COURIER L 14 IFE, APRIL 23-29, 2021
Mayoral fi ght!
Yang, Adams feud over placard abuse
Andrew Yang held a press conference near Brooklyn Borough Hall on April 15 laying out his
plan to combat placard abuse. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid
BY BEN VERDE
Mayoral hopeful Andrew Yang
rolled out a plan to combat placard
abuse on Thursday, while taking a
not-so-subtle dig at his rival, Borough
President Eric Adams.
The eccentric candidate promised
to crack down on illegal parking during
a press conference at Cadman Plaza
— where the Beep has been criticized
for printing parking placards that allow
his employees to leave their private
vehicles in the park. The practice
of placard abuse has long been a topic
of ire among transit advocates, who bemoan
city workers using the signs to
park in illegal spots — such as fi re hydrants,
bike lanes, bus stops, and more
— without receiving a ticket.
“I’m not the only New Yorker who
has run into an illegally parked car, or
a car that is parked inappropriately,”
Yang said, “because, at this point, placards
are being distributed so broadly
and being used for either offi cial or unoffi
cial purposes that they’re actually
causing inconvenience and even hazards
for many, many New Yorkers.”
Yang’s proposal mirrors a stalled
one from Mayor Bill de Blasio which
would have addressed the placard
abuse his administration has allowed
by creating a system of digital placards
that can be scanned by enforcement
agents, and restoring funding
to the Department of Transportation
to bring enforcement back into their
wheelhouse.
Though he used Adams’ offi ce —
where several NYPD vehicles were
parked on the sidewalk for an event at
Borough Hall — as a backdrop, Yang
did not directly name the sitting borough
president during the press conference.
The location, he told reporters,
was chosen out of support for a bill
by Councilmember Steve Levin which
would allow citizens to report illegal
parking and earn a cut of the fi ne.
But that didn’t stop the Adams campaign
from attacking Yang, and accusing
him of being out of touch with the
city’s most serious issues.
“Five-year-old and twelve-year-old
children are being shot in our streets
— and Andrew Yang is focused on double
parking,” said campaign spokesperson
Madia Coleman in a statement.
“Maybe double parking is the big
crime problem in New Paltz, but not in
New York.”
Yang shot back that he could work
to solve more than one problem at a
time.
“I think about what’s happening to
families in New York all the time, particularly
to victims of violent crime,”
he said. “I think New Yorkers sense
that we have the capacity to do multiple
things at once.”
The Adams administration made
headlines for placard abuse in 2019 after
the Beep responded to an anonymous
twitter critic by comparing them
to a member of the Ku Klux Klan. Adams
then hosted a public meeting at
Borough Hall, where he refused to stop
allowing sidewalk parking, arguing it
would be an unfair double standard.
“I fought my entire life to make sure
men that look like me don’t have different
rules than anyone else,” Adams
said at the time. “There’s one rule in
this city, there’s not going to be a rule
just for Eric Adams, the fi rst African-
American borough president.”