us some--100 percent assurance that we're going to have something.

PRESSMAN: But you seem to have more in common with the Democrats who are seeking your job on some of these issues in Washington than you do with Republicans.

Mayor BLOOMBERG: I don't know that's true. I think it's a question of which Republicans and which Democrats you pick. I mean, number one, I can't speak for anybody that's running against me. You know, they're all out there. They've got to say what they want to say and justify to, you know, themselves what they say. I've got to tell you what I really believe. I got elected and people either like me or don't like me for my honesty. And, as you know, I'm not a partisan person. I've always ascribed to the La Guardia theory that there is no Republican or Democratic way to pick the garbage up. I'm going to do what I think is right. I'm going to make the decisions that the public hired me to make and I think, in the end, they will like that. In fact, if you take a look at the polls, they always say--you know, very high percentage of people--he's honest, he's hardworking, competent, smart. Those are the things that matter and that's what'll get you re-elected.

PRESSMAN: How would you evaluate some of your potential opponents, like Ferrer, Miller, Fields?

Mayor BLOOMBERG: I can't. You've got to talk to them. You've got to talk to them. They've got to go out and they've got to make their case to the primary voters first in the Democratic Party and then whoever it is, I will be happy to meet and explain the differences between--I can't even explain the differences, I guess, between myself and them. I can tell you what I stand for. And, remember, four years ago, I ran based on what I said I would do. Now I'm going to run based on `I'm going to continue what I've been doing.' You will have had close to four years of watching me and deciding, `Do you like what Bloomberg has done,' bringing jobs to this city, fixing the school system--we're making big changes there--bringing crime down. You know, Jack Newfield once said they should have a ticker tape parade if you had under 600 murders. They should have a ticker tape parade for the mayor. We've had three years of under 600 murders. We're down to a level not seen since 1963; traffic deaths, fire deaths as low as they've been in modern memory. Life expectancy in this city is now higher than in the national average. I mean, we're doing all of the things that we should be doing--improving the quality of life, not burdening our children anymore than they've already been burdened.

PRESSMAN: So the difference in the election between you and the Democrats...

Mayor BLOOMBERG: I can't speak for them. I can tell you what I stand for. You're not going to get me to answer that, because I can't answer. I'm not an expert on them. I'm an expert on what I believe and it may be politically popular, it may not be.

PRESSMAN: The last time you were in, you had the endorsement of the Independents Party. A major force in that party is Lenora Fulani and she's been accused of making anti-Semitic statements. She's been allied with Pat Buchanan and Louis Farrakhan. She was once quoted as saying, "Jews had to sell their souls to acquire Israel and are required to do the dirtiest work of capitalism." Do you feel comfortable being--accepting the endorsement of that party?

Mayor BLOOMBERG: You mean, the party that Chuck Schumer took the endorsement of, that Gifford Miller took the endorsement of, a whole bunch of people took the endorsement of? I just want to make sure we have the right party.

PRESSMAN: Yes, you have the right party.

Mayor BLOOMBERG: Thank you. Now that we've established that, the answer is that every party is made up of a lot of people. There are people in the Democratic Party that I think are an absolute disgrace. Are you going to ask that question of people who take the Democratic Party endorsement? Of course not. You stand there and you run on your own and you like to get the support of everybody, and if people in that party want to endorse me and work for me because they think that I will do a good job for this city, I'm happy to have them and I'd like to have everybody's vote.

In the end, my job is to leave this city a lot better than I found it. And I think I've done a good job. I'm going to try to make that case to the voters, but, you know, everybody's going to have to take a look and it has nothing to do with a partisan issue. People know me, Gabe, well enough to know that I am not, as we said, a political guy. And it doesn't matter, when you come looking for a job, I've never asked anybody when they look for a job, `What party do you belong to?' I've never asked anybody. I don't ask your ethnicity or your religion or anything else. I have one criteria: Are you the best person that we can find for that job? And I defy you to find any time in history that anybody has had as good a group of commissioners.

PRESSMAN: But to answer the question, you don't feel uncomfortable because she happens to be in that party?

Mayor BLOOMBERG: No more or less than any party that I would take an endorsement from would have some people in that I don't agree with.

PRESSMAN: Back in June, you announced a plan to build 12,000 units of housing with the state for the mentally ill homeless. Now some of the advocates say that plan seems to be dead in the water.

Mayor BLOOMBERG: No, no, no.

PRESSMAN: Is it?

Mayor BLOOMBERG: No, you're confusing a couple of things. One, I think the 12,000 was 12,000 units of supportive housing and we're coming along on that. There's 65,000 units of affordable housing by the year 2008 and we are way ahead of schedule on that. We have something like 25,000 or 30,000 units either completed or in the ground. I think if you talk to the housing advocates, and they did have a protest down outside of City Hall, you didn't hear anybody really criticizing the administration, because I think they are happy with the job we're doing. They always like more.

But we are bringing down the number of people in the homeless shelters. It is starting to go down because we've changed the policies. The homeless advocates, I think you'll find, are pretty much--think--will argue that Linda Gibbs, my commissioner, has done a good job. Children--ACS, run by John Mattingly, we are--the advocates, I think, will tell you that we are doing a great job.

PRESSMAN: ...(Unintelligible).

Mayor BLOOMBERG: We have more adoptions than ever before, fewer kids in foster care than ever before. It used to be 50,000. We've got it down to 20,000. These are children who need parents. They need a break. And we're doing a good job on all these things.

PRESSMAN: No special allocation was made or promised for mentally ill homeless?

Mayor BLOOMBERG: Oh, yeah. There's a whole bunch of--I don't know what you mean in mentally ill homeless. There is--supportive housing is what you're really talking about.

PRESSMAN: Yes.

Mayor BLOOMBERG: Supportive housing is where, in the same building, you have a variety of services so that if they need a counselor for drug addiction or need help if they have physical handicaps or they need counseling or those kinds of things, they're all in the building. And supportive housing is something this administration's worked very hard on because we really think it's the way to get people so that they can get--deal with their problems, maybe conquer their problems and rejoin society and lead productive, happy lives.

PRESSMAN: Well, let's come back and talk about a couple of the loose ends that we left out after this.

(Announcements)

PRESSMAN: And we're back here again with Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

Mr. Mayor, the money that the state under the court ruling is supposed to provide the city for improving the schools, do you think that the state has been dragging its feet?

Mayor BLOOMBERG: Well, the Legislature has not come up with the ways to fund what the court said should be done. And they're waiting for the judge to issue a finding based on his three panelists that he appointed to study how much money and then he will, I assume, turn to the Legislature and say, `This is what you've got to do.' The Legislature does have a lot of flexibility. The Legislature could send the money to New York or could even order New York to come up with the money itself, which would mean a very big problem for this city, because we don't have any extra money, as you know. We do have a budget crisis. We are getting through it, but we have a structural problem. We spend $3 billion a year more than we take in and every year it's a problem to plug the budget. We're doing it but that would be a big problem.

PRESSMAN: Well, has the governor acted with alacrity on this?

Mayor BLOOMBERG: Well, I think the governor and the Legislature, in all fairness, are working together. There is no easy solution because the courts have said that it's an enormous amount of money that should be spent on education. The state Legislature and the governor, I think, feel that if they do it for the city, they've got to do it for the whole state. So it's two and a half times whatever it costs for New York City, and they have their budget problems.

PRESSMAN: I think you said once--well, let me start with this. Many years ago, Mayor William O'Dwyer said, `I wouldn't wish this job on my worst enemy.' And you have said that, `I consider myself something like the luckiest guy in the world to have the job.'

Mayor BLOOMBERG: Absolutely. If you started out the way I did--I was born into a family, my father worked seven days a week all his life. If he had lived to see me be so successful and be a mayor and be able to try to change the city and the world for my children, he'd be so ecstatic. I'm the luckiest guy in the world. This is the best job. You have a chance to make a difference.

PRESSMAN: What did your father do?

Mayor BLOOMBERG: He was a bookkeeper in a little dairy company in Somerville, Massachusetts.

PRESSMAN: And your mother?

Mayor BLOOMBERG: She was a housewife until my father died and then she went to work to help my sister and I go to college. And I had a job in college. I wasn't good enough to get scholarships. I got some loans, which I eventually paid off. And--but those were great days.

PRESSMAN: So you don't agree with your predecessor, Mr. O'Dwyer?

Mayor BLOOMBERG: I never knew Mr. O'Dwyer, although I have met some of his relatives actually at an event the other day.

PRESSMAN: I knew him slightly. He was my first mayor. I had just arrived at City Hall and then pretty soon he resigned. But he was a dynamic, charming fellow. In any event, you think you're the luckiest guy in the world and he wasn't quite sure.

Mayor BLOOMBERG: It's a very tough job, which is what makes it attractive. Everything you do, there are critics and there are people who support it, but it's not a job that you can do if you don't have the courage of your convictions, because you'll always be pressured from both sides.

PRESSMAN: Thank you very much, Mr. Mayor, for being with us today.

This is Gabe Pressman. Have a good day.