(NEW) New York City laws 2020

1. Plastic bag ban: Starting March 1, no store in New York State will be allowed to give their customers a single-use plastic "carryout" bag to carry their purchases in, unless that customer receives public assistance. Shops in the five boroughs will also have to charge patrons five cents for every paper bag they take. These strictures won't apply to restaurants and pharmacies, or to the handle-less plastic pouches used to hold meat, greens or bulk items, or to shopping bags used to hold clothes. Every other kind of establishment collecting sales taxes should stock up on reusable totes.

2. Marijuana testing: Beginning May 10, a city statute will forbid businesses, nonprofits and government agencies from obligating job applicants to undergo a test for cannabis use. The regulation carves out construction workers, commercial drivers and the health and childcare fields, as well as any federal contractor that Washington, D.C. mandates to screen prospective employees for weed.

3. Zoned carting: The bill passed last month will cut New York City up into 20 slices of turf served by three private carting companies each, but not until 2021. Next year, however, the crucial bidding process to get those 60 coveted slots, plus five more handling containerized commercial refuse, will begin and end in 2020. Since the program will radically transform the sanitation industry, companies in the field will want to watch for the city request-for-proposal.

4. Cash bail: Beginning in January, the Empire State will ban cash bail for misdemeanors and nonviolent felonies, with a few exceptions—sex offenses, domestic abuse cases, witness tampering and conspiracy to commit murder among them. Estimates suggest this could set free more than 40% of New York City's pretrial detention population. While this will almost certainly negatively impact the bail bonds industry, other businesses will benefit from not having their employees incarcerated.

5. Discrimination and harassment: Albany also passed a slew of reforms making it easier for workers to sue their employers for various kinds of mistreatment. Harassment as described in the state Human Rights Law no longer must be "severe and pervasive" to be legally actionable, nor will employees have to demonstrate they were treated worse than a coworker. Already, employers may no longer take shelter in the assertion that they established structures to correct a hostile work environment, and that the complainant failed to avail themselves of the solutions. And, beginning February, the broader Human Rights statute will apply to all employers—not just those with four people on payroll or more, as was previously the case. Further, as of August of next year, the statute of limitations for sexual harassment claims will stretch from one year to three years.

PROPOSALS TO WATCH FOR:

1. Paid vacation: While running for president, Mayor Bill de Blasio made a massive push to obligate all firms with five employees or more to provide 10 paid days off, in addition to the current five-day sick leave requirement. Business owners, particularly in the hospital sector, fear this mandate will increase both administrative and payroll costs, and even force them to close their doors. An aggressive pushback campaign appears to have stalled the proposal for now. De Blasio announced his support for this initiative in his State of the City address last January. Business owners are advised to tune in to see if it resurfaces in his speech next year.

2. Homeless set-aside: For more than a year, Bronx Councilman Rafael Salamanca has hawked legislation that would set aside 15% of apartments in subsidized housing developments for the homeless. But de Blasio resisted the proposal, despite several embarrassing brushes with its advocates. Last month, however, Council Speaker Corey Johnson unexpectedly endorsed Salamanca's proposal, and vowed that it "will move." And the mayor no longer seems interested in standing in its way, despite the complications it could bring for below-market apartment builders.

3. Hotel heartbreak: With both de Blasio and Johnson on their side, the Hotel Trades Council union has the keys to the city—and their imprimatur could be crucial to unlocking the doors to any new overnight lodgings. The administration wants to require a special permit for any new hotel project, forcing the new construction through the onerous Uniform Land Use Review Procedure, and essentially granting the local council member unilateral veto power over any such development. This would make transient lodgings more heavily regulated than petrochemical storage facilities and pornography stores, which can at least open as-of-right in particular areas. Hotel builders are hardly thrilled with the idea, but established players in the industry argue such restrictions are necessary to keep their operations afloat in the event of a recession. It's worth noting that these incumbent hotels are already unionized, and enjoy a mutually beneficial relationship with the union. HTC, for its part, is a major donor to many if not most of the council's members.

4. Food fights: The City Council's Committee on Small Business held a hearing this summer on the fees companies like Grubhub, DoorDash and Seamless impose on restaurants for every order. The hospitality industry has long complained that they lose money on their transactions with the apps, but feel they have no choice to participate in them. Legislation on the matter is in the offing, and the resulting struggle could pit mom-and-pop eateries against tech behemoths—and give city politicians the rare chance to claim they are doing something to uplift little proprietors.

5. Street vendor reform: The recent cuffing of two churro merchants has again brought the ever-contentious issue of food permits to the fore. Activists have lifted the women up as case studies for the problems that thousands of sidewalk hawkers operating under a deeply broken licensing system even though the two women aren't actually affected by these rules because they operated in the subways. Unlike those who illegally sell sweet treats in the train system, the thousands of vendors who sell everything from coffee to halal meals above ground have for years had to fight for Department of Health permits. Queens-based cartels control nearly all these priceless placards, which they renew every two years for $200—and then illicitly rent them for tens of thousands of dollars. Brick-and-mortar restaurant owners have beaten back repeated council efforts to liberalize this regime, since they view the food wagons as rivals for customer dollars and polluters of public space. Recently, Queens state Sen. Jessica Ramos has proposed overriding city restrictions with a bill forbidding any municipality from capping the number of street merchants. This legislation may never become law, but it may spur some action on the issue from the council.