8 SEPTEMBER 10, 2020 RIDGEWOOD TIMES WWW.QNS.COM
Queens senator calls on SLA to
restore liquor license removals
BY ANGÉLICA ACEVEDO
AACEVEDO@SCHNEPSMEDIA.COM
@QNS
Senator Jessica Ramos returned
to the New York State Liquor Authority’s
(SLA) headquarters on
Thursday, Sept. 3, to call for the agency
to restore all the liquor licenses it has
removed from New York City restaurants
and bars as well as drop all
suspensions.
“The way to help these small businesses
is not by suspending their license and
closing them down,” said Ramos. “The
way to help the businesses is to provide
clear guidance so that we can help them
comply if there’s any confusion, so that
they can continue operating and they
can continue providing us with good
food, entertainment and, more importantly,
good jobs for our communities.”
Ramos — who along with two dozen
state senators wrote a letter demanding
SLA stop hitting businesses with “excessive
fi nes” last week — was joined by
Uptown Manhattan Assembly member
Carmen De La Rosa, Jackson Heights
Assembly candidate Jessica González-
Rojas and several local restaurant and
bar owners.
Two weeks ago, Ramos led another
press conference at the Adam Clayton
Powell Jr. State Offi ce Building with more
than 30 Queens and Manhattan business
owners to speak out against what they
say has been harassment from the SLA in
the months when eateries were allowed
to reopen for outdoor dining.
The SLA has fi led 708 charges for
liquor license removals against establishments
in NYC, 207 (or 29 percent) of
which are in Queens, as of Friday, Sept.
4. Manhattan accounts for half of the
charges, according to the SLA.
The agency has also fi led 168 Emergency
Summary Suspensions, which
are imposed when the SLA fi nds the
continued operation of a licensed
business threatens public health and
safety.
Businesses that are subjected to an
emergency suspension are entitled to
an expedited hearing before an SLA
Administrative Law Judge.
SLA spokesperson William Crowley
told QNS the suspensions are “used
sparingly, and only in the worst cases
— that’s why 50,000 inspections have
led to under 1,000 charges and just 168
suspensions.”
But De La Rosa, who represents
Washington Heights, said restaurant
and bar owners in certain communities
are receiving “targeted enforcement”
from the SLA.
“Why are they targeting our businesses?
Because they serve communities
of color, because they serve
vulnerable communities, under the
guise of safety,” De La Rosa said. “We
visited many establishments in Upper
Manhattan, and these businesses are
trying their very best every single day
to not only serve their communities,
many of them never closed their doors
during a global pandemic. Let’s talk
about essential workers. These people
were part of food delivery operations,
of mutual aid operations when our communities
were dying. They are trying
to survive. This is not about safety, this
is about revenue.”
González-Rojas, who won the primary
race for Assembly District 34,
said her district’s majority-immigrant
owned businesses “are suff ering from
the burden” of SLA fi nes.
“We are in the district that was deeply
impacted by COVID,” González-Rojas
said. “There’s a restaurant down the
street from my home, I live right off
Northern Boulevard, and I witnessed it
getting shut down for days due to fi nes. I
witness another restaurant get a $1,500
fi ne without any proof — and when they
ask for proof they got a grainy photo
that shows nothing. This is unjust.”
Ramos said about 31 businesses in
her district have experienced “harassment
and threats by undercover
agents, members of a task force, the
state sheriff s, and the Departments of
Transportation and Environmental
Protection.”
Kae Burke and Anya Sapozhnikova,
co-founders of Brooklyn’s House of
Yes, a nightclub and arts space, were
there to talk about their liquor license
suspension a week ago. They said they
were given a list from SLA on what to
improve.
“We did make the changes, we did try
to rectify the situation, and they still
suspended our license,” said Burke.
“That is not justice; it’s not helpful. That
does not keep our communities safe.
All that does is destroy a business that
was completely compliant with all of
the guidelines. It’s heartbreaking to
see our friends all of a sudden, surprise,
unemployed again.”
Abby Ehmann, owner of Lucky, a bar
on the East Village, said she recently got
her liquor license suspended shortly
aft er she started a petition, “Seating
Not Eating,” calling on Gov. Andrew
Cuomo to reverse his Executive Order
mandating restaurant and bars have to
serve food item with alcoholic beverage.
The petition has surpassed 5,000
signatures.
Ehmann’s lawyer, Wylie Stecklow,
argues that while Cuomo’s executive orders
have eff ectively slowed the spread,
they are not always easy to understand
or enforce.
“Even before COVID, they were
looked at by the Department of Health,
Department of Buildings, the Fire Department,
as well as the State Liquor
Authority. These businesses know
they have to comply with a myriad of
rules and regulations that are hard to
understand,” said Stecklow. “Executive
Order 202.52, it is so undistinguishable,
it does not defi ne itself, that the The SLA
has set up 10 question and answers on
their own website trying to explain
what this one small executive order
means.”
President of the New York State Latino
Restaurant and Bar Association
Jeff rey Garcia joined many businesses
and elected offi cials across the city in
calling for a clear path for NYC to bring
back indoor dining.
“Our restaurants know they should
be wearing masks, cleaning tables and
following all these rules, but there
are a lot of things in place that’s a
hindrance as well,” said Garcia. “Like
the rule that business have to control
what’s going on 100 feet from their businesses
— they’re not cops. Just trying to
control people inside your businesses
is diffi cult enough during these very
diffi cult times, because even customers,
even though we’ve been dealing with
this for months, are not always used
to putting on a mask right away. Yet an
investigator can walk in as a person’s
walking to the bathroom, and you lose
your license over a free mask? It’s just
not fair.”
Ramos agrees that indoor dining
should come back, saying that as a
mother of two, she’s more worried
about what in-person school protocols
will look like in the fall.
“We’re going to be allowing a third
of the student population to go into
schools with little to no protocols,” she
said. “I do not subscribe to these concerns
about indoor dining when we are
being hypocrites in New York state and
allowing everybody but New York City
to reopen at a small capacity and now
we’re behind New Jersey as well.”
Ramos and Assembly member Yuh-
Line Niou, who represents Chinatown,
previously called for better outreach
and for guidance to be given to business
owners in several diff erent languages.
“As of yet, the SLA has been unable to
provide clear guidance in one place as
to what rules and protocols our restaurants
must follow,” said Ramos. “None
of this information is available in any
language other than English. The SLA
is still deputizing state employees from
other agencies who are not trained in
liquor authority law and are not culturally
competent … because they don’t live
in our neighborhoods and understand
our communities.”
Suspended licenses may cost business
owners anywhere from $4,000 to
$50,000, depending on “egregiousness
of the conduct.” The maximum penalty
the SLA could hand down is revoking a
liquor license.
For fi rst time Executive Order violations
involving less egregious conduct,
the SLA generally accepts fi nes anywhere
from $1,500 and $4,000, with the
maximum being $10,000 per charge.
Ramos added that it is not clear where
the fi nes that SLA collects are going.
Crowley maintains the SLA and
Cuomo’s task force for a safe reopening
are acting in order keep the public safe
during the pandemic. He said thanks to
the task force and responsible business
owners, the SLA is seeing a 97 percent
compliance rate.
He noted all fi nes, in addition to all
licensing revenue collected by the SLA,
are remitted to the state’s General Fund
— the major operating fund for the state,
which provides funding for schools,
healthcare and other services.
State Senator Jessica Ramos on Thursday, Sept. 3. Photo by Angélica Acevedo
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