Mayor Mamdani is directing his city agencies to work toward cutting down fees and fines for small businesses.
Small businesses in New York are required to fork up cash for, among many other things, the ability to serve ice cream and install fridges.
The executive order, signed by Mamdani on Wednesday, calls on the Deputy Mayor for Economic Justice, Julie Su, and seven city agencies to make an inventory of those various fines, and sets a timeline under which some of them can be eliminated.
“You cannot tell the story of New York without our small businesses,” Mamdani said in a statement announcing the directive. “Yet, our City has long made it too hard for these same businesses to open their doors, and to keep them open. With today’s Executive Order, we will bring that chapter to an end, instead delivering relief to businesses from the fines and fees that drive up their costs.”
Under the order, within 45 days, seven city agencies — the Buildings, Consumer and Worker Protection, Environmental Protection, Fire, Health and Mental Hygiene, Sanitation and Transportation departments — must list out the fees and civil penalties they collect and identify whether they can be reduced. After that, the agencies are slated to work to nix “unnecessary” fines with new rules or legislation.
Mamdani emphasized small businesses throughout his campaign, including in a video about halal food cart prices that helped him gain momentum as an underdog candidate.
On the campaign trial, he pledged to slash small business fees by half, and to appoint a “Mom and Pops Czar” to do so, though Wednesday’s announcement made no mention of either.
Ex-Mayor Adams also signed a similar executive order aimed at reducing fines for small businesses. Asked about that on Wednesday, Mamdani said Adams’ City Hall viewed small businesses as a side effort, while his own City Hall sees them as “central” to its mission.
In a joint statement, Randy Peers, president of the Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce, and Tom Grech, president of the Queens Chamber of Commerce, praised the move but said the mayor should set clearer goals.
“Every Mayor over the past few decades has committed to doing an inventory of fines,” Peers and Grech, co-chairpersons of the Five Borough Jobs Campaigns, said. “If this is truly about helping small businesses, then the best way to achieve real measurable reform is giving agencies a clear year-over-year number that they must reduce fines by.”