The Manhattan Times

Is the Small Business Survival bill dead?

by Daniel P. Bader

Is City Council Member Robert Jackson’s Small Business Survival bill dead? It might be for this legislative year. The bill, which would require landlords to negotiate the renewal of a lease with their commercial tenants or face binding arbitration, has garnered 33 sponsors in the City Council, more than enough to pass. But it has run into significant resistance from Council Speaker Christine Quinn and Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

Time is running out for the bill.

The bill has the support of the five members of the Council’s Small Business Committee, but it has not yet been voted on. There are at least two committee meetings before the end of the term, but Speaker Quinn has not added it to the agenda.

After jumping that hurdle, the full Council needs to vote on it before the end of the year, otherwise many of its supporters will be out of office.

Negotiations are still underway, and both Quinn and Bloomberg believe there are legal issues with the bill – which the bill’s supporters dismiss out of hand – and do not yet support it.

“Right now we’re trying to work with the speaker,” said Johanna Garcia, Jackson’s legislative and budget director. “[Quinn’s] actually becoming a little more receptive to it.”

Garcia said Jackson is still behind the bill.

“The Council member’s stance is ‘everything is still possible,’” Garcia said. “[But] time is, of course, of the essence.”

Even if the bill is voted on, the mayor has 30 days to sign it. If he doesn’t and the term ends, Jackson will have to start the whole process over again.

“He’s willing to start over,” Garcia said. “Whether or not they do [vote], the problem will still exist. I’m sure the Council member will want to pursue it.”

Steve Null, who wrote the bill over 20 years ago and pulled together a coalition of Dominican and Hispanic small business groups to support it this year, says he won’t continue to work for the bill’s passage in the new year.

“We have no time – I do not know how you feel about the issue of re-introducing the bill in 2010, but for me, I did the best I could and, Dec. 31, I am finished,” he wrote in a Nov. 11 email to the coalition.

“I don’t think you could do more than you did this year,” Null said in an interview. [And] here were are, not even going to get a vote.”

He said that despite the support on the Council, the system – particularly the power of the speaker – has kept the bill from being passed, and unless it is changed, there’s no reason to start up again.

“Even if we had lost we’d have something to show for it,” Null said. “If they’re not going to change the system, why bother?”

Quinn did engineer a way around the speaker’s office. A Council member can force a vote through the Rules, Privileges and Elections committee, but if there is a technical way of doing it, few would risk the wrath of the speaker, who decides which member serves on which committee. Jackson, the chair of the Education Committee would risk his seat if he forced a vote. Then the mayor could simply pocket the bill anyway.

Even if Null, a big voice for the bill, is out, the New York Women’s Chamber of Commerce, a member of the coalition, is going to stay behind the bill, even if the process starts all over.

“It’s very disenchanting,” said chamber president Quenia Abreu. “We’re hoping it’s going to happen because it’s the right thing to do.

“We get tired, but the reality is we can’t leave the small businesses without support,” she added.