City Council members are considering the POWER Act, legislation backed by Mayor Zohran Mamdani and introduced Thursday, that supporters say would expand consumer and worker rights and give New Yorkers more ways to take legal action against unfair and abusive business practices.<\/p>\n
The bill, according to supporters, would reduce barriers for workers, tenants, small businesses and nonprofit organizations seeking to hold corporations and other actors accountable in court for practices such as deed theft, junk fees and predatory small business financing.<\/p>\n
Workers-rights advocates, including groups such as Make the Road New York, New York Taxi Workers Alliance, the Legal Aid Society and AARP New York, rallied with elected officials on the steps of City Hall in support of the proposal.<\/p>\n
\u201cCorporations, and we see it every single day, we saw with the mayor last week, take advantage of low-income New Yorkers because they don\u2019t think they have recourse. Now, once we pass the POWER Act, they\u2019ll have the ability to protect themselves and to defend their rights across this great city,\u201d Council Member Harvey Epstein, chair of the Committee on Consumer and Worker Protection, said.<\/p>\n
Specific uses of the bill, supporters say, would be allowing tenants to take landlords to court and recover wrongfully withheld security deposits, allowing small businesses facing competition from corporate giants to sue over unfair business practices and empowering seniors who fall victim to scams.<\/p>\n
\u201cUnder New York law today there is a critical gap. Individual New Yorkers can sue over deceptive practices, but unfair or abusive conduct falls into a different category where it\u2019s a lot harder to enforce the law. The POWER Act will change that,\u201d said Sam Levine, commissioner of the New York City Department of Consumer and Worker Protection.<\/p>\n
Some New Yorkers expressed early optimism while also raising concerns about how the measure could be applied.<\/p>\n
\u201cSounds really idealistic and great, I hope there\u2019s nothing nefarious beneath the surface,\u201d Matt Flynn said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf it levels the playing field, and justifies the claims that people have, there\u2019s nothing wrong with it. However, if it starts to create a litigious society that we already have now, where all the lawyers get in line, then everyone is going to be chasing their tail,\u201d Frederic Zonsius said.<\/p>\n
Critics said the proposal would unfairly target businesses.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Mayor\u2019s proposal will lead to higher costs for New Yorkers by inviting costly litigation against businesses. Those costs do not disappear \u2014 they ultimately show up in fewer jobs, less investment, and higher prices,\u201d Steve Fulop, president and CEO of the Partnership for New York City, said in a statement.<\/p>\n
The bill\u2019s next steps would typically include a committee hearing and a vote before it could go before the full Council.<\/p>\n
City Council Speaker Julie Menin has not signaled support for the POWER Act. She has said her legislative team has been in talks with the bill\u2019s sponsors to learn more about it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"City Council members are considering the POWER Act, legislation backed by Mayor Zohran Mamdani and introduced Thursday, that…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":368439,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[109,25,9,24,11,10,12,6019,87,27,200],"class_list":["post-368438","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-app-local-state-politics","tag-app-top-stories","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news","tag-news","tag-noorulain-khawaja","tag-politics","tag-top-stories","tag-vod"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/368438","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=368438"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/368438\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/368439"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=368438"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=368438"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=368438"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}