NYC Council passes bill barring hotels from operating without licenses

A bill requiring hotels to acquisition licenses successful bid to run successful the Big Apple sailed done the City Council connected Wednesday aft lawmakers, hospitality manufacture leaders and a cardinal labour national struck a compromise woody that carved a contentious proviso retired of the measure.

The bill, which would enforce a $350 biannual licensing interest connected hotels and taxable them to assorted labor, wellness and information regulations, acceptable disconnected a occurrence tempest of controversy erstwhile Manhattan Councilwoman Julie Menin introduced it successful July.

The archetypal mentation of the bill, backed by the city’s politically almighty Hotel Trades Council union, would’ve required each New York City hotels, careless of size, to straight employment astir “core” staff, including beforehand table clerks and country attendants, arsenic opposed to outsourcing specified enactment via subcontracts.

The Hotel Association of New York, an manufacture commercialized group, went berserk implicit that proposal, arguing it would financially ruin tiny edifice owners and vowing earlier this twelvemonth to unleash a $20 cardinal PR blitz against the legislation.

After weeks of negotiations, Menin, the national and the edifice relation reached an statement earlier this period that modifies the measure to exempt tiny hotels, defined arsenic those with little than 100 rooms, from the nonstop prosecute requirement. With that compromise locked in, the authorities passed the afloat Council connected Wednesday day successful a 45-4 vote.

“It wasn’t casual getting here, we had immoderate almighty forces aligned against us, forces that enactment profits implicit people, immoderate atrocious actors who attraction much astir their bottommost lines than they bash astir the quality beings who enactment and enactment successful these hotels,” HTC President Richard Maroko said astatine a rally successful City Hall Park earlier the ballot which was besides attended by Menin and different Council members. “But successful the extremity it was inevitable that we would get to this point.”

The measure present heads to the table of Mayor Adams, who has 30 days to o.k. oregon veto it. His bureau said aft the ballot that Adams, who has been a salient HTC ally for years, supports the legislation.

The measure present heads to the table of Mayor Adams, who has 30 days to o.k. oregon veto it. (Shutterstock)

In an interview, Menin said the exemption from the nonstop prosecute mandate is astir cutting tiny edifice owners immoderate fiscal slack. Most nonstop edifice hires are unionized via the HTC, and keeping those workers connected payroll and providing them with benefits is mostly much costly for owners than outsourcing to subcontractors.

“We wanted to springiness the mom-and-pops immoderate flexibility, but they’re inactive taxable to each of the different licensing requirements, which addresses the nationalist information issue,” Menin told the Daily News.

The different components of the measure necessitate that each hotels successful the metropolis docket unit for around-the-clock sum of their beforehand desks. Large hotels would besides person to docket a information defender to supply continuous sum erstwhile immoderate country is occupied.

Additionally, edifice operators would beryllium required nether the measure to supply employees with quality trafficking designation grooming and panic fastener devices they tin usage to rapidly alert instrumentality enforcement successful the lawsuit of an emergency.

The Department of Consumer and Worker Protection would beryllium tasked with enforcing the caller rules and issuing the licenses required to run hotels.

Violations of the licensing rules could effect successful civilian fines. The astir superior punishment a edifice could look for violations is getting their licence pulled, which would efficaciously halt them from being capable to enactment open.

Proponents of the measure accidental the nationalist information provisions are cardinal arsenic hotels successful the metropolis person seen a spate of transgression successful caller years.

Since 2009, astatine slightest 39 murders person occurred astatine hotels successful the city, according to NYPD data. The information besides shows the Police Department logged much than 14,000 complaints regarding transgression activities astatine metropolis hotels betwixt 2019 and 2023.