September 9, 2020
Indoor dining at NYC restaurants can resume September 30, but…
“On restaurants in New York City, I understand the tension on the issue. Speaker Corey Johnson said yesterday— I believe or the day before— that he thinks the restaurants in New York City should open. First, that’s not a decision that’s going to be made by New York City. They have no legal authority to make that decision. The state will make that decision. I happen to agree with the Speaker. I’d like to see the restaurants open. However, there’s a but. B-U-T. The but is, our rules and guidance on reopening is only as good as the compliance and the enforcement. So, we can say, “50 percent of casinos or whatever,” but it then has to be enforced. There has to be compliance. 50 percent are malls. 25 percent on casinos. It has to be enforced. We have major problems in New York City with the compliance on the bars. I had beseeched New York City to do a better job on compliance and enforcement. We have put together a task force to do the enforcement on Long Island and New York City. We are taking State Police resources from many places to put on that task force. The State Liquor Authority has investigators, not just from the State Liquor Authority, but all state agencies have deployed investigators to do the compliance on the bars. We now open restaurants, that’s going to complicate by the hundreds if not thousands the number of establishments that have to be monitored. How is that going to happen? I don’t have any more state resources to do it, so we’re going to contact the Speaker today and say look, if New York City can say “this many police, NYPD, can be put on the task force to monitor the compliance,” that’s something we can discuss. I’m going to say to the Restaurant Association that desperately wants to open — and I understand the economic pressure — can you tell me how we’re going to enforce it and how we’re going to monitor compliance? Because the facts with what has happened on bars are damning and you’ve all heard me on this phone for the past month saying, “there’s a lax and an ineffectiveness in the compliance and that’s why I did the task force. But the state task force cannot take on the issue of restaurants just by personnel. It’s not going to work, so to come up with a plan — akin to schools. We have a great plan. “All restaurants can open, but they have to have this, this, and this and this.” Yeah, but the plan is only as good as your ability to enforce it and right now, we have no ability to enforce it. And again we just had a very bad experience when it came to bars.
“So, if the Speaker — and look, you have I don’t know, 34,000 NYPD — there’s a lot of questions about the NYPD and their activities. Put together a task force of NYPD, Speaker Johnson, and say, “there are going to be 4,000 police who are going to be doing restaurant compliance.” Not sheriffs. There are only 150 sheriffs. We have to do airport compliance, we have to do bridge and tunnel compliance. We’re now opening malls — mall compliance, casino compliance. All of these and then school compliance, so that’s a complication of opening the restaurants in New York City and again, if Speaker Johnson, his opinion is they should open; my opinion as they should open. The question is how?”
~Governor Cuomo
Read the complete transcript here.
