Small businesses have suffered a steep uptick in costly fines during Mayor Bloomberg’s tenure, according to a stinging report released by Public Advocate and mayoral candidate Bill de Blasio.
The searing data — which de Blasio said he received from city agencies only after suing them in state Supreme Court — show violations skyrocketing from Fiscal Year 2002 to 2012.
The Department of Consumer Affairs, for instance, issued 24,176 fines in FY 2012, compared to 9,719 in FY 2002 — a nearly three-fold increase. The agency simultaneously increased the number of inspections from 40,724 to 77,481.
During that time, the agency took in $10 million more in revenue from the fines — $14 million in FY 2012 compared with just $4 million a decade earlier, the data shows.
The Department of Health upped its inspections from 33,254 to 98,176 over the decade, taking in $52 million in FY 2012 compared with $8.2 million 10 years earlier — a sixfold increase.
Among the petty infractions de Blasio illustrated was a ticket for having a fork covered in wax — even though the fork was only used to clean candles behind a bar, and a summons for having utensils several inches too far over a napkin.
Bloomberg dismissed the report, saying, “Fines are easy to avoid. Just don’t do what we’re trying to prevent you from doing, and you won’t have the problem.”
De Blasio, who is hoping to carry a large outer-borough vote in his mayoral race, emphasized the fines often were for small businesses outside Manhattan.
Meanwhile Council Speaker Christine Quinn, the Democratic front-runner in polls and de Blasio’s rival, proposed to cap fines on street vendors at $500.
Quinn’s office also released a list of reforms she spearheaded, including allowing businesses to pay fines online instead of in person to avoid losing a day’s work.