New York (77WABC) – 77 WABC held the first in-person debate for New York City Comptroller on Wednesday, two weeks before the NYC Primary elections ramp up.

The debate, moderated by 77WABC’s Dominic Carter, included seven candidates: State Senator Brian Benjamin, New York Assemblyman David Weprin, NYC Council Speaker Corey Johnson, State Senator Kevin Parker, journalist Michelle Caruso-Cabrera, U.S. Veteran and entrepeneur Zach Iscol, and NYC Councilmember Brad Lander. While mostly even-tempered, the debate did get a little heated when Caruso-Cabrera wasted no time attacking Johnson in her opening remarks.

“The city budget under Corey Johnson has gone up by 20 billion dollars per year,” Caruso-Cabrera remarked. “And does this city feel 20 billion dollars better to you?”

Despite Johnson and Caruso-Cabrera having a few spats throughout the debate, most of the candidates focused on their accomplishments and explained their qualifications for the job. Many of the candidates had similar ideologies regarding things such as COVID relief, small business support, and auditing the budgets of various organizations on a more frequent basis.

Many of the candidates stressed the re-examination of budgets relating to law enforcement such as the NYPD and Department of Corrections.

“We are incarcerating fewer than half as many people as we did 10 years ago, but we’re spending 20 percent more: 1.6 corrections officers for every inmate,” said Lander. “That means $447,000 to detain a person for a year while they await trial. That’s $447,000 we could be spending on mental health care, on supportive housing, on resources for jobs and communities.”

Johnson and Iscol both also heavily focused on mental health and its importance. Both stressed that aside from everyday issues, money needs to be spent better to help those with mental illness.

Overall, every candidate agreed that money needs to be better spent to help NYC recovered after the shutdown and economic losses of COVID-19 which have affected small businesses, jobs, tourism, and education.

“We’ve got to recover from COVID,” Benjamin said. “We need to make sure that we have a Comptroller who is a Chief Accountability Officer, making sure that the federal rescue money that’s coming in is being spent appropriately, being spent on recovery, and that we are being very clear about equity and fairness as we make every decision because we do not want to have us be worse off post-COVID than we were pre.

The role of the Comptroller is acting as the city’s Chief Financial Officer, safeguarding the city’s fiscal health, roots out waste, fraud, and abuse, and ensures that municipal agencies serve the needs of all New Yorkers. The current NYC Comptroller is Scott Stringer, who has been in the role since 2014 and is currently running for Mayor.