NYC Mayor Adams aims to cut red tape for small businesses

The city is trying to make life a little easier for small businesses that have been struggling during the pandemic.

Starting at the end of the year, small businesses won’t face 30 kinds of fines, Mayor Adams announced Sunday. Penalties for numerous other violations will be reduced as well.

“For too long, we stifled the entrepreneurial spirit in New York City,” Adams said at a Midtown press conference.

“No one wanted to do business here,” he claimed. “No one wanted to go through the bureaucracy. No one wanted to be humiliated just day by day.”

FILE - In this April 8, 2020, file photo, a pedestrian strolls past small businesses that are shuttered closed during the coronavirus epidemic in the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn in New York. As of mid-April, about 26 million Americans had filed unemployment claims in the first five weeks since governments began ordering people to stay home and some businesses to close as a precaution against spreading the virus that causes the COVID-19 disease. It's already the worst stretch of job losses in U.S. history. New unemployment data to be released Thursday, April 30, 2020, is expected to push that total even higher. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan, File) (Mark Lennihan/)

Adams’ reform targets some of the more arcane aspects of city law.

The 30 violations to be canned include one for “failure to conspicuously post electrical work permit while work is in progress” and one for “failure to maintain required bins for disposal of compostable straws in restaurants.”

For 49 other violations, fines will be reduced. Those include “violations of time/temperature control for preparing foods safely” and “violations for picture tubes (older TVs with cathode ray tubes) sold or offered for sale without proper label.”

For still other violations, the city will administer warnings for first-time offenses or allow for “cure periods” instead of slap on fines.

Small businesses in Midtown on 32nd S. and Fifth Ave. (Luiz C. Ribeiro for New York Daily News) (Luiz C. Ribeiro/)

The changes are set to take effect Dec. 31.

Calling the old enforcement regimen “taxation through citation,” Adams said, “that is not how we’re going to run this city.”

Asked about rent stabilization for small businesses — a long-stalled priority of some City Council members — Adams was noncommittal.

“The devil is in the details … When we start making these decisions, we need to factor in the little guy,” he said, referring to small landlords.