New Yorkers Can Vote To Change Street Vendor Enforcement — But Proposed Ballot Question Does Not Mention Key Word

By Haidee Chu, The City

Aug. 6, 2024

New Yorkers heading to the voting booth in November will vote on a referendum that would allow the Department of Sanitation to enforce street vending regulations in city parks — but the language of the ballot question, approved by a city commission reviewing the City Charter last month, does not mention vending at all.

The question instead focuses on two other proposed amendments to the city’s main governing document affecting the Sanitation Department — one which would empower it to enforce cleanliness laws in city properties (in addition to just streets and sidewalks), and another which would require waste to be discarded in containers.

Advocates working on behalf of thousands of street vendors selling everything from churros to mangos to souvenirs say the shift would lead to more harassment of a mostly immigrant workforce that’s trying to scrape by.

“They’re trying to sneak in a change to vending policy by adding more enforcement at a time when vendors are already being issued thousand-dollar tickets by armed officers for selling dollar waters. And to not mention it in the ballot question? That’s manipulative and disrespectful,” said Carina Kaufman-Gutierrez, deputy director of the non-profit Street Vendor Project.

A street vendor sells fruit in Battery Park, Aug. 1, 2024. Credit: Ben Fractenberg/THE CITY

Summonses targeting unlicensed vending inside city parks have climbed steadily since 2020, previous reporting by THE CITY found. And while vending on New York’s streets and sidewalks is primarily enforced by the Sanitation Department, inside parks, it is primarily carried out by the Parks Department’s uniformed officers, Parks Enforcement Patrol. The New York Police Department is also frequently involved in crackdowns with both agencies.

If passed, however, the amendment to the City Charter would allow all three enforcement agencies to crack down on vending in parks — potentially exposing sellers there to more tickets.

Sometimes, the arrest and enforcement attempts turn physical, as it did in a case from June in a now-viral video showing a 32-year-old vendor and her 14-year-old daughter in a chaotic confrontation in Battery Park.

The Parks Department did not comment on THE CITY’s inquiry on whether it supports the amendment.

‘Completely Rushed’ Process

The proposal to expand sanitation’s power is just one of five ballot items that will appear in November’s election as a result of a City Charter review process that took place over the course of two months this summer and concluded in July.

Members of the Charter Revision Commission leading the process were hand-picked by Mayor Eric Adams to include some of his closest allies. And city lawmakers and advocates alike have criticized the process as hasty, saying it was intended to preempt a separate City Council ballot measure that would have required lawmakers’ advice and consent for more mayoral appointees.

Public meetings meant to solicit community input for the charter revision were also scantily attended.

“The overall process has been completely rushed and dangerously so,” said Councilmember Pierina Sanchez (D-Bronx), a backer of a package of street vendor reform bills who testified in one of the commission’s public meetings to call for a more “holistic conversation” on vending.

Councilmember Pierina Sanchez (D-Bronx) speaks about plans to regulate vendors on the Brooklyn Bridge during City Hall hearing, Jan. 31, 2024. Credit: Ben Fractenberg/THE CITY

“There’s even a disconnect between what the ballot abstract says the question is about, and what the question actually says,” she told THE CITY. “And so for me, that’s not transparent. The public deserves to know what they’re voting on.”

City Hall’s chief counsel Lisa Zornberg, however, said during a press conference that several charter revision commissions in the past “took place in a shorter time than this one.” A spokesperson for the commission, Frank Dwyer, told THE CITY that the Commission had been appointed two days before the Council’s advice-and-consent bill.

He said, moreover, that “New Yorkers engaged in a very meaningful way with this commission,” noting that 240 people had provided testimony in person or virtually at 14 public meetings across the five boroughs.

The Commission chose to limit the ballot question to 30 words due to a new state law requiring so, he added, but said a description of the ballot item, including its impact on vending policy, will be submitted to the city Board of Elections to be included in a voter’s guide.

Scant Input

Of the public’s 240 pieces of testimony, just six, including Sanchez’s, mention street vending at all, according to a review of the meeting transcripts by THE CITY. And of those six, just one was given before the Commission’s preliminary report published in June — when the vendor-related proposal was first detailed.

That singular comment came from Pedro Suarez, executive director of the Third Avenue Business Improvement District in The Bronx, who later told THE CITY about his concerns related to trash and dumping from street vendors in his area. In his testimony, he called on the City Charter to clarify “who’s responsible for addressing some of those challenges,” while also asking “how we support unlicensed vendors and the path at getting to the business properly.”

“I think part of the challenge is that enforcement, by itself, is not a solution,” Suarez later told THE CITY.

Suarez does not oppose the proposed revision. But he said the Sanitation Department would need additional resources to make enforcement effective, while also acknowledging the need for registration and licensing among vendors.

It’s a chronic problem among vendors. Currently, more than 20,000 people are stuck on waitlists for one of the city’s 853 merchandise vendor licenses and 5,100 food vendor licenses — a limitation imposed by a decades-long cap.

“I think the conversation should be more around how we navigate a street vending system that works for everyone, that is organized, that is safe and that can be regulated in a reasonable way,” Suarez told THE CITY.

All told, just two pieces of testimony explicitly supported the vendor enforcement revision.

One came from Councilmember Francisco Moya (D-Queens), who have often condemned unlicensed vending in his district of Corona; the other came from Sanitation Department Deputy Commissioner Joshua Goodman, who said the amendment would “allow for more uniformity and consistency in vendor enforcement operations throughout the city.”

When asked later how the amendment would do that and how the department’s enforcement in parks would look like in practice, Goodman told THE CITY that “it would be premature to speculate about what might change under a proposed charter amendment.”

Ultimately, the Commission decided to adopt the vendor enforcement proposal due to Moya and Goodman’s “compelling testimony … in favor of the reforms,” according to the panel’s final report.

‘Undemocratic’ Changes

In the days leading up to the Commission’s final vote in July to advance the proposals, a coalition of more than 70 civic and advocacy groups joined to urge that the 13-member panel refrain from placing Charter revision amendments on November’s ballot.

They said that not only had the hearings “been poorly attended and underpublicized,” but that “New Yorkers have barely had time to learn what a charter revision is, let alone figure out how to meaningfully participate in it.”

While Dwyer said the Commission staff contacted vendor advocates “by email, including newsletters,” to alert them to its public meetings and proposals, Kaufman-Gutierrez said she only became aware of the vendor-specific amendment from an aide to a Councilmember days before the proposals were advanced to appear on November’s ballot.

The Commission has failed to prioritize community engagement, Kaufman-Gutierrez charged, and said that the meetings were not inclusive of working-class street vendors.

“It’s only during the summer, right?” she said. “This is the busiest time of the year for street vendors.”

Over the years, she said, the Street Vendor Project has seen many “flawed” and “undemocratic” processes through which the city created regulations — including when Mayor Rudy Giuliani had restricted when and where vending can happen through a mayor-appointed review panel, and more recently, when the city Department of Transportation had forced vendors off of the Brooklyn Bridge through a rule change that bypassed the City Council.

“None of these are democratic ways. This is why it’s the City Council’s role to create and pass legislation,” Kaufman-Gutierrez told THE CITY.

“Would you rewrite something for teachers without engaging the United Federation of Teachers? Would you change any laws about hospitals without talking to anyone who works or runs or has anything to do with the hospital? Absolutely not,” she said. “You would never do that for any industry, and it just highlights how deeply undemocratic this process has been. It’s unconscionable.”

This press release was produced by The City. The views expressed here are the author’s own.