Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. We'll finish up today with a call-in for small business owners and employees for that matter in New York City on the most unnecessary or outrageous fines or tickets your business has gotten. 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692, or tweet @BrianLehrer. We ask because on one of his first days in office, Mayor Adams signed an executive order scaling down fines for small businesses or at least starting a process in which he hopes to remove some of the most unnecessary ways that small businesses have to pay the city or, in his words, to reduce needless fines and penalties. Listen.

Mayor Adams: We feel not fines but extra support is going to get us through this in a real way. We feel, in a real way, fix it, don't fine it, support, don't destroy it.

Brian Lehrer: The order also mandates that city agencies review their regulations on businesses and allow for warnings or cure periods for first time violations. For many things, the agencies impacted include the Department of Buildings, Environmental Protection, Sanitation, Health and Mental Hygiene, also, Consumer and Worker Protection and the FDNY. With that as background, we are inviting your calls right now on the most unexpected, trivial, or in your eyes, needless fines to use the mayor's word that your business has ever run up against. 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692.

We've been collecting these on Twitter throughout the hour. Some of you heard that invite later. Some of you heard me mention that earlier for use later. You set this time. Let's see if we have some of these coming in. Here is one on Twitter. My restaurant was fined by FDNY for unilluminated but bright red exit sign above a wall made up of completely open French doors. Someone else writes, truck drivers, sudden enforcement of traffic laws unenforced for years, perhaps interim warning time if NYPD plans to change. That's another one.

Couple of other examples that we looked up. The Deputy Mayor for Economic and Workforce Development, new Deputy Mayor Maria Torres-Springer says grocery stores in bodegas are required to have weighing scales visibly present, or they risk being fined $100. If Laundromats don't display their prices clearly enough, that's a $400 fine.

Those are some that the Adams administration is citing already. What's your example, New York City business owners, of unneeded tickets or fines that you have gotten that you would like to see reform on. 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. Some other ones as your calls are coming in. According to CBS New York, the $50 fine for failure to clean 18 inches from a curb into the street, 18 inches into the street, $50 fine, and the $560 fine for excessive noise created by an air compressor.

I know a lot of neighbor will think that fine is rightful. One more example, if businesses don't print clear receipts when you buy something, the fine can be between $50 and $500. I always wonder on those, though, if they're on purpose, so that if you try to return something, it's going to be all smudged and they're, "I don't know if you really bought this." Anyway, tell us about your most needless fines, the ones you would like the city to revisit and maybe stop finding you for. 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692, or tweet @BrianLehrer. We'll take your calls and tweets right after this.

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Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Now, small business owners in New York City, to your calls on the most needless or outrageous fine you've ever gotten from the city now that Mayor Adams has promised to revisit a lot of those things. Path, if I'm saying your name right, at LaGuardia Airport. Hi, you're on WNYC.

Path: Hi.

Brian Lehrer: Hi there. Tell us what you do and what kind of fine you got that you think is unnecessary.

Path: Fail to stop to a stop sign, $400 by the TLC.

Brian Lehrer: Now, is that a TLC fine so that a taxi driver like yourself would be fine $400, but somebody else who's just a private driver would be fined less for the same ticket for failing to stop at a stop sign?

Path: Yes, probably a driver is going to be fined way, way less. This is discrimination.

Brian Lehrer: Path, thank you very much, but please stop at all the stop signs. Okay? It's really dangerous when you go through stop signs, but thank you for your call. All right. Control room, bring up line 8, Anna in Brooklyn. Anna, you're on WNYC. Thanks for calling in.

Anna: Hi, this is Anna. Thanks for taking my call. I run a tiny business, and in 2009, I had my first full-time employee hire on payroll. That was in the fall. Then in March of 2020, I had to lay her off, and I went up to Vermont to be with my parents during the first crazy weeks of COVID. I came back to reopen my kitchen at the end of May to having a stack of fines from the Department of Labor because even though I had the insurance for my business, I had completely overlooked getting worker's comp insurance for my first full-time employee.

I'd never been given a warning. I'd been given no communication. I just got back to a stack of fines that had started at $1,000 and each week compounded, and so by the time I got back at the end of May, I was told I owed $6,000 for my one employee, and they wouldn't let me pay any kind of back insurance or anything in worker's comp for the year. It's $400. Of course, there was no one in the Department of Labor who would pick up a phone.

There was no one in the office. No one was present because they were closed for COVID as my kitchen had been. It took months of fighting back and forth. I finally got my fine down to $1,000, which is still a lot of money for my tiny business, but they had tried to fine me $6,000.

[crosstalk]

Brian Lehrer: Yes, and it took you all that work, $6,000 for the $400 thing you were willing to go back and pay for. Anna, thank you very much for your call.

We're going to go next to Susanna in Harlem, who I accidentally disconnected when my software wasn't working a couple of minutes ago. Susanna, since I've eaten in your restaurant and I know who you are, I'm extremely sorry for cutting you off. Hi.

Susanna: That's okay, Brian. Thank you. You know I'm a huge fan. Thank you so much for the conversation. As you know, I own a restaurant called Lido in Harlem, and we've currently opened two others in the middle of this very difficult time, both in Harlem. Lido's been here for 11 years. By far, the hardest part of having a restaurant in this city is the city. To give you just one example, and I promise any restaurant owner can give you 20, I feel like I'm being harassed by one inspector in the fire department.

A couple of years ago, he started telling me that even though we have four exits, and two of the exits, you need a key, a separate key to slowly bring down an electric gate, he says that our side gate, which is manual, has to be locked into place. In order to do that, we have to grab a ladder from the basement and bring it up in the beginning of the day and the end of the day, and it just seems so silly. When I asked him why we have to do that, he said, "Because in 1988, somebody started a fire in a club called Happy Land, which is in a basement, and locked everybody in." I just said, "That doesn't make any sense. In order for somebody to do that, they'd have to have both the keys. We'd have to be sitting here watching them lock us in and not--"

He just says, "That's what you have to do." At one point, we did put a lock on there and he got rid of the fine. The same day that he got rid of the fine, his supervisor came by to talk to me. He said, "How's it been going?" I said, "To be honest, it's so frustrating. We'd already paid $1,000 for this." When I told him what this man was telling me what I had to do, he laughed, and he said, "Oh." He knew it was ridiculous, and he laughed, and he said, "It is up to his discretion."

Recently, this guy came by again. We don't have the lock in there because again, we have four exits and it just makes no sense. When he said, "You have to do this," and he told me again about Happy Land, I said, "I'm not going to do that. I have to be honest." Now, we have another $1,000 fine and we happen to be going to court tomorrow to fight it.

Brian Lehrer: Susanna, interesting story, sounds extremely aggravating. Thank you for checking in with that.

Let's go next to Annie, who's got a dog training business. Is that right, Annie?

Annie: Hi. Yes, I run School For The Dogs in the East Village. One time, we were having a puppy play session there. We have lots of puppies there playing all the time. The inspectors came, and the puppies weren't vaccinated for rabies, which in New York City, puppies generally don't get until they're 16 weeks. These were puppies who were about 10 weeks. We ended up getting fined $1,500 for having possibly, I guess, rabied puppies. [laughs] That's so silly. There was there was nothing I could do about it.

Brian Lehrer: What would be the proper way to ensure that kind of safety for the pets and the people who come in contact with them, in your opinion?

Annie: For people to not worry about their dogs having rabies if they're under 16 weeks.

Brian Lehrer: Oh, because they're just not going to have it?

Annie: I think the chance of puppies getting rabies would involve many of them being bitten by a raccoon or a bat or something that you're probably aware that won't happen. [laugh] I don't know. As a business owner, rabies is fortunately the least of my concerns. There was just no reasoning with-- I couldn't get anybody on the phone to explain, “Hey, by the way, in New York City, puppies--"

[crosstalk]

Brian Lehrer: There's no real risk there.

Annie: It's not even about the risk, it's about what the law is. The law is, dogs need to have it over four months, but these dogs weren't four months yet. Dogs don't come with birth certificates usually. [laughs] On me, I guess, it's just be [unintelligible 00:11:55] them.

[crosstalk]

Brian Lehrer: There is that.

Annie: We do keep very careful track of vaccines, and we were doing everything right. Another time we got fined because there's a self-inspection form that the Department of Health has us keep as a business that has animals there. I printed it out on a letter-sized piece of paper cutting off the bottom part. It was meant to be printed out on the legal-sized piece of paper. That was another $200 fine.

Brian Lehrer: Annie, I'm going to move on and get one or two more people in here before we run out of time. Thank you so much, and good luck with your dog training business. Some more on Twitter. I had these up and then they disappeared. Instead, we'll go to Justin in Brooklyn. Justin, you're on WNYC. Hi there.

Justin: Hi, Brian. Second time, a long time. We have a little store in Brooklyn, and we had a truck parked on a piece of cardboard in front of our store, and we were charged $300 for littering. We couldn't get the cardboard out from under the wheel of that truck.

Brian Lehrer: There you go. Thank you very much. Now that one on Twitter. "I was charged $3,000 by sanitation for artists posting on public poles to advertise their performance." That is certainly aggravating. All right, let's get one more in here. How about line 8, Jennifer in Westchester. Jennifer, you're on WNYC. We got 20 seconds for you. You're going to wrap it up for us.

Jennifer: Okay. I had about 16 employees. This was about four years ago. Because I was paying lump sum payments and not by the hour, I was fined $50,000 by the Department of Labor, even though I proved that the amount that I was paying lump sum was correct with the employees' hourly rates and their overtime. I had to take--

[crosstalk]

Brian Lehrer: Sounds like a complicated situation there. That's going to have to be the last one because we're out of time. Thanks for your calls on the most needless fines according to you that you've gotten from New York City.

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