Cold Open On A Flawed Formula

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Didn't matter whether you were a laundromat, a restaurant, the kind of business where the energy consumption would be very high, or whether you were a showroom with where the energy consumption would not be very high, but you had to have a big space. There was no logical thought to this, other than the city council wanted to make a statement. Boom! Here's a simple formula.

SPEAKER_00 0:27

It was so simple it was stupid. This is the Co-op and Condo Insider, the podcast dedicated to New York's cooperative and condominium communities. This is your trusted source for the latest insights, strategies, and stories shaping the world of shared housing. You will hear from the people who are leaders in this community. Information and insights you will not hear anywhere else. If you want to stay ahead of the curve, you're in the right place. The views and opinions expressed on this program do not necessarily reflect those of the host or any affiliated individuals or organizations.

Meet Randy Mastro And His Path

SPEAKER_01 1:00

Hello and welcome to the Co-op and Condo Insider, where we explore the real-world issues facing co-op and condominium communities across New York City with a healthy dose of expertise, insight, and straight talk. I'm your host, Jeffrey Mazel. I'm a co-op and condo attorney. I'm a legal advisor to the president's co-op and condo council, and also a founding member of newly formed Co-ops and Condo United. I'm thrilled to have our guest today, a former first deputy under two mayors, and we'll get into that. Chief of Staff and Deputy Mayor under Ruby Giuliani. And for many of us in the co-op world, we know him as the lead counsel in the local law 97 litigation, Randy Nestro. Randy, welcome to the show.

SPEAKER_02 1:46

Pleasure to be here, Jeff.

SPEAKER_01 1:48

Okay, so tell us about your upbringing and what led you into law and public service.

SPEAKER_02 1:57

Thank you for asking that. I grew up in a suburb of New York and Philadelphia called New Jersey. My dad was a small business owner. He had a family shoe store, but he also loved political science. So he ran the family business after his dad died of a uh tragically of a heart attack. He dropped out of grad school, ran the family business, and went to NYU at night to get his PhD in political science. And he taught at his at a college while he was doing that, threw university, where he was a famous political science professor for decades. He instilled in me a love for politics and the importance of what public service can mean to your community. Because he always gave back. He was a local elected official. He consulted with many officials in New Jersey, including governors Christy Todd Whitman, Tom Cain, and others. And I just grew up with a love of government and politics and public service. In college, I decided that I was going to go to law school, not thinking that it would necessarily lead to ending up in public service, but inspired by movies like The Killer Mockingbird and Judgment at Nuremberg. So I'm enjoying practicing law, and then I decided to go to the U.S. Attorney's Office. And there was this inspirational leader there who was doing great things to clean up corruption in New York City, Rudy Giuliani. I served under him as an assistant U.S. attorney, federal prosecutor, did organize crime cases. And then, lo and behold, he runs for mayor, asked me to be the lawyer to his campaign. By that time I was in private practice. This is the second time he ran. Denkins won the first time. And I was suddenly drawn into, as a lawyer, the world of local politics. And represented Giuliani in that campaign. It was all about campaign finance, public financing of campaigns, all questions of first impression because it was in its infancy. The lawyers actually made a difference. The campaign finance board ended up fining the Dinkins campaign over half a million dollars because it had coordinated expenses with the state Democratic Party. And it had a real effect. Dinkins had to go off the air and raise more money. Giuliani wins. Who thought that could happen? That a Republican liberal could win in New York City. And he asked me to come into City Hall first as the chief of staff and later as his top deputy mayor. So that was the beginning of my career in city government.

SPEAKER_01 4:55

So right place, right time, and obviously skill sets to handle it.

SPEAKER_02 5:00

It's a it's a look, to have the opportunity to be first deputy mayor in New York City, it's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Exactly. Of course, I had it twice, and I was the first person in city history that ever happened to. But I uh I was drawn to it naturally by my father as a role model, and he was honored to come back last year as Eric Adams first deputy

What A First Deputy Mayor Does

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mayor.

SPEAKER_01 5:26

So let's just ask a basic question. What is the role of the first deputy mayor in the administration? Is it obviously it it requires city council approval? It does not. Oh it does not.

SPEAKER_02 5:39

It does not.

SPEAKER_01 5:39

So we'll get to that later. So just tell us the role of the first deputy mayor.

SPEAKER_02 5:45

It can vary by administration. And these are defined portfolios by executive order. It's the authority that the mayor gives you to act on his behalf. So the role was different in the Giuliani administration than in the Adams administration. But in both administrations, I was the acting mayor when the mayor was out of town. In the case of Rudy Giuliani, when I was the acting mayor, he never went out of town. I don't know. Maybe it was me, okay? He had one day he went and played golf on Long Island. I called those the glory hours. But Mayor Adams did travel a lot more. I had the honor of being the acting mayor on several occasions. You can be an acting mayor for up to seven days, and then the mayor has to come back to the city. And I would describe it this way: the role of a first deputy mayor in relation to a mayor is either the mayor is the CEO, and the top deputy mayor is more of a COO, or some mayors they're more like a chairman of the board, and the first deputy functions more as a CEO reporting to the chair.

SPEAKER_01 7:01

What was like your access? Let's again stick to Giuliani. What was the access to him? Was it every day?

SPEAKER_02 7:06

Was it the access in both cases was every day? Giuliani and Adams. You are uh chief confidant, chief advisor, problem solver, crisis manager, making sure the trains run on time. You're doing a little bit of everything. Overseeing the budget, you're overseeing relations with other government officials and the city council. And that was pretty constant in both administrations. Giuliani was very hands-on, very into the the weeds and the details. Eric Adams was more like a chair of a board. Big picture, great street smarts, great instincts, but wanted to see government run on a day-to-day basis by the deputies, with me as first deputy man.

SPEAKER_01 7:56

Giuliani, I recall I was a young lawyer working in downtown, and we would see him crossing the street, and we always made sure we got as far away as possible. Did he understand his reputation, understand the depth of his presence and character at that time? It's a fascinating thing.

SPEAKER_02 8:12

I know he can be very intimidating to a lot of people. I remember an incident when I was in City Hall, I was very young. I was I became deputy mayor. My appointment was announced when I was only 39 years old. And at the time we had a young daughter. And every once in a while, she's two years old. Every once in a while I end up with her in City Hall on my couch. And one day, Rudy comes storming into my office, which is right next to his, adjoined his, but just comes barreling in, barks out a few waters, notices I've got a two-year-old daughter sitting on the couch. So he stops and pretends like he's playing with her toy with her. Okay. And then he leaves. And my two-year-old daughter turns to me and goes, Dad, I shy of him. And I said, A lot of people are.

SPEAKER_01 9:02

Probably a bunch of lawyers were just running across the street, but five minutes before that, running away saying we're shy of him. During

The Giuliani Era City Turnaround

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that administration, what were, just for people who don't remember or don't know, what were your biggest challenges in those years?

SPEAKER_02 9:17

By far the biggest challenges were that the city was in a tremendous crisis when Giuliani came into office. Time magazine had just referred to us in a cover story as the rotting apple. There'd be over 2,000 murders a year, hundreds of thousands of private sector jobs lost. A city that was hemorrhaging seemed on the decline, declining quality of life, seemed almost ungovernable. And against that backdrop, and a huge deficit, against that backdrop, had to stabilize the city. First and foremost, crime, make people feel safe in their own city, make families want to stay here, create an economic opportunity for them, and improve quality of life, improve the government could work again, and basic city services could function, cleaner parks and streets. So it was a tremendous challenge, and one that Giuliani and his team, including myself, embraced, and the results spoke for themselves. Crime was reduced. Look at crime today. During the Giuliani years, over 70% decrease in major crime and including homicides, murders. Remarkable, even more in that latter category. Hundreds of thousands of private sector jobs grown during that period of time. A city in financial turmoil got a handle on the city budget, even managed to reduce taxes while reducing spending, yet providing better city services, doing more with less. It was really a remarkable period. And folks remember him today from his more recent activities as a lawyer for Donald Trump, but they should get to know the history of the city and what a profound impact he had on turning this city around and stabilizing it in the mid-90s and late 90s.

SPEAKER_01 11:27

So I was again lucky enough to be a young lawyer in real estate. And when you reduce crime, you increase property values, you make neighborhoods that no one would walk through livable and desirable. And it was a transformative time for the city and for entire industries. And I do agree. We'll see what happens as time goes on. So that must have been incredible to be part of that team and part of that transformation of the C.

Fighting The Mafia In City Markets

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It was a remarkable period. And given my own background as a former federal prosecutor who did organized crime cases, we took on the intractable problem of the mafia at the Fulton Fish Market and the other public wholesale food markets in the private carding industry and the largest conspiracy in history. Every business forced by organized crime to use particular carters at set rates. Incredible. And we broke the back of that and reduced mob tax on carding by over $600 million in what had been a $1.5 billion industry. Also at the San Janeiro Festival and other ways in which the mob was part of life in New York City. Today you don't see it. And people think of the mafia as a historical footnote. It still exists. But back in the 80s and 90s, it was still a very big deal in New York City. You know what? When we cracked down on the Fulton Fish Market, they did a classic arson fire burning down the building that housed the one association at the fish market that was cooperating with our reforms. And then to protect a non-union unloading shop. The union went out on strike the first night. A unionized loading company, unloading company came into the Fulton Fish market. Tell me how that happened. Okay. And shut down the market. And you know what Rudy Giuliani said? He went to the microphones the next morning and New York press court. Can't live with them, can't live without him. They go, oh, it's a disaster. Your initiative isn't working. And Giuliani said, they better get back to work in 24 hours, and I'll just shut down the fish market altogether and we'll reconstitute a new market somewhere else. Guess what? Guess what? They came back 24 hours later. And our in it and our initiative was a huge success. But in the process, because I was so heavily identified as the person spearheading it from within the administration, I and my family had death threats. Confidential, reliable FBI informant that had overheard an Italian social club, there was a contract out on my life. And I had to have police protection in my family, I had to have police protection for two and a half years.

SPEAKER_01 14:36

We appreciate your bravery in the line of service. And nobody should have to go through that. But the results speak for themselves. And I think people today who are not old enough to remember it have no idea what the city was like and what we had to go through.

Returning To City Hall Under Adams

SPEAKER_01 14:52

So let's fast forward because as we said, you are you made history when another mayor came calling in a different party in different times. Mayor Adams came calling to ask you to serve as your first deputy mayor. How did that come about? What was that? What year was that? How many years?

SPEAKER_02 15:10

There are almost three decades in between. But for Eric Adams, it was during his last year in office 2025. But I'd known Eric for many years. And I'm not, I'm a lifelong Democrat, but city service is serving the city. It's not about party. It shouldn't be about party. It should be about service. Fiorella LaGuardia famously said, there's no Democratic or Republican way to pick up the garbage. So for me, it was never about partisan politics. It was about serving the city. Eric is somebody I met in the mid-90s. He was at the time a police captain and the head of an organization called 100 Black Men in Law Enforcement. Now he later cleaned it up, you know, and modernized it to say it was 100 blacks in law enforcement. But back then there were no women who were prominent in those roles. So I got to know him there. He was a critic of the Giuliani administration. That we hadn't done enough to be sensitive to communities of color. And that we hadn't hadn't done enough within the ranks of the uniformed services to recognize diversity. But he always did it with that famous smile of his and with a lot of charm. And I believed in talking to everybody. So my boss didn't necessarily want to talk to everybody, but I always talked to everybody. And I got to know Eric then. We stayed in touch over the years. He admired what was happening in my career. We were not close friends or confidants or went out socially or anything like that. But we ran across each other regularly over the next 25 years. He saw a lot of good things happen in my career as a lawyer and a lot of challenging cases against the government that we were fortunate to prevail on. I saw him rise to borough president eventually. And I think we had a lot of respect for one another. When he ran for mayor and it was a very close race, I was among the lawyers that would have been part of going to court as necessary if there had been a challenge, because in the ranked choice voting, the count got very close at the end between him and Cathan Garcia, but he didn't end up challenging. And when he went into office, I did some pro bono legal work for the administration during earlier years relating to immigration issues and the role of the federal government and what it should have been doing. And then he approached me about coming into the administration, first in 2024 as corporation counsel. And when that didn't work out, because the city council had advised and consent, and at that point had a very frosty relationship with Eric. In 2025, he had a need for a new first deputy mayor and reached out to me again.

SPEAKER_01 18:13

Where were you when you got that call?

SPEAKER_02 18:15

I was in private law practice. I actually love the desk and the mayor's on the phone. It was a call from the mayor. And I love practicing law. Okay. I love litigating. I love the courtroom. It's my first love, right? But there's nothing like what you can do when you're in that kind of role in city government to change lives and to help so many people directly. Litigation can help on one issue, one group of people or one person or one client. But in City Hall, you can do so much good for so many people.

SPEAKER_01 18:51

I guess that transitions to back to your other hobby, litigation.

SPEAKER_02 18:59

It's my day job, and right now I'm a 24-7 kind of guy.

SPEAKER_01 19:03

There you go. We all are. So

The Local Law 97 Lawsuit Explained

SPEAKER_01 19:05

our paths crossed when you were hired to prosecute legislation to challenge the illegality of local 197, the Climate Mobilization Act. And when various real estate groups were looking for plaintiffs, of course they came to the co-op community. And when you go to the co-op community and you want people that are not afraid to voice their opinions, and you go you go to the outer boroughs and you come to the president's co-opado council. And we f you guys found, of course, Warren Schreiber, a great community leader, a fearless leader, and a board president, and then of course Bob Friedrich, who is just a legend in his own right in Glen Oaks, and runs an incredible co-op. And by the way, for our listeners and for you, Randy, we he Warren and Bob were my first two guests. If you listen to the Bob Friedrich episode and what he did at Glen Oaks, it is an incredible transformation of a community that was going into bankruptcy and he turned it into a thriving community. And also, not surprisingly, I asked him what about you would surprise us, and he apparently rode his motorcycle cross-country many times back in the day. So fascinating. So we all got together. How did the lawsuit come to you? And if you could just explain in basic terms the premise of the lawsuit.

SPEAKER_02 20:34

Sure. It came to me because who better than a uh former deputy mayor who litigates the know-when government screws up? And this was a whopper and remains a whopper, unfortunately. To make a long story short, I when I left the Giuliani administration and returned to private law practice, not surprisingly, many people came to me when they wanted to challenge government action. And I had a lot of success in those cases. They're very hard cases to win because there's such deference in the courts to government action. Legislation is presumed to be lawful, and you have to basically prove to overturn the government action that it was arbitrary, capricious, and abuse of discretion. In other words, the government has to have been crazy and have no rational basis for what it did. I like to say to people, it's easier to convict somebody of a crime beyond a reasonable doubt than it is to convince a court to overturn a government decision on an arbitrary and capricious standard. But I I've won more than my fair share of those cases because the government so often acts arbitrarily and capriciously. In this particular case, the issue is pretty outrageous. The state had a comprehensive regulatory scheme that it had adopted in the Cuomo administration. To target climate change, greenhouse emissions, energy consumption, and how to get buildings, both commercial buildings and residential buildings, to be more energy efficient. But the state was doing it in a more logical way. It was starting with aspirational goals and formulating policy over time in a thoughtful manner. Then the City of New York decides, oh, we're going to show how great we are on climate change. So they pass a law that's basically one size fits all. They imposed basically numerical requirements based on the square footage of buildings, commercial or residential. You can only use this much energy. Didn't matter whether you were a densely populated apartment building or whether you were luxury co-ops, where there were very few people living in the building, and the energy consumption might be very different. Didn't matter whether you were a laundromat, a restaurant, the kind of business where the energy consumption would be very high, or whether you were a showroom where the energy consumption would not be very high, but you had to have a big space. There was no logical thought to this, other than the city council wanted to make a statement. Boom. Here's a simple formula. It was so simple, it was stupid. And it was contrary to the comprehensive scheme, not my word, the words of Andrew Cromow when he's when he implemented that policy under state law, that it was a comprehensive scheme. So you can't have every town, hamlet, municipality, and city in the state having completely different rules. And what made the city scheme even worse, Jeff, is was there had been improvements that property owners were making. New buildings, office buildings, new co-ops condos where relying on existing law, they had made huge improvements in their buildings and the systems in their buildings. But the new law just ignored all that and said, okay, maybe you changed your practices. You built your infrastructure to try to comply with state law and consistent city law before that. But we decided now, a couple of years later, that's not good enough. So we're going to impose completely new standards after people had spent millions and millions, including homeowners, co-ops, conducts who could ill afford it. You mentioned two champions who are still friends. They invested in doing the right thing. And then the rug was pulled out from under them, and they suddenly had entirely new standards to comply with. And this is infrastructure. This isn't cheap work. It's in the walls.

unknown 25:12

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 25:12

As you can see, I'm still fired up about the case. Well, uh, this is one of the greatest explanations. I just wanted to add something, just from my experience. I represented two of the largest solar panel installations in co-ops in New York City history in a 900-unit co-op and a 600, 800-unit co-op. It's a great fanfare. Government officials came down, and one of them we were written up, it was like planting 21,000 trees. They're both subject to huge local 097 fines.

SPEAKER_02 25:40

Incredible. So here's so to take you to the next level, because I'm sure those listening to your podcast probably know the sad ending, although the story is not over.

Court Wins Losses And Waiver Reality

SPEAKER_02 25:53

But I won the case while I was still in private practice. In the appellate division, first department, very respected court, unanimous panel, agreed with me that this was preempted by state law. How do you get around the governor and the legislature both describing the state scheme as comprehensive? Couldn't have been clearer. So we won 5-0. Then Letitia James shows up and says, Oh, we don't think it's comprehensive. We want to join the city, going to the Court of Appeals. Our attorney general, who really hadn't had a role up till then, injects herself into it. The question is certified for leave to appeal, and the New York Court of Appeals agrees to hear the case. I still thought we would win in the New York Court of Appeals, even with Letitia James there, because after all, she wasn't involved in passing the statute. And I was hopeful that Andrew Cromo would come out publicly during that period of time and say, of course it was comprehensive. I had reached out to him to ask him to do that. He was contemplating running for office again and for whatever reason chose not to do that. I then get the call from Adams. So I am going into City Hall. He hired me, despite the fact that the city law was what I was challenging, because he didn't look at this as you're a lawyer doing cases, getting good results. It doesn't, I want a lawyer. And I want a first deputy mayor who is going to help me get good results, unlike our city council, which couldn't differentiate between lawyering and politics. But the I had to leave, so I didn't get to argue in the New York Court of Appeals. I'm not saying that's the reason it didn't go well. But unfortunately, the New York Court of Appeals did not buy the argument that this was comprehensive. And therefore the city statute was preempted by state law. It's a decision that makes no sense. It has created enormous problems for property owners, both commercial spaces and co-ops condos apartment buildings. And the city had to eventually, because I think Mayor Adams was sympathetic to the problem. So I was recused from being involved. But in his administration, I think they put out regs that you could apply for waivers and exemption. A tacit admission that the scheme doesn't work and is fundamentally unfair. So we're living in this Netherland, uh new administration, very different view of the world, hostile to private property ownership in general, and apartment owners and landlords in particular. So it's going to be a rough period, I think. But eventually, I think there will have to be modification, recognition that it doesn't work, recognition that it's unfair, some breathing room, whether that comes from the state or from the city. It's not going to happen with this mayor, but five years from now might be a very different story because it's just too draconian and too unfair.

CLCPA Delays And A Political Fix

SPEAKER_01 29:28

So since the lawsuit actually just passed the New York State legislative session in a budget resolution, the CLCPA timelines for 2030 were kicked over to 2040 with with a recognition from the governor that the CLCPA is economically uh unworkable and unfeasible and unaffordable. Do you think that would tie in legally to any future argument, maybe if another lawsuit was brought with respect to local law 97?

SPEAKER_02 29:59

Yeah, it it may. I think there's going to have to be modification, whether that comes through the courts or through government channels. What the state did supports the argument that what the city is doing now is too draconian. Someone who actually gets fined, who has an owner who gets fined and has very sympathetic facts, like the parties that I was honored to represent in that litigation, might be able to get courts to refocus on whether what the city is now doing and implementing is inconsistent with state law and preempted by state law. But I think the solution is much more likely to come from a political solution.

SPEAKER_01 30:48

That's what we're working on. That's what we're working on. There was a lawsuit brought against the DEC last year because New York State did not put in regulations under the CLCPA. Because they basically said we we can't give regulations for law that's unworkable, and environmental groups sue them. And the Attorney General put in uh affidavit basically listing why the CLCPA is unaffordable and unworkable. It was it looked like something you would have written for your lawsuit. And so I guess I guess politics when you're attorney generals can go both ways.

SPEAKER_02 31:27

But usually you're usually you're not supposed to talk about talk out of both sides of your mouth in the in less than two years.

SPEAKER_01 31:33

This was on unashamedly both sides of the mouth. And when it came out, we were shocked. And of course, we tried to get publicity on it, and we did, but then when the governor came out with the budget resolution, we were pleased to see at least somebody's waking up, at least at the state level, and hopefully the city. All right.

Final Thoughts And Listener Ask

SPEAKER_01 31:53

At this point, I think we're out of time. I want to thank you for joining the podcast. I'd like to invite all our listeners to subscribe and share. We're in all the podcast stores. Randy, any last words for the Copen Condo community and uh what does things go for, how you see things going forward?

SPEAKER_02 32:12

The only thing I would say is I know that there are a lot of people concerned about the current city administration. Their right to be concerned, I think the courts will turn out to be a place that protects property owners' rights and private property. But this too shall pass. The city has a way of like a pendulum. It's way it's been swinging to the far left, but it usually comes back to a not too far, but towards the middle. Yeah, towards the middle, right? And we are a great city, and we will survive this administration, and I will do all I can as a lawyer to see to it that the law is followed and to hold the administration accountable.

SPEAKER_01 33:00

Randy, thank you for your time. And I look forward to working together with you in the future. I just want to let you know uh very important fact that congratulations, you are now a co op and condo insider.

SPEAKER_02 33:13

Thank you very much. Okay. All right, appreciate it.