TJH Speaks with Terri Liftin, Candidate for NYC Comptroller

Bringing Her Experience to the City

TJH Speaks with Terri Liftin, Candidate for NYC Comptroller BY SUSAN SCHWAMM

Terri, when did you decide to run for New York City comptroller?

I have various friends in my neighborhood, on East 67th in Manhattan, who are very involved in politics. One of my friends ran for city council and state assembly. Since last August, I had been fielding calls about the comptroller’s race and how desperate the city’s financial fiscal situation was, how it was going to get much worse in the coming years, and that it was really time to bring in someone, a professional. There is a need to bring someone in with a finance and asset management background, someone who would understand what it meant to be a fiduciary, and someone who would have the courage to speak up against some of the spending practices. It took me a while to fully appreciate that what I was being asked is whether I would run, and I finally made the decision over the Thanksgiving holiday to run for NYC comptroller. We officially announced my run in early January. for you – crazier than most people’s, I guess. Can you tell readers what exactly the New York City comptroller does?

Broadly speaking, the comptroller is the chief fiscal officer of New York City. There are a few primary responsibilities. Number one is that it’s a fiduciary to the city’s five pension funds. It’s the final say on all contracts with the city – the comptroller ensures that there’s integrity in those contracts. The comptroller has the authority, under the city charter, to audit every city agency every four years. The comptroller also dispenses with, and otherwise deals with, all litigation brought against the city and by the city. And then finally, the comptroller provides general oversight and counsel to the city, the mayor, and the city council on the budget.

It sounds like somebody with your experience – and we’ll get to your experience in a few minutes –would be the perfect candidate for this position. Why do you think the comptroller position has become more of a political position, as opposed to a position based on merit?

I love that question because it’s something that I’ve been thinking about as well. When people ask me, I’m trying to make the point that the comptroller really shouldn’t be a political position. I do appreciate the fact that the person who should run for election needs to be independent and needs to be a check on the mayor and city council and spending. But I think, at its core, the office really should be held by a professional.

In terms of why politicians generally end up with the position of comptroller, I would say, the answer is twofold. One, I think the hardest part of becoming a politician is your first run. And once you’re in office, you have the infrastructure you need to stay in office, and then to run for other offices. Now, for myself, because I have never been involved in politics, I’m finding a lack of infrastructure, constituency, and a fundraising support base does make it difficult for outsiders. If you’re already in political office, you have relationships with the press and other politicians. So it’s easy to get noticed and covered and raise money and endorsements.

And, two, some people say the comptroller’s office is a stepping stone for mayor, although, there haven’t been too many comptrollers that have been successful. I think the last one was Abe Beame.

Well, Scott Stringer is running for mayor now, so I guess he sees it as that stepping stone.

That’s right. But we’ll see whether he gets there. Because of Scott running for mayor, I think it’s become a big question in this race. And it’s a fair question: How many of the candidates running for comptroller are running because they’re bumping up against term limits and they need another political job? And how many of them see it as a stepping stone to mayor? Political ambition is not an attractive quality, I have to tell you. Wanting to do the job because you want to do service for New York City – that’s what it should be about.

the position. Tell readers a little bit about your experience in this area.

Let me start with my background. I grew up in Great Neck, right over the Queens border, and I went to Great Neck South, a public school. In 1986, I moved to Manhattan, where I attended Barnard College. As I was telling some members of the Orthodox community earlier, I was remembering Shabbats on Friday nights. I’m not Jewish, so I was always the one who turned off the lights and the oven after Shabbat dinner. And when they let me, I would eat in the kosher dining room because the food was always so good.

After Barnard, I worked for a while as a paralegal. And then I went to NYU to get a Masters in Economics. After NYU, I worked for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey as an economic analyst. I analyzed macroeconomic behavior and the interaction with the economy. I was actually in the World Trade Center the first time the attempt was made. I worked in One World Trade.

And then after the Port Authority, I went to Brooklyn Law School on a scholarship. After I graduated from Brooklyn Law School, I worked at two different law firms. The first law firm I worked at I was in the litigation department, and I learned the anatomy of a legal case. I learned when to fight and when to settle. And then I moved to a second large firm in the securities and regulatory practice, where our clients were investment managers and broker-dealers. I now have been married for 22 years, but at the time, my husband and I decided to start a family. And I just knew that working long hours at a law firm wasn’t consistent with how I wanted to raise my family, so I moved in-house to the investment management business. That’s where I’ve worked for 15 years.

I worked my way up to be the chief legal officer, chief compliance officer at investment management firms, firms that manage pension assets – state private pensions, state, city, and union pensions. I know what it means to be a fiduciary. I have negotiated billions of dollars in investments. I’ve negotiated beneficial terms for pension investors with underlying investments. I’ve reviewed hundreds of contracts. I have experience making sure that contracts were tailored to the right level of services and that payment was always based on success and performance metrics, not just a promise to deliver services. I’ve had litigation experience. Additionally, when I was in-house, I was involved with settling cases. As a chief compliance officer, I was really accountable to the SEC, a federal regulator. I always made sure I put monitoring programs in place, where we would track expenses and follow the money, making sure every dollar that was spent was spent in line with what we could spend, according to the documents. That’s what I’ve been doing for

the last 15 years.

Now, it’s time for me to hand over my service to New York City. I love the city. It’s given me every opportunity. And now, it’s my time to give back. I’ve been extremely frustrated over the last few years, prior to COVID. I started thinking to myself, “Something is just not right. Our leaders, our city politicians, our mayor are spending so much money.” And when I looked around, it just seemed like we weren’t getting the return on our tax dollars. Whether you lived on the Upper East Side or the Lower East Side or anywhere in the city, the streets were dirty. The transportation wasn’t reliable. Crime had started to step up. The homeless weren’t being taken care of. There seemed to be more mentally ill people who just weren’t getting the services they needed. I also felt that we were being pulled apart and that we were just being pitted against one another. And then COVID hit.

My boys love the city, and my husband and I do, too. I decided, “I’m going to stay here, and I’m going to fight and I’m going to make it better.”

If that’s what you were thinking

The next comptroller has to stand up and have the courage to speak out against what’s going on.

before COVID, I’m sure COVID

wrecked the city’s finances even

more.

I wasn’t reviewing the budget prior to COVID, but that’s the feeling I was getting as someone who lived and worked in New York City since 1986. I’ve seen the effects of a national recession. I lived through the dotcom bubble bursting in the late ‘90s, 9/11, Hurricane Sandy, the global financial crisis. As we emerge from COVID, we have a long way to go to come back, although the fiscal situation turned out not to be as bad because personal income taxes and property taxes were much higher than the city anticipated. We were able to cover the gap in 2021 and for 2022. The federal relief package, roughly $15 billion, is all being all spent over the next two years. And as a result, we’re going to face deficits again in a couple of years of $4 billion or more. We really need someone with the courage to speak out and make sure that doesn’t happen.

When you’re speaking with

voters, what’s primary on their

minds?

They really are craving new and competent leaders. They’re tired of the current political leadership. They’re tired of politicians promising but not delivering. They’re tired of communities being pitted against one another based on social factors, whether it’s race or money. Politicians are always blaming somebody else for the problems, instead of trying to come up with solutions. That’s what I’m hearing.

When you get to office, what are

the things you want to tackle

first?

Any time you come into an organization, it’s really important that you assess the current team. In the case of the comptroller, the current team is over 700 employees. I think that Scott Stringer has really top-notch people at all levels, but he probably has too many people. The second priority is to make sure that we’re investing our pensions based on the best risk adjusted returns. Right now, there’s an equal weighting put on different social factors and social screens. I think that social programs are really important, but belong in the city’s budget. When it comes to investing in the pensions, the primary decision has to be made based on performance because right now – we’re underfunded by 40-plus billion dollars. Every year, pension contributions are $10 billion, and a part of that amount is to reduce that underfunded amount, or at least, to keep us even. And that’s billions of taxpayer dollars.

Next, we need honest and transparent accounting. While Scott Stringer has done a very good job in making sure the comptroller’s website is chock-full of information, I think the way it’s presented is not always clear and concise. Checkbook NYC is a link to where you can see all of the city’s spending by budget and expense line on third party contracts. A lot of times there are miscellaneous lines

or other lines, and we really need to make sure that we’re providing full disclosure.

With respect to third-party contracts, we should disclose material terms on the website, so that they can be viewed by the public. The public has a high level of distrust right now for the procurement process. They don’t really believe that the bidding and the procurement review is done with any type of fairness. We have to remedy that.

And, finally, I am determined to stand up for small businesses. The current administration, Scott Stringer’s administration, put together a Red Tape Commission back in 2015, which brought together small business owners and city agency employees responsible for regulating small businesses. The Commission produced a report listing all of the different complaints from small businesses, and also came up with really great recommendations, 60 recommendations – tightening timeframes, eliminating the use of expediters, stopping to use fines as a way to bludgeon compliance. I agree that there should be a more productive relationship between city agencies and small businesses, and unwind the red tape. Once the report was finished, though, it was left on the table, and the small businesses didn’t know how to move forward on the recommendations. We need to dust off that report because when I walk the streets, the business corridors, and the business improvement districts, the small businesses are talking about the same things. They’re being strangled by the bureaucracy. They talk about the arrogance of city agencies, the Byzantine codes, the overlapping inspections. They’re really hurting. The next comptroller has to stand up and have the courage to speak out against what’s going on.

I want to talk about taxes a little bit. Taxes are big problem for New Yorkers, especially high earners in the city. How much do you think that’s going to hurt the city, when we wake up and realize that a lot of people with bigger pocketbooks

have left for places with lower

taxes?

Oh, I think it’s hurting the city already, and that’s why I’m not optimistic about the current budget proposal and the projected revenue estimates from income tax and property tax. I think the predictions are too rosy. I think people will come back – the next mayor will play a huge role here – but I don’t think it’s this year, and maybe not next year. So yes, I do think tax rates motivate behavior. And some people who left during COVID are not coming back. Eric Adams was talking about this tonight on the mayoral debate stage. He spoke about a small percentage of New Yorkers who pay an outsized portion of taxes and that we need those people to come back. Nonresident commuters also pay a lot of taxes when they come and work in New York City, as long as offices remain in the city. Now that coming to work is optional, that’s also going to hurt the city. The impact is real, and right now, our leaders are underestimating it.

You are a mom to two boys. How do you juggle being a mother and working full-time? Well, I mean, I think the honest answer is you never quite feel like What do you enjoy most about campaigning?

Talking to voters. That’s what I love the most. Being out on the street and speaking with voters.

Could you explain to voters about ranked-choice voting? I think some voters are still not so comfortable with it, even

though we had one or two elec-

tions with ranked voting in the

neighborhood.

The simplest explanation of ranked-choice voting is that each vot-

Wanting to do the job because you want to do service for New York City – that’s what it should be about.

you’re doing it all. You always feel like at any given moment, you’re doing really, really well on one thing. And then you have to quickly shift focus and spend time on this other matter.

How old are your children?

One is going to be 13 this summer, and the other one is 18, so the juggling has become a little easier.

I made a decision after my first son was born to move in-house to an asset management position. And that was great. The hours were reduced. I was able to leave every night at a good time. I wasn’t working weekends or traveling. And then about six years ago, I started at a new firm on a parttime basis because my older one was roughly 12 to 13, and my younger one was 7 to 8, and I thought, “I really need to be home more.” It wasn’t that I was working crazy hours. It’s just that I had become so senior, I just had a lot going on. So even if I were home, I still would have to take a phone call, etc., I just wanted to be more present for my family. I was lucky that I found a firm where I started working two days a week. And then I stepped up to three days a week. I grew as the firm grew, and at least initially, I was home more. I remember my sons were like, “Mom, you need to go back to work.” Like, “You’re spending too much time at home.”

er gets to choose and rank five of his or her top candidates. You can vote for just one candidate, or you can vote for your top five. Voters should make sure that they don’t vote for the same candidate five times down the line.

If one candidate in a race with RCV doesn’t receive 50%-plus-one vote, the ranked-choice system provides for an automatic runoff. The candidate with the fewest number one votes gets eliminated. And everyone’s ballots who voted for the candidate who gets eliminated get re-examined, and their second choice is then reallocated. It’s an iterative process. That happens until there’s one candidate who has 50%-plus-one of the votes.

Do you feel like this ranked voting would help you or hurt you in this election?

If I receive enough votes to stay in the race for the first or second round, I will do very well. As we said earlier, there are so many elected officials running. People like David Weprin or Brian Benjamin or Brad Lander, they have their constituencies, but I also think that their voters would be attracted to someone like me as their number two. When I talk to voters, if they say, “Oh, I’ve known David Weprin for 35 years. He’s my next door neighbor.” I say, “Well, can I be your number two?” So it’ll be interesting to see. I think ranked-choice voting will certainly help me, in that case.

I’m not running out of political ambition. I’m running because I want to turn my service over to New York City. I think competency matters, more than ever, in government today.

The election is on the June 22, but people could start voting. Early voting starts on the 12th.

That’s right. I urge New Yorkers to go out and vote. This is a very important election.

One last question. You’re a blackbelt, am I correct?

Yes, in Taekwondo.

It was something that I did later in life. I did it while I was in law school, and I went to law school when I was in my late 20s. I really felt it was empowering. It was the exact opposite of law school, which is so cerebral, and you study so much your head hurts. It was just so nice to go and work out in an environment that’s so physical, but respectful. As a woman, it’s wonderful to feel like you’re not afraid, or to feel like you can defend yourself – it’s a great feeling.