In what has suddenly become the nastiest race in the city, the two Democratic candidates for comptroller clashed sharply last night over pension reforms, integrity and just about everything else during their final debate before Tuesday’s runoff.
David Yassky came out strongly for lowering retirement benefits for new employees, saying that the city’s pension bill has ballooned from $1 billion to $6 billion a year and was busting the budget.
“It doesn’t do anyone any good to pretend things aren’t true when they are,” said Yassky. “That’s what happened with General Motors, and look what happened there.”
But John Liu, who has the endorsements of the Working Families Party and most of the city’s municipal unions, countered that pension reforms were a matter for collective bargaining.
“To simply impose a new pension tier on new employees will bring us back to the problem we faced a number of years ago when the starting pay for police officers was so low that the administration, in fact, had to backtrack on that,” Liu said.
“Was that a yes or a no?” asked Yassky.
“I’m answering your questioning, Dave,” Liu retorted.
That was about as cordial as it got between the two onetime City Council colleagues in the one-hour showdown broadcast on New York 1.
Most of the time, the issues took a back seat to Liu and Yassky questioning one another’s honesty and integrity — over and over.
“This kind of mudslinging is not something New Yorkers want to see,” Liu fumed about a Yassky ad claiming that Liu had distorted his own record of battling the MTA, exaggerated claims of working in a sweatshop as a child, and lied about returning red-flagged contributions.
“You can look it up,'” said Yassky, refusing to back down, adding, “You’ve run ads that just aren’t true.”
The two men couldn’t even agree on whether tax credits for the film industry helped the city.
After Yassky boasted that he had successfully pushed legislation to keep the industry and its jobs here, Liu charged that filmmakers were clogging streets and hurting small businesses.
“So it’s certainly not as clear-cut as you make it out to be,” Liu said.
In a lightning round, where the candidates had to respond with a simple yes or no, Liu said he’d support a law to ban texting while crossing a street. Yassky said he wouldn’t.
Yassky also said he’d “very seriously” have to consider whether to run if he got a call from President Obama asking him not to.
Liu didn’t answer directly, but made it clear he thought the White House had stepped over the line in trying to pressure Gov. Paterson not to run again.
Although Liu leads Yassky, 49-43, percent in the latest Quinnipiac University poll, analysts say as few as 150,000 to 175,000 of the 3.2 million registered Democrats will vote on Tuesday, putting the outcome in considerable doubt.