de Blasio Press Q&A: The Pinch Edition (Updated x 2)



Today Mayor Bill de Blasio named his wife, Chirlane McCray, as chair of the Mayor’s Fund to Advance New York City.  McCray and de Blasio visited the Osbourne Association, a non-profit dedicated to assisting incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people improve and transform themselves, in the Mott Haven section of the Bronx.  During their visit, de Blasio announced the appointment and answered questions from the press.  McCray gave a short speech following de Blasio’s announcement.

To start, here’s a brief clip from the beginning of McCray’s remarks.

Update – McCray:

Here are McCray’s full remarks.

Update #2 – Q&A:

Here is de Blasio’s full press Q&A.

On-topic questions include: whether de Blasio and McCray’s partnership is modeled on the Clintons, how the Mayor’s Fund will be financed including whether they plan to ask Michael Bloomberg to contribute money, the anticipated size of McCray’s staff and office location, whether McCray will regularly issue a public schedule, how de Blasio decided to appoint McCray, whether she will continue to be active in other efforts related to the administration such as the pre-K initiative, whether McCray is ready for increased public and press scrutiny and how others who disagree with any actions or decisions by McCray at the Mayor’s Fund can address those with the mayor.

Between the on-topic and off-topic questions, de Blasio made a statement criticizing the NY Times for a specific story on Sanitation Commissioner John  Doherty.  (de Blasio’s statement and an in-depth look at the topic is also separately available here.)

Questions on other topics include: the NYS Attorney General’s investigation of the Puerto Rican Day Parade committee, whether de Blasio’s pre-K initiative will include private and parochial schools, the “absent teacher reserve”, a protest by Girls Prep supporters against de Blasio’s expected  charter school policies, performance of Administration for Children’s Services and whether de Blasio plans to contact the St. Patrick’s Day Parade committee to urge them to lift their exclusion of LGBT groups and organizations.


Our look at Mayor de Blasio’s complaint about the New York Times’ reporting on Sanitation Commissioner John Doherty is here.