Public Advocate Bill deBlasio delivered a strong message to small business owners in Queens on Monday afternoon when he announced the "hidden tax" imposed by the Bloomberg administration.
Public Advocate Bill DeBlasio has caught the Bloomberg administration with their hand in the proverbial cookie jar of small business owners throughout the city—well not exactly the whole city. Just in the outer boroughs, according to a study DeBlasio’s office completed after launching a successful lawsuit against the administration.
DeBlasio says when he was approached by a flood of small business owners to see why they were receiving such a large amount of tickets, he asked the six agencies responsible for those tickets for some answers. But instead he says he was stonewalled and forced to sue the city in order to obtain the information that should have been part of the public record.
The lawsuit yielded thousands of pages of documentation that revealed a shockingly clear pattern evidencing over enforcement in the outer boroughs and under enforcement in Manhattan.
DeBlasio revealed the findings of the study at a press conference held along the busy commercial strip of Jamaica Avenue in Richmond Hill on Monday afternoon. “When the mayor looks at places like this, he sees dollar signs,” said DeBlasio, “but not dollar signs for the owners of the stores, dollar signs for the city coffers.”
That, DeBlasio says, is a something that has become a fundamental problem in the city. In unearthing these facts and figures it’s been proven that Queens and the other three boroughs, exclusive of Manhattan, have been grossly and unfairly “taxed” through the application of nuisance fines imposed on businesses located in Queens, Brooklyn and the Bronx.
DeBlasio was joined by several small business owners in the area who related stories of what they feel are indiscriminate fines, without merit and without no opportunity for correction before payment.
The study, entitled Borough Bias: How the Bloomberg Administration Drains Outer Borough Businesses, yielded proof of a severely disproportionate schedule of fines targeting the outer boroughs in what has been coined by DeBlasio as “boroism.”
“The farther you get from City Hall, the more likely your business is to get inspected and fined. That’s no way to balance a budget and it’s no way to spur hiring in the boroughs that need it most,” said deBlasio. “These fines are a $50 million hidden tax that was levied on small businesses without warning or debate. The Mayor can’t keep burdening outer borough neighborhoods with frivolous fines to balance the City’s books.”
Among the most distressing findings to emerge from the study is that Queens has 90 of 10 top-fined neighborhoods in the entire city. The study was based on only two of the agencies participating in the ticket blitz, the Department of Health (DOH) and the Department of Consumer Affairs (DCA).
In addition, the report provided the following findings:
· Queens businesses are 16 percent more likely than Manhattan ones to receive a DCA inspection
· Queens businesses pay 22 percent more in DCA fines than Manhattan businesses
· Of the 10 neighborhoods issued the highest number of Health Department violations, 7 are in Queens
· Of the 10 most heavily fined neighborhoods by DCA over the past decade, 9 are in Queens—and 8 are in southeast Queens.
The neighborhoods in Queens with the highest DCA fines per business in NYC for Fiscal Year 2001-2012 as compared to the citywide average are South Ozone Park at 4.5 times the average, Ozone Park 4.4 times, Richmond Hill 3 times.
In addition, for the fiscal period of 2010-2012, DCA increased inspections by 66 percent, increased violations issued by 153 percent, and increased revenue from fines by 102 percent. DOH increased inspections by 55 percent to 98,176 visits, increased violations issued by 73 percent, and increased revenue from fines by 90 percent.
With respect to gross numbers, both agencies have increased annual fine revenue during this period by a combined $50 million.
For more information or to read the report in its entirety go to: http://advocate.nyc.gov/borough-bias.
