Cutting 'Red Tape' for Small Businesses

**Brian Lehrer** (0:10)
It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning again, everyone. Coming up later this hour, we'll talk about The Odyssey as part of our occasional series that we call Context and a Movie. We'll match a film critic with a classics professor in this case, to talk about Homer's original, Christopher Nolan's blockbuster adaptation, and a little about the right-wing backlash that the movie is getting. We turn first, however, to City Hall's latest move on the affordability agenda. This one aimed at the people who run the city's roughly 180,000 small businesses, which together employ about a million New Yorkers. On Monday, Mayor Mamdani joined by members of his administration, elected officials and small business owners gathered inside La Bodega in the Bronx, to announce open for small business more than 50 regulatory reforms, some enacted by executive order on the spot, others needing help from City Council or from Albany. The plan touches restaurant letter grades, for example, outdoor dining, street vendor permits, barbershop licenses, even the rules for church bingo nights, believe it or not. And yes, it eliminates the separate permit a restaurant needs just to serve ice cream. What? Joining us now to walk through this is Kenny Minaya, Commissioner of the New York City Department of Small Business Services. Obviously, point person on a lot of this. Commissioner Minaya, thanks for some time. Welcome to WNYC.

**Kenny Minaya** (1:38)
Of course, Brian. Thank you. Good morning.

**Brian Lehrer** (1:40)
And listeners, small business owners, this one is for you. What was it like opening your shop in New York City or keeping it? Which permit, license or inspection made you want to give up? Which city agency could not give you a straight answer or took 18 months to do so? The commissioner will hear your red tape complaints or proposals for reform or you can even shout out a city worker who actually helped you get open or stay open. Tell those stories too. 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692.
But mostly this is access for those of you who are small business owners to the commissioner of the Department of Small Business Services, Kenny Minaya. You know, since this is your first time on the show as commissioner, a little bit about you will give you that platform. I see your parents have run a bakery in Inwood for 42 years. So you come from a small business family.

**Kenny Minaya** (2:41)
That's right, Brian.

**Brian Lehrer** (2:42)
What did you see growing up in that bakery that you're now trying to fix?

**Kenny Minaya** (2:45)
Absolutely. So my parents' lived experience informs the way I approached a job. And one of the things I saw is my parents having to resort to the services of expediters, not because they wanted to. Expediters provide a service, but because they felt like they had to. They felt like they could not figure out the system on their own.
And just plain got frustrated with the system and would rather pay to opt out of having to deal with it directly because it was too complicated for them, especially as immigrant business owners who are limited English proficient.

**Brian Lehrer** (3:20)
Is that bakery still there, by the way? You may or may not know I live in Inwood, so I'm curious. I do know you live in Inwood.

**Kenny Minaya** (3:26)
The bakery is still in Inwood.

**Brian Lehrer** (3:28)
And you don't want to say the name of it on the air?

**Kenny Minaya** (3:30)
I do not want to say the name of it on the air.

**Brian Lehrer** (3:32)
You'll tell us off the air and I'll go buy a piece of cake. Absolutely.
So your team and Deputy Mayor Julie Sue's office spent six months in round tables with owners in all five boroughs and the report says the fees themselves were not the main complaint, which some people might assume they would have been. So what are the biggest problems you heard about?

**Kenny Minaya** (3:55)
Absolutely, Brian. And something I was surprised about, by way of background, I've been in city government for ten years, mostly and all of them at the Department of Consumer and Worker Protection. So I think I had a very kind of regulatory reform heavy mindset and thought that that was the thing that was really plaguing folks. But when I spoke to business owners, it really came back down to the same handful of things.
High cost of commercial rent, high cost of utilities, increasing costs of liability insurance. Those are really the cost drivers that most concern them. And then added to that, they were concerned about city government, seeing city government not as a partner, but adding an additional burden by not being transparent with what's required of them to comply, by attacking on additional fines and fees.