tating that
he considers it a deeply anti-immigrant piece of legislation as well as
objectionable in several other ways, Council Member Hiram Monserrate
announced his support of 11 newsstand operators and the
New
York City Newsstand Operators Association in their lawsuit aimed at
stopping the implementation of Local Law 64, known as the street furniture
bill. This suit against the City of New York, the Department of
Transportation, and the Department of Consumer Affairs was filed in New
York State Supreme Court on July 7th.
The amended local law allows for a private franchisee to assume
ownership of the city’s privately owned newsstands and replace them with
uniform, advertisement-laden kiosks. The design for the new structures
would force as many as 60 newsstands, or approximately 20% of the city’s
remaining stands, to close or relocate.
Numerous media companies, including Viacom's outdoor unit, Clear
Channel Outdoor and JC Decaux have expressed interested in bidding for
this 20-year street furniture contract, worth an estimated $1 billion.
Under its terms, the vendor who gets the contract will control 80% of
available advertising space, while the city will keep the rights to the
remainder. Newsstand operators, who have always been forbidden from
advertising on their structures, will get none of the
advertising-generated revenue. These owners lobbied the City Council to
get a portion of advertising revenue, but they were unsuccessful.
The
lawsuit contends that Local Law 64 deprives news dealers of their
constitutionally guaranteed property rights and violates the First
Amendment. It states, "By supplanting individually owned stands - upon
which advertising has been forbidden - with corporately owned ones, the
law forces individual plaintiffs to display and adopt messages that are
dictated by the government, contrary to their beliefs, and, in each and
every case, are placed without even a hint of consent from the newsstand
operators."
Council Member Monserrate, who is Co-Chair of the City Council’s
Black, Latino and Asian Caucus as well as Chair of the Veterans
Committee, was one of the few councilmembers who voted against the
street furniture bill when it was passed by the City Council in October
2003. He cited the unfairness and illegality of a policy that takes
unfair advantage of small, predominantly minority-owned businesses, as
his reason for opposing this Bloomberg-supported local law.
Speaking at a recent press conference, Monserrate stated, "So many of
our newsstands are operated by immigrant, veteran, and disabled
entrepreneurs. We can not allow these newsstand owners, who have
dedicated time and money building their businesses and providing New
Yorkers with a valuable service, to have them stripped away to line the
pockets of a well connected corporation."
Monserrate has pledged to do everything in his power to protect the
rights of these hardworking, well deserving small business owners.
