Franchise Opportunities in New York City, NY

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Gov. Kathy Hochul has put her signature on a number of bills set to take effect on New Year’s Day.

The bills passed by the state Legislature and signed by Hochul range from lengthening the voter registration period to ensuring college athletes can't lose their scholarships if they take an endorsement deal. In some cases, lawmakers have spent years attempting to get these bills signed into law. All told, there are over 100 bills set to take effect this year, including at least 39 on Jan. 1.

Though some of these bills passed the state Legislature months ago, Hochul didn’t have to sign them until they’re “delivered,” a procedural term meaning when lawmakers send a bill to the governor for her to sign or reject. In practice, the state Legislature offers a governor a kind of deference in deciding when to review the bill for approval or veto.

Here are some of the bills Hochul has signed — using the state Assembly and Senate’s bill lookup websites — that have city or statewide impact:

'Wrong Church' Bill: As Gothamist previously reported, the law will allow voters who cast an affidavit ballot at an unassigned poll site the ability to have that ballot count. The “wrong church” rule has prevented thousands of affidavit ballots from being counted in New York’s elections since it took effect in 2005, with New York City having the most affidavit ballots dismissed. A 2021 report by Vote Early NY, a voting rights advocacy group, found that nearly 13,800 affidavit ballots were disqualified during the 2020 general election because they were cast at the wrong poll site.

Impact: The law follows the passage of several election reforms passed this year to help bolster voting access across the state. Currently, New York is currently the eighth-worst state when it comes to voter turnout, according to a 2022 study by the U.S. Elections Project.

Voter Registration: New York residents will now be able to register to vote up until 10 days before an election, whether it's a general election, a primary or a special election. Previously, the cutoff was 25 days before an election.

Impact: New York has long faced criticism for its low voter turnout, and this will give people more time to register to vote.

More Judges in NYC: The bill creates 14 more justice posts in New York City — four in family court and 10 in state Supreme Court — in New York City. While family court justices are appointed by the mayor, Supreme Court justices are chosen by voters.

Impact: The hope is to fix what advocates and lawmakers say is a backlog of cases. In the case of family court, some cases were held as long as a year during the pandemic — keeping families from having their cases heard in a speedier manner.

Paid Family Leave Care for Siblings: Starting in 2023, New Yorkers will be able to take paid family leave to care for a sibling with a serious health condition. Previously, New Yorkers could only take this time to care for a spouse, domestic partner, parent/stepparent/parent-in-law, grandparent or grandchild who was deemed seriously ill, injured, impaired or suffering from a physical or mental condition. This change applies primarily to New Yorkers who work for companies that directly pay benefit claims. New Yorkers are encouraged to verify when sibling care is covered by their employer’s Paid Family Leave insurer.

Impact: The new law, which originally passed in 2021 but not effective until 2023, is meant to aid situations in which a sibling is the main caregiver for someone who is seriously ill.

Removing Independence Party: The law prohibits political parties from using "independent" or "independence" in their name, forcing the Independence Party to rename its party. It is technically still a party in the state but failed to reach the required number of signatures in 2020 to automatically get a ballot line.

Impact: The renaming of the party is meant to prevent New Yorkers from mistakenly registering for it when they mean to say they are an independent voter with no party affiliation. A 2012 Daily News editorial said thousands of voters registered for the party thinking it meant they were identifying as being independent from any political party. Lawmakers leaned on the pieces as justification for the new law.

Student Athlete Compensation: The law makes clear that students at New York colleges and universities — specifically those in the NCAA — can receive compensation from endorsements without losing their scholarship. Student athletes can also hire an attorney or agent for such business deals without being penalized.

Impact: The new law comes after the NCAA began allowing student-athletes to receive compensation from selling their image or likeness, which comes as universities reap revenues from someone’s popularity and performance in a sport. Data collected by the U.S. Department of Education shows Syracuse University — home to an array of teams including basketball, football and hockey teams — generated $76 million in revenue between July 2020 until June 2021.

Cosmetic Testing on Animals: This bill makes it illegal for retail stores to sell cosmetic products found to have been tested on animals. Those violating the law can face a $5,000 fine, an additional $1,000 for each day a business violates the law, and a potential probe by the state attorney general. The law’s passage builds on a global trend. Products that have been tested on animals have been outlawed in other countries, including India, Canada and Switzerland.

Impact: The move could compel cosmetic companies that still test their products on animals to consider alternative methods to stay competitive in the New York market, which has yearly revenues that run in the billions of dollars.

CNN —

A New York state judge on Friday denied motions from former President Donald Trump, Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump and Ivanka Trump to dismiss the New York attorney general’s $250 million lawsuit, finding some of the arguments “frivolous.”

Judge Arthur Engoron had previously rejected several of the Trumps’ legal arguments when he imposed a monitor on the Trump Organization last year.

On Friday, in a written order, he ruled that the Trumps’ repetition of the arguments was “frivolous.”

“Reading these arguments was, to quote the baseball sage Lawrence Peter (‘Yogi’) Berra, ‘Déjà vu all over again,’” the judge wrote.

Engoron had considered imposing sanctions on the Trumps’ lawyers but decided against it.

“Sophisticated defense counsel should have known better,” the judge wrote, adding, “In its discretion this Court will not impose sanctions, which the Court believes are unnecessary, having made its point.”

The judge also rejected the Trumps’ arguments that some of the alleged fraudulent conduct occurred beyond the statute of limitations allowed under the law.

Ivanka Trump, who left the business to go to the White House in 2017, argued that the claims against her were time-barred and that she didn’t personally falsify any business records. The judge said the attorney general’s office has alleged liability “sufficiently” on Trump to survive a motion to dismiss.

In a motion to dismiss the judge must give more favorable weight to the plaintiffs’ allegations.

New York Attorney General Letitia James initially filed the lawsuit in September, in which she alleged the Trumps have used fraudulent financial statements to obtain favorable rates of insurance and loans and tax benefits. The Trumps say the investigation is politically motivated.

In the months since, Donald Trump, who has denied any wrongdoing, has tried to block James’ investigation through multiple legal channels.

In December, a federal judge in Florida rejected his request to block James’ office from obtaining records from the Donald J. Trump Revocable Trust, which he used to hold his companies upon becoming president in 2017.

Donald Trump filed the civil lawsuit in November, hours after a New York judge denied an effort to move James’ lawsuit into another division of New York state court.

This story has been updated with additional information.

Solving the problem of the infestation around the mayor’s Brooklyn property is not necessarily simple, an expert in rodenticide says.

Good morning. It’s Friday. Mayor Eric Adams has a residential rat problem. We’ll hear what someone who has spent more than 40 years in the pest-control business would advise the mayor to do.

Mayor Eric Adams, who in his official capacity has been waging war on rats, has again been fined for failing to control them at the four-unit rowhouse he owns in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn.

The latest summonses were issued on Dec. 7, the day after the mayor challenged an earlier one, and carry up to $1,200 in fines. The mayor said on Wednesday that he would again fight the citations, even as he acknowledged that there is a rat problem in the city. “I mean, who are we kidding?” he said.

The mayor’s rat problem reached “another level of absurdity” on Wednesday, as my colleague Dana Rubinstein put it. Curtis Sliwa, the Guardian Angels founder who lost to Adams in the mayoral election last year, appeared in front of the mayor’s rowhouse. Sliwa brought along two of the 16 cats he and his wife live with, showed off a dead rat and offered to set up a cat colony for the mayor.

I wondered if the mayor might not want different advice. John Murphy, an executive at Liphatech, a company that develops and distributes products to control rat infestations, had some ideas. He appeared at the New York Pest Expo last year and at an earlier workshop called “Serious Rodent Management With Style.” His job includes training other licensed pesticide applicators and working with municipalities on rodent problems.

So what would you say to the mayor?

Mr. Mayor, your problem can be managed. There is action that can be performed to manage this situation you’re having.

The first question is, Mr. Mayor, where are your rats coming from? Was it droppings? Was it nesting material?

Mr. Mayor, it could just be a random rat because of the population density in Brooklyn. It could be a random rat from three houses away or a construction area in the next block. Why are they citing you? I don’t know how the violation reads.

And if I were the inspector who gives the mayor the fine, I’d ask, is there evidence on the exterior or have you actually gone inside? If it’s exterior, are the rats coming up from the sewer line or are they on a neighbor’s property and running over? Are they nesting here? Are they just passing through or does this house have a lot of garbage out front? Maybe the garbage is attracting rats that are coming from someplace else.

So, Mr. Mayor, a rat here, a rat there. The best advice is to call in a professional who’s licensed. Let them evaluate the situation and let them do what a pest control applicator does best: Look for conducive conditions and give you a summary of what your house and your block look like.

The mayor says he’s spent $7,000 on rat mitigation efforts. What would you tell him?

With all due respect, Mr. Mayor, what did you pay for? Did you pay for somebody to do exclusion work on the residence, meaning seal up the holes and stuff in an older building? Did you pay for an individual to do an assessment and put a protective barrier of rodent control tools to prevent rats from coming onto the property and infesting the property?

Have you been paying them just to protect your building so the rats do not come into your structure? Perhaps you need somebody to create a more comprehensive program, look at the neighbors and say, “Why do the rats keep coming here and I keep getting violations?”

Seven thousand dollars is a lot of money. If they just went in and firmed up the building so you’re not getting any entry, I respect that, but what else is going on on the outside? You need to have a comprehensive approach because this is a recurring problem.

If the infestation is coming from next door, what can the mayor do? Have a chat with the neighbor?

I could say, yes, Mr. Mayor, the problem is your neighbor.

Now does that homeowner do it themselves or call in a professional? If they call in a professional, yes, they’re going to pay out of pocket, but they can find a company that comes in and sets up a program and controls that population.

The neighbor might want to use rat traps. But maybe the cause is the rats are living under the sidewalk and there are cracks in the sidewalk, and then there are garbage containers. Maybe the neighbor is putting out garbage bags and the rats are eating through the garbage bags.

So, once again, where are the rats coming from?

Can’t the next-door neighbor of someone who received a violation just buy rodenticide at a hardware store?

They could, but they would probably apply it against label directions. I’d rather bring in a licensed professional pest control company that can evaluate and provide a summary of what the needs are to control the rat problem.

The average homeowner won’t read the label. I’m disrespecting the homeowner here, but often the way homeowners apply rodenticide, it’s the opposite of the way the label tells you to. The label says you cannot use this bait outside unless it’s in a tamper-resistant bait station. You’re not going to toss bait around the building.

A homeowner may not read that and may just say ‘I’m going to put the bait around my garbage pails, loose.’ You can’t do that. It needs to be secured and anchored so you can’t lift the bait station above your head and shake the bait out. Does a homeowner realize that? Does a homeowner think about that?

Do you think Mayor Adams knows that?

Mr. Mayor’s got a bunch of people working under him. There are people to answer his questions. But he can call me. Maybe he could pay my E-Z Pass if I drove to Brooklyn. But I’m not going to show up with cats, that’s for sure.

Expect rain before 1 p.m. and temperatures near the mid-40s. The evening is partly cloudy, with temps around the mid-30s.

Suspended today (Three Kings’ Day).

The latest New York news

Dear Diary:

I came out of a meeting on the Upper West Side on a wintry evening and hurried down the block to catch my bus home. I was wearing a knitted hat with bits of silver tinsel in it at the time.

A group of men who were probably in their late 20s came out of a bar.

“Nice hat,” one of them yelled sarcastically but good-naturedly.

Without a moment’s thought, I reverted back to my teenage self.

“Nice face,” I yelled back.

As I reached the bus stop, I could hear him and his friends laughing in the distance.

— Irene Biggs

Glad we could get together here. See you on Monday. — J.B.

Melissa Guerrero and Ed Shanahan contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at [email protected]

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Let’s be perfectly honest for a few paragraphs:

This is one for the die-hards only, for only the truest of the true believers, for the Jets fans who are every bit as obsessed with Gang Green in the quiet football months of late spring and early summer as they are with the 17 games of the season.

Anyone with anything less than a clinical dependence on the Jets? They’re checking the TV listings for alternatives. They’ll spend what promises to be a cool but sunny day walking in Central Park, taking in a matinee, cruising through a museum.

Jets-Dolphins?

For everyone else?

What’s the point? It will be a duel of third-string quarterbacks, Joe Flacco versus Skylar Thompson. It will be a matchup of teams that harbored far higher ambitions just a month and a half ago — jeez, some were even calling the Dolphins a sleeper to come out of the AFC and reach the Super Bowl — who are now on matching five-game losing streaks.

Only the Bears (nine in a row), Cardinals (six) and Colts (six) are playing worse.

The Dolphins were already quivering before Tua Tagovailoa went down with one final concussion of the season. Whatever hope the Jets had of receiving positive quarterback play went down in a hail of cracked Mike White ribs. Zach Wilson will dress Sunday, but there is a genuine sense that the Jets will sooner prefer to play Quinnen Williams at quarterback if anything happens to Flacco.

So, yeah. Good times at Hard Rock Stadium!

What does that leave you as a Jets fan?

It leaves you this:

It leaves you, if you are old enough, thinking of the lyrics of an old Don Henley song …

“This is the last/

Worthless weekend/

That you’ll have to spend …”

Because it had better be.

Because even if you are the most patient fan, the most resilient fan, the most optimistic fan, the most unflappable fan, you have broached the beginning of the end of your surplus of patience, resilience, optimism and … well, flappability.

It is now 12 full seasons without a playoff berth, which remains the longest drought in the entire league. It is now seven full seasons without a serious run at a playoff game (no, by now, this season doesn’t count even if the Jets still had destiny in their own hands through 16 weeks and a still-real chance through 17).

It was impossible to know when the Jets left Buffalo after that long-ago Rex Bowl of Jan. 3, 2016, that they were taking the whole store with them and dumping it in Lake Erie on the way home. The Bills quarterback that day? Tyrod Taylor, who will play in another meaningless game Sunday, only that one is a happily meaningless one for the Giants in Philadelphia.

Seven years and five days after that 22-17 loss to the Bills that kept the Jets out of the playoffs despite a 10-6 record, the Jets face something that they know better than any team in the NFL: another worthless final Sunday of the regular season.

It had to stop. Has to stop now.

Next year, Week 18 has to be different. Has to mean something. No, let’s take it farther: It has to mean something even beyond still-in-the-hunt, something beyond win-and-you’re-in. It should be for seeding purposes. It should be for — dare we say it — home field. It should be for something real.

It has to be.

Because even if the Jets have gone from two to four to seven wins — meaning that if the win Sunday in Miami they will have doubled their win totals in consecutive years, which should be a sign of progress — it sure doesn’t feel that way. Five straight losses have soured the feel-good nature of the seven wins that came before.

Jets fans — even the optimists, even the unflappables — don’t have an endless supply of wait-till-next-year in them. And they shouldn’t be asked to re-up. It has to be different this time next year. Has to be. For Jets fans, this must be the last worthless weekend that they’ll have to spend.

The New York Knicks currently find themselves 21-18 in the Eastern Conference and holding on to a Top-6 spot in the conference.

Their talented trio of Julius Randle, Jalen Brunson and RJ Barrett has been playing well and they are beginning to develop some great chemistry with one another, but the Knicks as a whole are still searching for ways to get more production from their depth.

One player they are high on and looking forward to getting back to full capacity is 2020 first-round pick Obi Toppin, who was recently cleared to return from a non-displaced fracture in his right fibula head.

While he was made available for Wednesday night’s game against the San Antonio Spurs, Toppin did not play and on Thursday morning, the team sent Toppin to the Westchester Knicks in the NBA G League to get some more practice time.

Just a couple of hours later, the team announced that they have recalled Obi Toppin and that he has rejoined the Knicks ahead of their road game against the Toronto Raptors on Friday.

Toppin, 24, was drafted 7th overall by the Knicks in 2020 and his time with the team has been a little bumpy to this point.

Unlike most Top-10 picks who instantly have a starter’s role or key rotation spot with their team, Toppin has been in and out of the Knicks’ rotations even though he has played well when on the floor.

In 25 games this season, Toppin has averaged 7.7 points and 3.8 rebounds per game while shooting 42.1 percent from the floor. For his career, Toppin has averaged 6.9 points and 3.1 rebounds in about 14.7 minutes per game.

Having elite-level athleticism and length, Obi Toppin certainly has a lot of potential and a lot to give to his team. The only question though is if the Knicks will truly give him the opportunity to prove himself, especially with them already having Mitchell Robinson and Julius Randle in the frontcourt.

He will have his chance to return to the floor for the Knicks on Friday for the first time since December 7. Be sure to catch up on the newest episode of The Fast Break Podcast hosted by Fastbreak's own Brett Siegel!

Streaming on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, The Fast Break Podcast takes you inside the league with the latest news, intel, rumors and interviews from those close to the action for all 30 teams. Be on the lookout for a new episodes every Friday.

Be sure to catch up on the newest episode of The Fast Break Podcast hosted by Fastbreak's own Brett Siegel!

Streaming on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, The Fast Break Podcast takes you inside the league with the latest news, intel, rumors and interviews from those close to the action for all 30 teams. Be on the lookout for a new episodes every Friday.