Vendor advocates rip passage of ballot measure

A ballot proposition expanding the mayor’s power to direct the Department of Sanitation to clean public spaces was passed overwhelmingly by New York voters last week. The change to the city Charter also enshrines trash containerization as one of DSNY’s mandates and emboldens the department’s ability to remove street vendors from public spaces.  

Advocates for the vendors vociferously campaigned against the measure, Proposition 2, viewing it as means by which the city can more easily confiscate vendors’ goods and arrest them. Carina Kaufman-Gutierrez, the Street Vendor Project’s deputy director, called the measure’s passage an “unfair blow” to street vendors.  

“We’re already seeing the city dramatically ramp up its punitive enforcement while doing nothing to solve underlying economic injustices,” she said in a statement. "From property confiscation to violent harassment along Roosevelt Avenue in Queens, vendors are being charged for lacking permits — at the same time that they are denied a chance to get a permit. The City Council “must use every remaining tool in their power to implement the Street Vendor Reform bills and protect vendors from the mayor’s inevitable increase in harassment in our City’s Parks."

More than 75 percent of the estimated 23,000 vendors on the city’s streets lack permits and are vulnerable to enforcement from DSNY and the NYPD.  

“New Yorkers voted overwhelmingly for a clean City,” DSNY Commissioner Jessica Tisch said in a statement. “Proposition 2 enshrines waste containerization into the City Charter, making the fight against the black bags the law of the land, and it creates clear Mayoral authority to end a bureaucratic quirk where some areas receive different cleanliness service and enforcement than others. This is a win for quality of life and it is a win for equity.”

Harry Nespoli, the president of the Uniformed Sanitationmen’s Association, said that it's not yet clear exactly how his members will be affected by the rule changes but said that police officers will likely remove vendors while sanitation workers would clean up what is left behind. He likened sanitation workers’ expected roles to what follows from a police sweep of homeless encampments, in that officers "go in first" with the police then directing DSNY workers on what to remove. He expects a similar dynamic to play out if enforcement on street vendors continues to escalate.

"This workforce knows that if asked by the city or the mayor to help out, we're going to do that," Nespoli said. "If there's something out there that has to be cleaned up, that’s what we do for a living and that’s what we're going to do.”

Council opposition 

Prop 2 was among six ballot measures that voters were asked to consider this year and it passed with 62 percent support, the same percentage as ballot measure one which enshrined abortion rights in the state Constitution. That measure was supported by a broad swath of Democratic lawmakers but measures two through six drew opposition from most lawmakers. 

Those proposals were created by a rapidly assembled Charter Commission that Adams organized earlier this year as a means of circumventing the City Council. Council Speaker Adrienne Adams, other Council members and state lawmakers lobbied their constituents heavily against voting for propositions two through six in the lead up to the election, arguing that they represented a power grab by the mayor. 

Voters approved all but Proposition 6, which would have established a chief business diversity officer, given the mayor power to award film permits and merge two agencies overseeing the city’s archives.

With the passage of Proposition 3, the City Council must now publish the proposed laws’ cost estimates even before public hearings are held. Proposition 4’s passage means the Council must give a 30-day public notice before it can vote on legislation that involves the NYPD, FDNY or the Correction Department. With the passage of Proposition 5, annual reports on the city’s infrastructure, including information on maintenance costs and needs, need to be more detailed. 

Following the results, Council Speaker Adrienne Adams said the proposals created by the mayor’s commission were “anti-democratic” and “inaccurately worded,” and misled voters.  

“Tonight demonstrates the dire need for better safeguards to ensure city ballot proposals are accurately presented to voters,” she said in a statement. "There is serious work needed to protect our local democracy from a mayor willing to disregard norms in the pursuit of power that removes checks and balances. The Council will continue to represent the communities and people across our city who elected us to make government more responsive to them, with a commitment to defending and strengthening representative democracy.”  

The mayor, by contrast, said that his commission listened to the desires of working-class New Yorkers.

“This is a great day for everyone who desires a safer city, cleaner streets, greater fiscal responsibility, transparency in the city’s capital planning process, and, of course, access to abortion care,” he said. “I’m grateful to the commissioners and staff who heard the voices of their fellow New Yorkers, and whose outstanding efforts will now likely be enshrined into our city’s charter through Propositions 2-5. Tonight’s overwhelming success at the polls is just the latest example of how our administration is working every single day to make this a safer, more affordable city for all New Yorkers.”