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Opinion: Assembly Bill A3575 is bait-and-switch, fake vending reform

BY ROBERT LEDERMAN | In New York State Assembly Bill No. A3575, it states, “…the legislature finds and declares that there should be no limit on the number of street vending permits and licenses that can be issued in the City,” and that this new law shall apply “…in every city with a population of one million or more.”

Under this law anyone with a folding table and anything to sell could now operate on city streets as a legal vendor. Have New York State legislators become zealous vending advocates who want to see tens or even hundreds of thousands of newly licensed vendors setting up stands along every commercial strip in every town and city in New York State?

Maybe not. Could there be a hidden agenda behind this magnanimous elimination of more than a hundred years of carefully constructed vending restrictions?

I’ve been an artist/street vendor in New York City since 1961. Elected officials in New York City have been passing laws for my entire lifetime to limit and restrict vending. The vast majority of the constituents of our elected officials, be they landlords, businesses, storeowners or residents, are opposed to vending.

In New York City, businesses grouped themselves into business improvement districts (BIDs), primarily in an attempt to eliminate their local vendors from every commercial strip in town.

Who are the constituents that New York legislators are trying to help with this proposed law? What might the secret agenda behind the law be?

If one understands the long history of this issue, it becomes clear.

Once the streets of every large city in New York State have been occupied by tens of thousands of newly minted vendors, there will be a huge outcry from landlords, businesses, storeowners and residents. The very same legislators that sponsored this law will be in the forefront, demanding drastic new restrictions on where, when or how a vendor can set up a stand.

This exact dynamic recently played out in California. Facing the reality of thousands of unlicensed vendors, officials created a seemingly generous vending law where anyone could get a license. Vendors and their advocates rejoiced until the complaints began flooding in from businesses, landlords, storeowners and residents. Within a few months drastic new restrictions were enacted that banned legal vendors from many of the locations where they had traditionally vended.

In New York City, the Street Vendor Modernization Act was recently passed. It was supposed to create thousands of

new vending licenses, significantly reduce summonses and open up more areas to vending.

Instead, no new licenses were issued, summonses and arrests doubled and the BIDs are now suggesting relocating vendors to parking lots and other remote locations.

How will New York State likely handle a massive increase in vending in its large cities if A3575 is passed? Simple: privatization via a concession system, where vendors compete to bid for a handful of desirable spots in which to sell.

This is the exact system that the New York City Department of Parks instituted decades ago and that the BIDs have been demanding for more than a decade. The vendors you see in the parks are corporate employees, often paid less than the minimum wage to operate food and souvenir vending stands. The prices for viable spots where a stand can make a profit range from a few thousand dollars to $250,000 for a single 8-foot-by-5-foot location. In most parks, a single corporation owns every vending stand.

The immigrant vendors these laws are pretending to be helping will be eliminated by this bidding system from any viable potential vending locations. If they survive at all, it will be as exiles in parking lot vending concessions run by a BID.

As a longtime vending advocate, I would love to see vending become unlimited. But as a realist who has debated this issue with mayors, legislators and police officials for decades, I know that unlimited vending would be its own worst enemy.

If helping those who are now out there legally vending is your purpose — whether they are lifelong state residents or newly arrived immigrants — then on behalf of those very vendors I ask legislators to vote NO on Assembly Bill A3575.

Lederman is president of A.R.T.I.S.T. (Artists’ Response to Illegal State Tactics), a street artist advocacy organization.

5 Comments

  1. lin lin February 23, 2023

    It seems that there are quite a few food vendors who seems to be part of a “company” — not independent — is that true?

    Also recently have been seeing more food vendors setting up right in front of grocery stores — basically “competing.”

    That seems really unfair to grocery stores, which pay rent, taxes etc.

    Also, the community needs grocery stores!

  2. Michael Cook Michael Cook February 22, 2023

    https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/bills/2023/A3575?intent=subscribe&utm_source=ny_state_senate&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=subscriptions&utm_content=NEW_SAME_AS
    This bill, as well as its Senate counterpart S-1739, includes unlimited permits, overlapping territories for permits and little or no police enforcement. It is anti-disabled veteran and veteran street-vending privileges and does not really add to quality of life issues for business districts and community members, including immigrants. Less police interaction would also give more entitlement to illegal and unethical self-interest groups already present.

    — USAF Veteran Vendor

  3. artistpres artistpres February 14, 2023

    The strategy behind this proposed law is to replace the independent vendors now working with corporate vendors in permanent vending spots. If you don’t want this law to pass, please contact your NY State Senators as they are voting very soon on this https://www.nysenate.gov/senators-committees

  4. Kurt Brokaw Kurt Brokaw February 14, 2023

    Writing as an 84-year-old occasional vendor of a lifelong collection of books on the sidewalks of our city.I enjoy the protection of New York City law, which in 1893 declared vendors of written matter free to offer
    printed material without license or permit The law was passed to protect Jewish immigrants who offered pamphlets for a penny a copy out of pushcarts on Orchard Street. Today booksellers as well as artists have the same freedom, which will be swept away if assembly bill #3575 passes as written.

    The bill is a deception from the get-go. It was drafted by assembly members in consort with the city’s Business Improvement Districts (BIDs) and its false-front Street Vendor Panel, to create an exigency
    sidewalk mess so God-awful, NYPD will shut down ALL vending. Thus setting the stage for the city to begin privatizing public sidewalk space to the highest bidder. This has been the long-term goal of every BID in town.

    No newspaper or magazine has yet fielded a reporter to dig into the true who/what/when/where and how of this scandal. Time is fleeting.

    Kurt Brokaw
    New York City

  5. Kurt Brokaw Kurt Brokaw February 14, 2023

    Writing as an 84-year-old occasional vendor of a lifelong collection of books on the sidewalks of our city. I enjoy the protection of New York City law, which in 1893 declared vendors of written matter free to offer printed material without license or permit The law was passed to protect Jewish immigrants who offered pamphlets for a penny a copy out of pushcarts on Orchard Street. Today booksellers as well as artists have the same freedom, which will be swept away if Assembly bill #3575 passes as written.

    The bill is a deception from the get-go. It was drafted by assemblymembers in consort with the city’s Business Improvement Districts (BIDs) and its false-front Street Vendor Panel, to create an exigency sidewalk mess so God-awful, NYPD will shut down ALL vending. Thus setting the stage for the city to begin privatizing public sidewalk space to the highest bidder. This has been the long-term goal of every BID in town.

    No newspaper or magazine has yet fielded a reporter to dig into the true who/what/when/where/why and how of this scandal. Time is fleeting.

    Kurt Brokaw
    New York City

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