City Leaders Call to Stop Excessive Ticketing on Small Businesses

New York, NY —

Democratic mayoral nominee Bill Thompson has criticized the Bloomberg administration for excessively ticketing small businesses. Now, some city council members are siding with Thompson and trying to crack down on "ticket hoarding". WNYC's Lisa Chow reports.

REPORTER: City leaders say Sanitation enforcement officers are writing tickets but not serving them immediately, and then hitting the unsuspecting offender with thousands of dollars in fines.

In one case, three nonprofit groups in Queens, advertising a street fair they had organized, were required to pay the city more than $7,000 for illegally posting 32 flyers.

City council members are proposing a bill that would limit fines for first-time offenders and require the Sanitation officers to serve their tickets promptly, not hold onto them.

The mayor says the officers need to enforce the law, but they should also be well trained, so they aren't giving out tickets that people don't deserve. For WNYC, I'm Lisa Chow.