James Oddo
Staten Island's Jimmy Oddo isn't pulling punches
Nearly five years after Superstorm Sandy wrecked much of Staten Island, Borough President Jimmy Oddo is still working to repair the damage – and prepare for whatever comes next. The Slant podcast traveled to Staten Island to speak with Oddo about the important issues in his borough, from Sandy recovery to handling the entrenched bureaucracy of city government.
Oddo doesn’t pull any punches when discussing the failures of post-Sandy recovery. “There’s no victory lap, there’s nothing about this experience that was satisfactory,” Oddo, who was minority leader of the New York City Council at the time of the storm, said about the immediate responses to the crisis. “By the time we really as a city got the recovery program fully in gear, we were so far down the rabbit hole there were cascading negative implications.”
Oddo was just as candid on a host of other topics, like confronting the New York City “perma-government” and why he doesn’t think Mayor Bill de Blasio’s “millionaire’s tax” is an effective response to the city’s transit crisis. Oddo also discussed his endorsement of Republican mayoral candidate and fellow Staten Islander Assemblywoman Nicole Malliotakis, and why he thinks she is the change agent New York City needs.
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