NEW YORK -- In the City Council's first legislative split with Mayor Michael Bloomberg since coming under control of Speaker Christine Quinn, lawmakers overrode a mayoral veto and passed a bill that seeks to crack down on gasoline price gouging in New York City, the Staten Island Advance reported.
The new law prevents gas station owners from raising prices more than once in a 24-hour period and requires them to keep detailed records on their wholesale deliveries and retail sales for a year, the report said. Violators are subject to fines ranging from $500 [image-nocss] to $10,000.
This is a very common-sense, and fair, consumer-protection piece of legislation, Quinn told the newspaper.
The bill passed the Council in July, with support from Councilman Michael McMahon (D) but without the votes of Councilmen James Oddo (R) and Andrew Lanza (R).
Its lead sponsor, Councilman John Liu (D), said the measure targets the tiny percentage of proprietors who raise their prices in the absence of wholesale price increases. The practice is most often seen at times of peak demand, such as long summer weekends, he said.
They're clearly taking advantage of a disruption or shortage in the supply, he told the newspaper. Although prices are dropping, Liu called the law a protection measure for the next time a market change sends prices soaring.
But James Calvin, president of the New York Association of Convenience Stores (NYACS), argued that the bill was unnecessary because retailers virtually never raise their prices more than once a day. The exception came last summer, when wholesalers raised prices three times in one day. Without the flexibility to react, retailers wouldn't have had enough money to replenish their supply, he said.
Calvin added that New York state already prohibits station owners from raising prices above a certain level in times of emergencies, and that Attorney General Eliot Spitzer prosecuted many of them last year.
While the mayor has signed 37 bills into law since Quinn took office in January, this was the first to pass over his veto, said the report. The Council vote of 43 to 6 mirrored the July vote. Bloomberg's veto reflects his hands-off philosophy when it comes to private enterprise. The city, I do not believe, should be engaged in telling businesses how to run or price their product, he said in July. It remains to be seen whether he will direct the Department of Consumer Affairs to enforce the law, the report added.
According to a separate report in the New York Sun, the mayor said in his July veto statement that existing city rules adequately guard against fuel price gauging.
The bill is not just bad for businesses, NYACS told the Sun, but it could ultimately hurt consumers by encouraging panic buying during crises like Hurricane Katrina, when costs rise on the retailer's end. The bill, to us, is pointless, Calvin told the paper. To tell businesses at the retail level that they can't respond to changes in wholesale prices that are beyond their control seems to me to be silly.
He speculated that legislators are responding to political pressure from constituents angry at high prices at the pump. The council needs to do what they need to do in order to create the illusion that they're doing something about gas prices, he said.
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