Notable NYC Laws from 2023
Notable NYC Laws from 2023
Outdoor dining // government hiring // GPS live tracking of street sweepers // hospital price transparency // free eye exams & glasses // free rec centers // UBI pilot // and more
This is part 4 in a series of posts analyzing the 174 local laws of New York City from 2023, and the New York City Council. The links below will be populated as I release each post.
Part 2: Reporting Requirements
Part 3: Housing Legislation, and the Council’s Housing Posture
👉 Part 4: Notable New Laws by Subject Matter
Part 5: Legislative Drafting & Legislative Management
Part 6: Resolutions—the Forgotten Enacting Mechanism
Unlike the other parts of this series, this one is not fundamentally driven by research questions. It’s just a list of laws I found interesting for one reason or another, along with my brief commentary. Sometimes they’re good interesting, sometimes bad, and sometimes they just leave me puzzled.
Let’s get into them.
🍴 Permanent outdoor dining law
Local Law 121: This law creates a permanent program for sidewalk and roadway-based dining. A temporary version of this program began during the initial wave of COVID-19. The program is implemented by the city’s Department of Transportation. Unlike the temporary program, the permanent program does not allow open-air sidewalk cafes—or any dining establishment that takes up road space—to operate between November 30 and March 31.
[See §19-160 of the New York City administrative code for the statute, see the DOT’s adopted rules to implement the program here.]
🧑💻 Government talent acquisition
The city government periodically attempts to make hiring talented people for the municipal workforce easier. Although they sometimes make marginal improvements, the city is increasingly behind the eight ball. ~80% of city jobs are gated behind cumbersome civil service exams,1 and the city does not have the recruiting capacity to effectively usher enough talent through the system.
None of the local laws passed in 2023 will change this state of affairs. At best, they tinker at the margins, although most of them will likely fail to achieve even that.
Local Law 2 requires the Department of Citywide Administrative Services (DCAS), which oversees the civil service exams, to create an outreach and education program about them. I have no doubt this will fail to reach almost everyone who doesn’t already know about the civil service system, especially talent in the private, for-profit sector.
Local Law 27 and Local Law 28 expand reporting requirements for DCAS and other city agencies regarding disparate pay rates, physical diversity, and civil service exam passage rates.
Local Law 113 requires DCAS and the Department of Correction to administer civil service exams for individuals in city jails for 10+ days, along with supportive educational programming related to the exams. The requirement to administer exams only goes into effect after Rikers is closed.
Local Law 130 requires DCAS to create a civil service exit interview program. It’s voluntary, so no employee must complete an exit interview or survey.
[Note: the civil service is fundamentally controlled by state law, but administered locally (the city still has things it can do!). See the New York State Constitution, Article V, §6, and the Civil Service Law (CVS) in the consolidated laws (state statute).]
🧹 GPS and live tracking of street sweepers!
Local Law 9 requires the Department of Sanitation (DSNY) to allow real-time, GPS tracking of street sweepers.
You can see the map here: https://sweepnyc.nyc.gov/sweepnyc/
[See section 16-111.2 of the administrative code for this requirement, and subdivision c for the December timeline.]
🏥 Hospital care cost transparency
Local Law 78 sets up an Office of Healthcare Accountability, which will issue reports on the cost of common hospital procedures, insurance reimbursement rates, and a variety of other healthcare costs. An example from the law:
Provide on the office’s website in a simplified and publicly accessible format, information on the publicly available price of common hospital procedures…formatted in a way to allow for price comparisons between hospitals for such common procedures…
I don’t think this information is online yet though. The law didn’t go into effect until February 2024 after it was enacted in June 2023, and its reporting/posting requirements don’t seem to go into effect until February 2025. Per the law (emphasis added):
No later than 1 year after the effective date of the local law that added this section and by January 1 annually thereafter, the director shall submit to the mayor, the speaker of the council, and the attorney general of the state of New York, and shall post conspicuously on the office’s website, a report detailing the pricing practices of hospital systems in the city.
👀 Free eye exams and glasses!
Local Law 84 provides free eye exams and glasses to any qualifying 18+ individual whose “annual gross household income is within 250 percent of the federal poverty level.”2 That means one person making $37,650 or less qualifies, and a married couple making a total of $51,100 would qualify.3
This law is currently in effect, but I don’t know of anyone who has yet accessed the program, or even if the program is fully set up yet. Let me know if you find out.
The law also says that the government agency administering the program may pay a third party for eye exams and glasses via vouchers if they want.4 This makes me nervous that the program will be slow and practically unusable, if the voucher experience here is like the voucher experience with rental assistance.5 We shall see.
[See section 17-199.21 of the administrative code for this program, and paragraph 2 of subdivision c for the voucher/implementation concern.]
[Bonus note: there are two section 17-199.21s in the city administrative code! I linked to the right one, but you’ll see another one right after it. The law…is like that sometimes.]
💪 Free rec center membership if you’re 18-24
Local Law 103 makes “memberships for recreation centers under the jurisdiction of the Department of Parks and Recreation” free if you’re 18-24 years old.
This law is in effect, and you can check out memberships here!
💸 Universal Basic Income pilot
Local Law 105 authorizes (but does not require) the city to run a “direct cash assistance” program to low-income individuals.
The very first, unamended version of this law established a program that would give 1,000 individuals $500 per month. The final version of the law doesn’t even establish a concrete program, but sets out the parameters by which the government can implement one if it chooses.6
The June 7, 2023, committee hearing on this bill was only three minutes and 13 seconds long, because literally no one showed up to discuss it. No one from the mayor’s administration, and no one from the public, either in person or via Zoom.
From the committee chair:
“…the Administration has informed us that they were not able to send anyone to come in and testify today…With that, I guess I’ll just share there’s no one testifying online either…”7
I have my doubts about the City Council’s ability to properly oversee this program even if it does get implemented. It’s on my watch list.
👎 Pardon me? The strange, the odd, and the sub-optimal
🐹 Local Law 54 illegalized the sale of guinea pigs in city pet shops. The law’s rationale: too many people purchased guinea pigs as companions during the pandemic, and started unloading them onto shelters (and the wild) after social restrictions eased. You can still get guinea pigs as pets, you just have to adopt them from a shelter, rather than buy them.
🏦 Local Law 64 requires the government (specifically the Human Resources Administration) to offer landlords electronic payments when providing rental assistance. Right now, individuals on city rental assistance frequently fall behind on rent because the city does not send payments electronically.8
❄️ Local Law 79 requires air conditioning on all school buses that transport disabled children. Right now, the only buses that must have air conditioning are the ones that transport children whose disability/health is directly tied to heat tolerance.
The first, unamended version of this law said “This local law takes effect 90 days after it becomes law.” The final version of the law says: “This local law takes effect September 1, 2035.” It doesn’t go into effect for more than a decade!
There is, of course, a reason for this. The city simply doesn’t believe it can implement the law faster than that, due to contractual constraints and a monopoly bus supplier.
The ultimate irony: the law’s sponsor, Council Member Oswaldo Feliz, said this in the education committee hearing about the bill (emphasis added): “This is something very simple. Unfortunately, these students and parents have had to fight for this, if I am correct, for over ten years now. And I look forward to working with all of you to finally make this a reality in the city of New York.”9
Looks like they’ll be waiting another decade.
🏆 Honorable mention: a resolution calling for the end of the “Jones Act"
This resolution was introduced in 2022, and adopted in 2023. The City Council can’t do anything about the federal law itself, but it is asking Congress to do something about it via a resolution, a statement of the opinion of the Council.
Per the resolution:
Whereas, Economists across the ideological spectrum have condemned the Jones Act; and
Whereas, The United States’ shipping industry has radically shrunk in the century since the Jones Act passed, demonstrating that it failed in its protectionist purpose; now, therefore, be it
Resolved, That the Council of the City of New York calls on the U.S. Congress to repeal the Merchant Marine Act of 1920, commonly known as the “Jones Act.”
When I first read this, I was a bit surprised. The City Council was putting forth a genuinely good resolution grounded in solid economic understanding! I wondered what moved them to do it—after all, they effectively ignore consensus in the economics literature all the time (especially with regard to housing supply and its effects).10 Why suddenly appeal to it?
As it turns out, the real reasoning seems to have nothing to with economics per se, but with the city’s deep connection to Puerto Rico, which the Jones Act harms.
The Council passed two other resolutions in 2023 calling for federal action concerning Puerto Rico, including:
See this page on the Department of Citywide Administrative Services website about civil service exams: https://www.nyc.gov/site/dcas/employment/more-about-civil-service.page
Although the text of the law gets this right, this quoted plain text summary that accompanies the law refers to “federal poverty levels.” The federal Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) specifically says not to do this: “The poverty guidelines are sometimes loosely referred to as the ‘federal poverty level’ (FPL), but that phrase is ambiguous and should be avoided, especially in situations (e.g., legislative or administrative) where precision is important.”
The federal poverty guidelines are updated yearly by the federal Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). You can look at them here.
(deep breath in) Paragraph 2 of subdivision c of section 17-199.21 of the administrative code of the city of New York: “[the administering agency]…Shall determine the manner by which such testing and eyeglasses are made available, including, without limitation, provision by third parties paid by a voucher issued by the department or otherwise reimbursed by the department…”
Local Law 64 of 2023 allows the city to send rental assistance payments to landlords via electronic payment. Every time someone reads about this law they think “Wait, the city wouldn’t send electronic payments to landlords until now?” Correct. Although if you read the transcript of the hearing (pp.59-64) where this law was discussed, it doesn’t seem close to being fully rolled out, even after this law.
You can see the different versions of the law on its Legistar page. In the upper-left corner you’ll see a “Version” field with a drop-down menu. The “*” version is the original, “A” is the second, and “B” is the final, enacted version.
Transcript of the Minutes of the Committee on General Welfare, June 7, 2023, page 3, lines 12-17.
See footnote 5.
Transcript of the Minutes of the Committee on Education, March 29, 2023, page 9, lines 15-19. See pages 46-51 for more detailed discussion about why the Department of Education feels it cannot implement this program quickly, in addition to discussions of cost.
You can see the different versions of the law on its Legistar page. In the upper-left corner you’ll see a “Version” field with a drop-down menu. The “*” version is the original, and “A” is the final, enacted version.
The Council did pass several resolutions in 2023 that mention the housing crisis in terms of supply, but their legislation hasn’t followed that claim at all, and neither does their rhetoric writ large.