Michael Tannousis was elected to the New York State Assembly on November 3, 2020. His district represents parts of Southern Brooklyn and the East Shore of Staten Island.Michael began his career in public service in 2006 when he was hired as an aide to former New York City Council Minority Leader James Oddo. After graduating law school, he became an Assistant District Attorney in the Bronx District Attorney’s Office, where he prosecuted major felony offenses. In 2016, Michael was hired to a similar role in the Richmond County District Attorney’s office. During his tenure at the Richmond County DA's office, he successfully prosecuted serious felony cases involving violent crimes and drug sales. Two of his highest profile cases included the conviction after trial of a double murder in Dongan Hills and the successful retrial of the infamous Ramada Inn murders. Michael has also served as Counsel to City Council Member Joseph Borelli. As an experienced prosecutor, Michael will seek to use his expertise to prioritize protecting the rights of victims and enact changes to recent bail and judicial discretion reforms. He believes the state government has lost focus on the taxpayers’ best interests and is resolved to making Staten Island and Brooklyn better, more affordable places to live through improvements to transportation options, education, and fighting misguided property rights laws. Michael is a lifelong Staten Islander and is the son of Greek immigrants who came to America to seek a better life after being displaced by armed conflict in Cyprus. He is a graduate of Public School 23, Intermediate School 24, and Monsignor Farrell High School. He earned an undergraduate degree from SUNY Binghamton and his Juris Doctor from Pace Law School. Proud of his Greek and Cypriot community roots, Michael previously served as a board member of the Cyprus-US Chamber of Commerce and was a delegate for the Cyprus Federation of America.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
This is a podcast from WR.Here again is Larry Menti with the WR
Saturday Morning show, Welcome Back.The MTA announced this week that major renovations
and needed repairs are on hold becausethey didn't get congestion pricing. That's the
cash grab plan to charge fifteen dollarsa day to drive in midtown. Governor
(00:23):
Hokel put it on pause until afterthe election, and the MTA is throwing
a temper tantrum. But a NewYork City assemblyman has a good idea.
If the MTA wants that money,prove it, he wants to audit the
MTA. Here's wor's Jacqueline Carl andher interview with Assemblyman Mike Tanousis. I'm
(00:46):
Jacqueline Carl with seventy ten WOR,and we're speaking with Republican New York State
Assemblyman Mike Tanusis, who's introducing abill to cancel congestion pricing and audit the
MTA. Assemblyment toanusis, what isthis bill? Where is it? Tell
me a little bit about it.So I joined the Assembly back in twenty
twenty one, and it was afterthe original vote that the legislature took for
(01:10):
congestion pricing, which passed through thebudget process. Since coming to the Assembly,
I've seen a lot of momentum buildup against congestion pricing from colleagues on
both sides of the aisle, fromRepublicans and Democrats alike. And I noticed
that as the MTA kept moving forwardon putting installing cameras and taking other steps
(01:30):
conducting hearings, I noticed a lotof my colleagues were coming out against congestion
pricing. So as a result ofthat, I put in a bill to
the Assembly to cancel congestion pricing andto actually ordit the MTA to find out
where the funds that they raised ona daily basis, which goes into the
hundreds of millions of dollars, isbeing spent, and if there's an alternative
(01:53):
way that we could fund the MTAwhere it doesn't involve congestion pricing. I
noticed that the Office of the MTAInspected General is the one that's supposed to
audit the MTA, So what's goingon? Why do we need a bill
for this? I think it's agreat idea. I'm not adversarial that I'm
just saying, like, why wouldn'tthat be automatically done. That's a great
(02:14):
question, and the answer is verysimple. Listen, I've been in government
my entire career. Before the Assembly, I was an assistant district attorney,
so I worked for the City ofNew York, for the State of New
York. So I have a littlebit of an idea of how the State
of New York operates. What Ithink is needed here. My bill would
do is to contract an outside auditfirm, similar to one of the Big
(02:35):
four firms for example, that's anoutsider, not involved in state government,
not involved in city government. Andonly then do I believe that you will
have a fair and adequate and actualaudit of the MPa from an outside party
that has nothing to do with stategovernment. I think any other type of
audit I think would be detrimental,be a falsity because at the end of
(02:57):
the day, I realized that anythingaffiliated with the state, anything affiliated with
the city, that's when politics becomesinvolved and they may not be able to
do a stover and know it.As the MTA needs to determine its finances.
I tend to agree with you onthat because I feel like there may
be some redundancies in the jobs thatare going on at the MTA and the
(03:20):
spending, and nobody really has itseems to have a good handle on how
much do they get, how muchrevenue do they get, and exactly what
are they spending it on. Right, I can tell you one thing.
It's certainly not going to the hardworking bus drivers and train operators at the
MTA employees. I'll tell you that, But I will tell you something else.
And I've had friends that have workedat the mt at their executive offices,
(03:44):
and from what I understand, thereis a lot of wasteful spending that
is happening in those offices, withthe salaries certain employees are getting. And
you know, in the MTA,they're supposed to provide a service. They're
not a business. They're supposed toprovide a service to the public. Not
supposed to be a detriment to thepublic, and there's certainly not supposed to
be a detriment to the taxpayer.And I think the quicker we realize that
(04:06):
the sooner a type of water canbe conducted, the smoother will be,
the better will be for the taxpayer. What was your reaction to Governor Kathy
Hochel's complete and sudden about face oncongestion pricing last week. What did you
make of it or were you insideon that decision. I certainly wasn't inside
(04:26):
on the decision, but to behonest with you, I kind of expected
it because momentum was picking up againstcongestion pricing, and when the MPA's own
environmental impact study shows that congestion pricingwill in fact increase pollution, increase traffic
on the outer boroughs, so basicallybenefiting one borough to the detriment of the
(04:46):
other boroughs, I knew it wasonly going to be a matter of time
until reality had sunk in. Andyou know, November is a big election
year here and it is that wehave the presidential elections. It's a referendum
on the ballot, so you knowit definitely they definitely did not want to
have congestion pricing play a role inthat election, and it quite very well
(05:08):
likely would have because you know,voters vote with their pockets a lot of
times, right. I think theeconomy is one of the main issues on
the ballot in November, and thisis something that would directly cost the constituents
and the residents of the state.And I don't think that the governor was
going to take a chance on that. So where is this bill now?
Do you feel like you're getting alot of support on this bill? Where
(05:30):
would would you say the bill standsright now to audit the MTA and cancel
congestion pricing. So at this pointthe bill is in the is in committee,
has not made it out of committee. I have had certain people sign
on as co sponsors, but Ithink at this point, because of the
governor's decision, people are just ina situation where they want to look and
(05:51):
see what's going to happen. Obviously, the governor now has put out that
she would like to find some typeof funding for the MPa. In my
opinion, I think the first thingwe need to look at is the seven
to eight hundred million dollars that theMTA loses every year to toll infa evasion,
which they're not doing anything about,by the way, So I think
that's the number one step is totry to recuperate those funds first, before
(06:15):
we look at the taxpayers for supportand something else. I want to point
out here the MTA has spent fivehundred million dollars installing those cameras for congestion
price five hundred million dollars. Ifthis isn't an example of the wasteful spending
that the MTA does on a dailybasis, this is the prime example.
Five hundred million dollars for cameras.And now we don't even know if we're
(06:35):
going to go forward with the program. So I think there's many things we
need to look at before we lookat the taxpayers for funds. Do you
think they jumped the gun on thosecameras or do you think that they thought
it was actually going to go forwardon June thirtieth based on their actions,
Based on the MTA's actions, Itruly believe that they thought that they were
going to move forward on it.But you know, the MTA is a
(06:57):
little bit different than the elected officialsthe MPTA, although they technically answer to
the governor, they're not in thepolitical field that we are, and we
get to you know, we talkto constituents every day, we get to
see what the cent of it is. So I realized that it was only
going to be a matter of timeuntil somebody put the brakes to it.
H and that happened obviously. Butthis, this this agency needs to complete
(07:19):
overhaul. I don't think there's anyother way to look to to go around
that. They need a complete overhaulto see where money is being spent on
a daily basis, and we needto do that way before we tried to
find a billion dollars for the MPa. The Citizen's Budget Commission is calling on
Governor Hokeel to pass legislation that wouldincrease fines for offenders. Were also increasing
(07:43):
incentives to get people to comply.But what are your thoughts on buses and
train fair evasions? Well, so, just to give you an example,
a few months ago, I wasactually myself taking the train. I was
going from downtown Manhattan near the WallStreet area to go to day Ridge Brook
uh And I went down the subwayto take the to take the subway to
(08:03):
go to Bay Ridge. And asI'm walking down the steps, I counted
six people, one holding the dooropen for the next as they kept walking
through without paying. Okay, therewas not one police officer there or anybody
from the MTA to stop them oreven say anything to them. Okay,
So you know this new technology thatthey have installed, although it may be
(08:24):
great, you could use your phoneto kind of go in if there there
is no there's not enough police officersdown there, there is not enough MTA
down there to stop people from doingthis. And keep in mind, you
know, the main, the mainissue here is you have to hold people
accountable for their actions. If peopleare continuously going to be able to walk
(08:46):
through, whether it's jumping the turnstile, whether it's you know, doing some
kind of scheme that allows them togo through, if you're not stopping them,
if you're not holding them accountable fortheir actions, they're just going to
continue doing it. Make no mistake, people, people in our communities,
not just my community, but incommunities throughout the city are really fed up.
This is not a democratic Republican issue. This is a common sense issue,
(09:09):
and people are fed up and theyneed to make their voices heard at
the ballot box. That's really whereyou make your voice heard. If people
start to lose elections because of sillydecisions they have made in the legislature,
then that's when people are going tostart waking up and saying, wait a
minute, this is not working.This is not what my constituents want.
(09:31):
Thank you so much. Assemblyman MikeTanusis for taking time out of your schedule
to be with us today. JacquelineCarl, Seventen WR New York Assemblyman Mike
Tanusis, and wor's Jacqueline Carl,Thank you, Jacqueline. This has been
a podcast from WR.
This is a podcast from WR.Here again is Larry Menti with the WR
Saturday Morning show, Welcome Back.The MTA announced this week that major renovations
and needed repairs are on hold becausethey didn't get congestion pricing. That's the
cash grab plan to charge fifteen dollarsa day to drive in midtown. Governor
(00:23):
Hokel put it on pause until afterthe election, and the MTA is throwing
a temper tantrum. But a NewYork City assemblyman has a good idea.
If the MTA wants that money,prove it, he wants to audit the
MTA. Here's wor's Jacqueline Carl andher interview with Assemblyman Mike Tanousis. I'm
(00:46):
Jacqueline Carl with seventy ten WOR,and we're speaking with Republican New York State
Assemblyman Mike Tanusis, who's introducing abill to cancel congestion pricing and audit the
MTA. Assemblyment toanusis, what isthis bill? Where is it? Tell
me a little bit about it.So I joined the Assembly back in twenty
twenty one, and it was afterthe original vote that the legislature took for
(01:10):
congestion pricing, which passed through thebudget process. Since coming to the Assembly,
I've seen a lot of momentum buildup against congestion pricing from colleagues on
both sides of the aisle, fromRepublicans and Democrats alike. And I noticed
that as the MTA kept moving forwardon putting installing cameras and taking other steps
(01:30):
conducting hearings, I noticed a lotof my colleagues were coming out against congestion
pricing. So as a result ofthat, I put in a bill to
the Assembly to cancel congestion pricing andto actually ordit the MTA to find out
where the funds that they raised ona daily basis, which goes into the
hundreds of millions of dollars, isbeing spent, and if there's an alternative
(01:53):
way that we could fund the MTAwhere it doesn't involve congestion pricing. I
noticed that the Office of the MTAInspected General is the one that's supposed to
audit the MTA, So what's goingon? Why do we need a bill
for this? I think it's agreat idea. I'm not adversarial that I'm
just saying, like, why wouldn'tthat be automatically done. That's a great
(02:14):
question, and the answer is verysimple. Listen, I've been in government
my entire career. Before the Assembly, I was an assistant district attorney,
so I worked for the City ofNew York, for the State of New
York. So I have a littlebit of an idea of how the State
of New York operates. What Ithink is needed here. My bill would
do is to contract an outside auditfirm, similar to one of the Big
(02:35):
four firms for example, that's anoutsider, not involved in state government,
not involved in city government. Andonly then do I believe that you will
have a fair and adequate and actualaudit of the MPa from an outside party
that has nothing to do with stategovernment. I think any other type of
audit I think would be detrimental,be a falsity because at the end of
(02:57):
the day, I realized that anythingaffiliated with the state, anything affiliated with
the city, that's when politics becomesinvolved and they may not be able to
do a stover and know it.As the MTA needs to determine its finances.
I tend to agree with you onthat because I feel like there may
be some redundancies in the jobs thatare going on at the MTA and the
(03:20):
spending, and nobody really has itseems to have a good handle on how
much do they get, how muchrevenue do they get, and exactly what
are they spending it on. Right, I can tell you one thing.
It's certainly not going to the hardworking bus drivers and train operators at the
MTA employees. I'll tell you that, But I will tell you something else.
And I've had friends that have workedat the mt at their executive offices,
(03:44):
and from what I understand, thereis a lot of wasteful spending that
is happening in those offices, withthe salaries certain employees are getting. And
you know, in the MTA,they're supposed to provide a service. They're
not a business. They're supposed toprovide a service to the public. Not
supposed to be a detriment to thepublic, and there's certainly not supposed to
be a detriment to the taxpayer.And I think the quicker we realize that
(04:06):
the sooner a type of water canbe conducted, the smoother will be,
the better will be for the taxpayer. What was your reaction to Governor Kathy
Hochel's complete and sudden about face oncongestion pricing last week. What did you
make of it or were you insideon that decision. I certainly wasn't inside
(04:26):
on the decision, but to behonest with you, I kind of expected
it because momentum was picking up againstcongestion pricing, and when the MPA's own
environmental impact study shows that congestion pricingwill in fact increase pollution, increase traffic
on the outer boroughs, so basicallybenefiting one borough to the detriment of the
(04:46):
other boroughs, I knew it wasonly going to be a matter of time
until reality had sunk in. Andyou know, November is a big election
year here and it is that wehave the presidential elections. It's a referendum
on the ballot, so you knowit definitely they definitely did not want to
have congestion pricing play a role inthat election, and it quite very well
(05:08):
likely would have because you know,voters vote with their pockets a lot of
times, right. I think theeconomy is one of the main issues on
the ballot in November, and thisis something that would directly cost the constituents
and the residents of the state.And I don't think that the governor was
going to take a chance on that. So where is this bill now?
Do you feel like you're getting alot of support on this bill? Where
(05:30):
would would you say the bill standsright now to audit the MTA and cancel
congestion pricing. So at this pointthe bill is in the is in committee,
has not made it out of committee. I have had certain people sign
on as co sponsors, but Ithink at this point, because of the
governor's decision, people are just ina situation where they want to look and
(05:51):
see what's going to happen. Obviously, the governor now has put out that
she would like to find some typeof funding for the MPa. In my
opinion, I think the first thingwe need to look at is the seven
to eight hundred million dollars that theMTA loses every year to toll infa evasion,
which they're not doing anything about,by the way, So I think
that's the number one step is totry to recuperate those funds first, before
(06:15):
we look at the taxpayers for supportand something else. I want to point
out here the MTA has spent fivehundred million dollars installing those cameras for congestion
price five hundred million dollars. Ifthis isn't an example of the wasteful spending
that the MTA does on a dailybasis, this is the prime example.
Five hundred million dollars for cameras.And now we don't even know if we're
(06:35):
going to go forward with the program. So I think there's many things we
need to look at before we lookat the taxpayers for funds. Do you
think they jumped the gun on thosecameras or do you think that they thought
it was actually going to go forwardon June thirtieth based on their actions,
Based on the MTA's actions, Itruly believe that they thought that they were
going to move forward on it.But you know, the MTA is a
(06:57):
little bit different than the elected officialsthe MPTA, although they technically answer to
the governor, they're not in thepolitical field that we are, and we
get to you know, we talkto constituents every day, we get to
see what the cent of it is. So I realized that it was only
going to be a matter of timeuntil somebody put the brakes to it.
H and that happened obviously. Butthis, this this agency needs to complete
(07:19):
overhaul. I don't think there's anyother way to look to to go around
that. They need a complete overhaulto see where money is being spent on
a daily basis, and we needto do that way before we tried to
find a billion dollars for the MPa. The Citizen's Budget Commission is calling on
Governor Hokeel to pass legislation that wouldincrease fines for offenders. Were also increasing
(07:43):
incentives to get people to comply.But what are your thoughts on buses and
train fair evasions? Well, so, just to give you an example,
a few months ago, I wasactually myself taking the train. I was
going from downtown Manhattan near the WallStreet area to go to day Ridge Brook
uh And I went down the subwayto take the to take the subway to
(08:03):
go to Bay Ridge. And asI'm walking down the steps, I counted
six people, one holding the dooropen for the next as they kept walking
through without paying. Okay, therewas not one police officer there or anybody
from the MTA to stop them oreven say anything to them. Okay,
So you know this new technology thatthey have installed, although it may be
(08:24):
great, you could use your phoneto kind of go in if there there
is no there's not enough police officersdown there, there is not enough MTA
down there to stop people from doingthis. And keep in mind, you
know, the main, the mainissue here is you have to hold people
accountable for their actions. If peopleare continuously going to be able to walk
(08:46):
through, whether it's jumping the turnstile, whether it's you know, doing some
kind of scheme that allows them togo through, if you're not stopping them,
if you're not holding them accountable fortheir actions, they're just going to
continue doing it. Make no mistake, people, people in our communities,
not just my community, but incommunities throughout the city are really fed up.
This is not a democratic Republican issue. This is a common sense issue,
(09:09):
and people are fed up and theyneed to make their voices heard at
the ballot box. That's really whereyou make your voice heard. If people
start to lose elections because of sillydecisions they have made in the legislature,
then that's when people are going tostart waking up and saying, wait a
minute, this is not working.This is not what my constituents want.
(09:31):
Thank you so much. Assemblyman MikeTanusis for taking time out of your schedule
to be with us today. JacquelineCarl, Seventen WR New York Assemblyman Mike
Tanusis, and wor's Jacqueline Carl,Thank you, Jacqueline. This has been
a podcast from WR.
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