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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC, New York and New Jersey Public Radio. With us now, we have an opportunity to talk to the mayor of Trenton, the capital of New Jersey, of course, that's Reed Gusciora. He was just reelected to a second four-year term in November. Before that, he had served in the state legislature since 1996. If I forgot my history right, he had been the first openly gay member of the legislature when he first got elected in '96. With the conservative, Don't Say Gay laws and attacks on drag story hours and everything in the news, it's relevant that as I understand it, he co-sponsored the New Jersey State Law that passed in 2018, requiring school districts to include academic content on the LGBT community and on people with disabilities.

Now, Trenton itself, from the stats I have, has a population of around 90,000 people, 47% Black, 37% Latino. For those of you who don't know the geography, Trenton is 66 miles from New York City, 33 miles from Philadelphia. Go Eagles this Sunday I guess and maybe folks, you do know the sign on the bridge over the Delaware River there that says, "Trenton makes, the world takes." We'll take it from there. Mayor Gusciora, nice of you to come on. Welcome to WNYC today.

Mayor Gusciora: Thanks so much, Brian. Glad to be here.

Brian Lehrer: Do you know the origin of that phrase, "Trenton makes, the world takes." Was it about manufacturing in Trenton at a certain time?

Mayor Gusciora: Absolutely. We were in the heart of the industrial revolution. We made the wire steel cables that hold up the Brooklyn Bridge. We made Lennox China where our last set was the Reagan White House China. We had car manufacturers, so we did indeed have a lot of industry in the city. Unfortunately, that is all dried up. There was one time our population was 135,000, and now it is down in the 90s.

Brian Lehrer: Classic so-called Northeast Rust Belt. Right?

Mayor Gusciora: Yes.

Brian Lehrer: What's the economy based on now? I see that one of the notes your office sent us is about property tax revenue challenges because half the properties in the city are designated government or non-profit.

Mayor Gusciora: Yes. That is essentially our anchor store right now, is state government. Unfortunately, they cover more than 50% of the ground. Albany is 22 square miles. We're 7 square miles, and so we have more tax-exempt properties than not.

Brian Lehrer: Now, we just had the State of the Union address this week. Economists are talking about the laws passed by Congress under President Biden, that he was highlighting that are reviving manufacturing in this country. Notably, the CHIPS Act for making semiconductors here and the parts of the Inflation Reduction Act aimed at US-made Green Energy Technology. Are you seeing any of that coming to Trenton or are you bidding for any of that in any way?

Mayor Gusciora: Absolutely. We're looking for that economic incentive. We do have a couple of large companies in the city, but we want to redevelop the Roebling Blocks of abandoned factories, so it's an ideal place to come in. You said it before, we're halfway in between Philadelphia and New York, so we have five colleges within 10 miles. It's a unique city that is destined to have an economic revival in the coming years.

Brian Lehrer: We were just talking to a New York State senator, maybe you heard part of it about the NYPD. For listeners who might be in New York City or Philadelphia, are the issues you face in a much smaller city like Trenton more similar to or more different from those people in New York or Philly might mostly be dealing with housing, economic inequality, crime, mental health, transportation, police accountability?

Mayor Gusciora: All of that is our major issues in the capital city. We're just coming out of the COVID pandemic. We had 40 homicides two years ago, and this last year, we had 23. We were able to get our crime stats down and that was with good neighborhood policing and partnering with other agencies and making sure that we had alternatives to violence with expanded recreation programming. We hired 250 teenagers during the summer. We have to deal with crime issues as well.

Brian Lehrer: That would mean, you have a lower crime rate than New York City. I'm just doing the math. If you have 90,000 people and New York City has about 9 million, so multiplied by 10, you had 23 murders last year. New York City definitely had more than 230. It had close to 400. Do you feel like there are some lessons that bigger cities can learn from how you got the murder number down from 40 to 23?

Mayor Gusciora: Yes, we made a concerted effort to tackle our crime stats, particularly what happened the previous two years. We have 10 departments in City Hall, and we told each one of them to concentrate on or to take their part in crime reduction, whether it was just having sanitation workers looking for bad eggs in the neighborhood and the like to report those. We've really made a conservative effort. The state police put in a real-time crime center that we have cameras out there and using data are able to use it effectively, at least to catch the bad guys. We have to work better to prevent the bad guys.

Brian Lehrer: I'm sure those are all useful tools, but I have to correct myself. I usually am really good at math. Listeners know I really like doing data crawls and stuff like that on this show, but somehow I just divided 9 million New Yorkers by 90,000 Trentonian, and I got 10 times, but it's really a hundred times. [lauhs] New York City has a hundred times the population of Trenton, so I can't really say that your murder rate is lower than New York City. Just to correct myself.

Mayor Gusciora: Yes, and we do have a concentration of poverty and it is because we have lack of investment and jobs that we can offer to the youth in Trenton.

Brian Lehrer: Camden, before we get off this topic, which is not too far from you, of course had a complete overhaul of itch police department a few years ago, which some observer said was a more progressive change. Even a model for other cities, allowing them to retain only the officers who had the right attitudes as the department saw it. Both crime and excessive use of force complaints went down in Camden. I know it's not all as simple and clear-cut as just that, but have you learned anything from the Camden experience?

Mayor Gusciora: Well, I think there it's different. They essentially disbanded the police department and then rebranded it under the auspices of the county. On one perspective, the city was able to save money from the county takeover of the police department. It was essentially the same police department, although they did get a lot of attrition because the salaries went down.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, we can take some phone calls, if you're in Trenton or if you have a question for the mayor of Trenton. We can get it to some New Jersey statewide issues as well as we will with Mayor Reed Gusciora, who was a member of the legislature for so long. 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692, or tweet @BrianLehrer. This is not about Trenton, but I assume you heard the shocking news that a second local government official in New Jersey, in one week, has apparently been murdered. Russell Heller from Milford now, in addition to Eunice Dwumfour from Sayreville, both members of their town councils, both Republicans.

In Heller's case, they seem to know who did it, unlike with the Dwumfour case, and early reporting says they are unrelated incidents. I should say that, but oh my goodness, mayor, what's going on?

Mayor Gusciora: It does cause concern and if you look at the national stage as well, the divisiveness. It does cause alarm for all elected officials. Too many people out there, if they disagree with you, they don't simply take it out in the voting booth. They try to take it out on you personally. It does cause concern but that doesn't prevent me from trying to do my job and to work harder for the citizens.

Brian Lehrer: I saw the mayoral campaign in which you just got reelected, got ugly at times. There was homophobia, antisemitism in the campaign speech in support of your opponent at one point. Things get ugly in the city council. I don't know any of this personally. I was just reading up before [chuckles] my conversation with you. Is your city council a massive vitriol?

Mayor Gusciora: Luckily, they all left the center stage. I got reelected by 70% of the vote. I think the people, by and large, rejected the obstruction that they played out and just the vitriol and homophobia, and antisemitism. They all lost. That's a good thing. We're here to work for the benefit of the residents. I think people, they wanted problem solvers, not problem makers. We're glad to put an end to that chapter. I really look forward to new council makeup that is starting. We're all going to be sworn in tomorrow.

Brian Lehrer: Bruce in New Brunswick. You're on WNYC with the mayor of Trenton, Reed Gusciora. Hi, Bruce.

Bruce: How are you?

Brian Lehrer: Good, Bruce.

Bruce: Hello.

Brian Lehrer: Hi, Bruce. Can you hear me?

Bruce: Yes. I'm calling to congratulate the mayor. I met him before he won his first election in Trenton. I'm in the cannabis industry. I met you before. He's always been there. Any help we needed. Also, congratulating him on the educational side, which you've been doing, because people do need to be educated on those issues. Congratulations. Remember, you're going to see me in a week or two, brother. Congratulations.

[laughter]

Mayor Gusciora: Look forward to it. That's one thing is we held ourselves out to attract the cannabis industry. At least seven entities have applied for licensures with the state that will set up shop in Trenton. This is going to be a real economic engine for the capital city, and we really look forward to the cannabis industry opening their doors here.

Brian Lehrer: Oh, they're not open yet in Trenton? You have no dispensaries in Trenton because they've been open in the state for a while, elsewhere in the state.

Mayor Gusciora: Yes. That was the problem with the last council that they wouldn't give the approval process. In the last couple of weeks, they were finally greenlighted. We do have one shop, run by the Weedman. He did a legal venture. He even applied for a state recognition and got a provisional license. Good for Weedman and the other entities that are planning to open their doors very soon.

Brian Lehrer: Are you going to have any problems, you think that you need to deal with, if there are a lot of dispensaries, a lot more people high on cannabis at any given moment? Are there other issues to manage with legal cannabis in addition to the advantages of it?

Mayor Gusciora: Well, I think it's part of the times right now. We hope that it will create jobs, new opportunities for other shops and small businesses to crop up. We think, overall, it will have a benefit to the city. If we can get more tax revenue in, we can get more public safety out on the streets to prevent that from happening.

Brian Lehrer: You were a big advocate for that legalization in the legislature. That was one of your things, right?

Mayor Gusciora: Yes. That was one of my prior visits to your show, to discuss medical marijuana when it first came as a legislative issue.

Brian Lehrer: Yes. Chuck in Manhattan, you're on WNYC with Mayor Reed Gusciora, also former member of the legislature. Hi, Chuck.

Chuck: Hi. How are you doing? I've got a question for the mayor because I commute to Trenton twice a week to [unintelligible 00:14:19] University to teach there, and you can see the economic disparity between people of color in the city than I teach in the suburbs, which is more affluent white folks.

My question is that does the mayor have a plan because you have so much vacant infrastructure or better infrastructure to really attract some of those tech companies or those automotive companies to build electric cars and such, such? You can really utilize the two fair system of people from New York community to try and to work there and then employing people in the city, primarily first, so we can close the gap. I was curious about that.

Brian Lehrer: Thanks, Chuck. By the way, Chuck, you'll be interested, and hopefully, a lot of other people would be interested that our next segment after Mayor Gusciora is going to be all about racial economic disparities, 10 times the wealth in the hands of the average white family as the average Black family in the United States. That's only gotten worse since the main civil rights laws of the 1960s were passed. We're going to talk about that with an economist from the Economic Policy Institute coming up next. To Chuck's specific question, Mr. Mayor, and also, generally, what powers do you have as mayor of a small city to reduce economic disparities?

Mayor Gusciora: That was actually one of the subjects of a Harvard study that they sent a team down to Trenton to research the value and cost of a capital city. They discovered that it was an actual net loss because of the tax-exempt properties and that we still have to provide roads and police protection and the like. We need to get greater recognition from the state with state aid for hosting the capital city. That said, we're also working with Princeton University to do an autonomous car demonstration. We got a federal grant to set up a demonstration of 100 autonomous vehicles.

Brian Lehrer: You mean self-driving cars?

Mayor Gusciora: Self-driving cars. That's correct. We hope to get that innovation spirit so that we are attractive to tech companies and the like. There is interest in coming to the capital city. I think they just wanted to make sure that the last council left and that we have a new council that really wants to promote economic development and further education opportunities in the capital city. We're excited about the possibilities.

Brian Lehrer: Since the caller brought up racial economic disparities, I think you're right. Correct me if I'm wrong. You've been elected now twice as a white mayor of a city, I think the stats I saw say about 85% Black or Latino. Has there been an act of consciousness-raising, a process of cultural sensitizing on your part to govern effectively and sensitively with the population you're representing?

Mayor Gusciora: Yes. Again, I was reelected with 70% of the vote. I think what people wanted were problem solvers and to help get out of the economic morass that is here. By and large, I'm out in all sections of the neighborhoods. I think the people know me from being in the legislature. I represented Trenton in the legislature for 22 years, so had developed a track record of bringing in more capital city aid than before. They wanted me to continue the job as their Chief Executive.

Brian Lehrer: Last question, that LGBTQ instruction requirement passed by the state legislature that I mentioned in the intro that you sponsored when you were in the legislature in 2018, given what's going on around the country, is it being implemented statewide? Are you seeing anti-LGBTQ school board fights and things? Are you watching around the state?

Mayor Gusciora: Yes. I see it and it is alarming. That's the unfortunate pitfall of an elected school board. By and large, it's a popularity contest where people recognize names and they don't realize they're not necessarily voting for ideas. Nonetheless, it's in the books. I had an 80-year-old woman at a Baptist church grab me and say, "I don't care what you do in the bedroom. I just want my roads fixed." I think it's a time of excellence over finger-pointing. I think it's important for LGBT youth to know their self-worth, that they can get ahead, and there are many role models in history that would help them along in their education process.

Brian Lehrer: Reed Gusciora, mayor of Trenton, reelected in November, reinauguration tomorrow, right?

Mayor Gusciora: Yes, tomorrow.

Brian Lehrer: Congratulations.

Mayor Gusciora: Thanks so much, Brian.

Brian Lehrer: Thanks for coming on today.

Mayor Gusciora: My pleasure. Thank you.

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