The Transport Workers Union plans to file federal suit if a bill banning carriage horses citywide passes the City Council on Thursday, October 22, as expected.<\/p>\n
Last week, Mayor Zohran Mamdani and City Council Speaker Julie Menin announced that the legislation\u2014known as Romanch\u2019s Law, in tribute to a teenage tourist who died during a Central Park carriage accident in June\u2014had garnered enough votes to pass with a super majority in the City Council. Mamdani said he will sign the bill into law.<\/p>\n
There will be dueling press conferences from both sides before the vote on Oct. 22.<\/p>\n
The TWU represents the few hundred remaining licensed carriage workers operating in New York City, largely in Central Park; the trade has taken place there for the last 150 years or so. The bill, whose prime sponsor is downtown City Council member Chris Marte, says it will set up training programs to transition the carriage horse drivers to new jobs.<\/p>\n
But the union is blasting the vague promise of new jobs, insisting that the union members love the jobs they have now in the carriage trade.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis bill is a train wreck of constitutional and due process violations,\u201d TWU International President John Samuelsen said in a statement provided to Straus News.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt offers nothing concrete for blue-collar drivers and carriage owners who will be financially crushed, stripped of their jobs, their licenses, expensive city-issued medallions, small businesses, and way of life,\u201d Samuelson added. \u201cIt is not progressive. It is anti-worker. It\u2019s theft.\u201d<\/p>\n
Romanch\u2019s Law represents the culmination of a decades-long push to ban the trade, largely spearheaded by animal rights activists and community groups such as NYCLASS (New Yorkers for Safe, Clean, Livable Streets), the latter of which the TWU separately sued last year.<\/p>\n
Two lawyers representing the TWU penned a fierce letter to City Corporation Counsel Steven Banks on October 21\u2014the day before the vote. In it, they essentially asked Banks to advise Mayor Mamdani against signing the bill.<\/p>\n
Citing their personal relationship with the city\u2019s lawyer, who they described as \u201ca champion for Constitutional rights over the years,\u201d attorneys Arthur J. Schwartz and Ben Kallos described Romanch\u2019s Law as \u201ca mess of serious Federal and State Constitutional violations.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kallos was Menin\u2019s predecessor in the Upper East Side City Council seat that she was elected to in 2021, after he faced term limits and made an unsuccessful bid for NYS Assembly. While on the City Council, Kallos headed the Progressive Caucus.<\/p>\n
Schwartz, meanwhile, is known for his dogged representation of a community group that sought to halt the shutdown of Mt. Sinai Beth Israel hospital in the East Village\u2014which eventually closed its doors last April after a long and bruising legal fight.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe pending bill just basically says: \u2018Poof, your medallion is now worthless. Your horse needs to be put to pasture, and we get to dictate where that pasture is. Your carriage is now worthless. Your stable is now worthless. And your profession, the one you have a license for, is now banned,\u201d Kallos and Schwartz wrote.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou know that the Fifth Amendment bars a \u2018taking\u2019 without \u2018just compensation.\u2019 So does the New York State Constitution,\u201d they argued.<\/p>\n
Carriage workers, union leaders and supporters will gather for a 9 a.m. press conference and rally at the Broadway entrance to City Hall, across the street from 250 Broadway, Manhattan. Horses and carriages will be present, the union said.<\/p>\n
Marte, Menin, and other city council members are expected to be joined by members of Romanch Mahajan\u2019s family, animal welfare advocates, and other supporters of Romanch\u2019s Law for a rally at noon on Thursday before the bill\u2019s expected passage at 1 p.m.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Transport Workers Union plans to file federal suit if a bill banning carriage horses citywide passes the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":379085,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[137627,9,24,55,54,56],"class_list":["post-379084","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-john-samuelson","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-new-york-city-headlines","tag-new-york-city-news","tag-ny"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/379084","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=379084"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/379084\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/379085"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=379084"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=379084"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=379084"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}