Assemblyman David Weprin, who represents District 24 in Queens, the only frum Yid on the ticket this Election Day. He is running to be New York City’s next comptroller, which is the second highest office in City Hall.
“The comptroller financially checks on the mayor, who controls agencies and budgets,” said Weprin, who has chaired the Finance Committee of the City Council for eight years, before serving in the state Assembly for nearly 12 years. “The comptroller does audits to make sure the mayor’s funds are being spent and allocated correctly. If there is any waste or fraud, the comptroller is the one who finds out about it.”
Not since 1954, has there been an orthodox Jew to hold this office. The last orthodox Jewish comptroller was named Lazarus Joseph, who was the grandson of Rabbi Jacob Joseph.
Before getting into politics, Mr. Weprin worked on Wall Street for twenty-five years in public finance, for which he said he gained experience that prepared him for many tasks of the city’s comptroller, who invests the pension funds of all the city’s employees, such as the police, the fire, the sanitation workers, and the city employees, explained Welprin, who said that the pension funds of the retirees of the city workers: the now total $254 billion. “I would be trying to get the best returns on the assets by making the best investments with the lowest risks.”
After receiving endorsements from five separate police unions, Mr. Weprin explained that the police officers of New York City, who contribute approximately 20% of the city’s total pensions, are how the 55,000 employees of the NYPD are expressing that they feel confident that Mr. Weprin is the best person to invest their retirement savings.
Besides for his financial acumen, having Mr. Weprin as the second-in-command in City government, would be advantageous because he shares with the Jewish community, values, such as yeshiva education, public safety, and supporting small businesses.
“Primarily the role of the comptroller is to be a check on the mayor financially: through the audit power,” said Mr. Welprin, who explained that one way he could help non-for profits in the Jewish community, for instance, is by getting them reimbursed within thirty days, instead of the year it is now.
One issue about which Mr. Weprin is passionate is yeshiva education. “I have been fighting this substantially equivalent issue with the Department of Education for a number of years because good educations are not determined by the number of hours of secular education they include,” Mr. Weprin said. “We learn so much critical thinking and intrinsic value from learning gemara and learning limudei kodesh. “We have yeshiva graduates going to all the top schools, top colleges, as well as going into important industries and jobs. We get good academic rigor through the Talmudic learning, and I think these are things that the Department of Education should take into consideration.”
In addition, Mr. Weprin has been a strong advocate of the yeshiva tax credit for parents who take on the financial burden to send their children to yeshivas.
Another of Mr. Weprin’s innovative ideas is to station comptroller officers in every borough to better help the communities with financial services, instead of employing the office’s 800 employees in their one usual location in the Municipal Building, near City Hall, in downtown Manhattan. “I especially want to help small businesses in New York City, which make up more than 50% of the city’s jobs and have been particularly hit hard,” Mr. Weprin said. “They really haven’t come back, they are just beginning to recover now, and I would like to use those borough offices to reach out to communities and to focus on small businesses to help them to access various government programs that are available from the COVID relief from Washington.”
Lastly, Mr. Weprin said that his skills and background would be specifically useful in helping the city as it starts to recover from the pandemic. “We got billions of dollars in aid this year,” he said, “but we are anticipating a $4 to 5 billion deficit for the next four years, which will take us through the comptroller’s entire first term. I think it is important we get our fiscal house in order.”
