New York City's once-negligible enforcement against vehicle idling will likely top 100,000 violations this year thanks to citizen reporting — but a proposal in the City Council could diminish it by giving the city broad powers to disqualify members of the public from submitting complaints.
Intro 941 would make sweeping changes to city's Citizens Air Complaint Program — reducing violations for vehicles with "anti-idling technology," permitting school bus idling up to 15 minutes, halving the bounty citizens receive from each violation they submit and allowing the city to disqualify participants in violation of an as-yet-unwritten "code of conduct."
The bill – drafted by Queens Council Member James Gennaro in consultation with the Department of Environmental Protection — would empower DEP ban anyone who violates rules that require participants "conduct themselves in a dignified, orderly and decorous manner" and prohibit "false, altered and misleading evidence." DEP would write the rules itself, effectively having the power to ban members of the public from filing complaints over simple mistakes.
Other provisions in the bill would:
- Specify that commercial trucks can idle for just three minutes every hour, making existing policy explicit that violators can receive multiple tickets in a day for the same offense at the same location;
- Allow school buses to idling “for up to 15 minutes in a 60-minute period to provide heating or air conditioning when it’s below 40 degrees or above 80 degrees";
- Cut fines by 50 percent if the violator installs "anti-idling technology," which automatically shuts off a vehicle's engine after three minutes;
- Require members of the public to submit complaints within five days of the violations — no deadline currently exists — while doubling the time DEP has to issue a notice of violation from 45 to 90 days;
- Reduce the "bounty" complainants receive for submissions that lead to violations by 50 percent of the fine paid by the violator — to 12.5 percent for tickets prosecuted by DEP and 25 percent for tickets "self-prosecuted" by complainants.
DEP officials contend the legislation merely tweaks a program that has ballooned from a few thousand to over 100,000 complaints in only a few years.
Gennaro's office did not return multiple email requests for comment. Approached at City Hall on Thursday for an interview, the Council member declined an interview and referred Streetsblog to his communications staff before a City Hall security guard escorted our reporter out of the building.
The City Council will host a hearing on the proposal next Wednesday, Sept. 18. A separate bill, Intro 291, from Council Member Julie Menin of Manhattan would increase fines for violators from a minimum of $350 and maximum of $2,000 to a range of $1,000-$2,000 for the first offense, $2,000-$4,000 for the second offense and $3,000 to $6,000 for the third offense.
The Adams administration supports Menin's bill — but wants the bounty limited as part of any fine increase, DEP Commissioner Rohit Aggarwala said. That could happen by reducing the percentage or setting a maximum payout.
"Given that you've got some of the enforcers who talk about making between $150,000 and $250,000 a year from this, I'm not convinced that we need somebody to be able to make a million dollars a year through idling fines," Aggarwala told Streetsblog. "It’s not the administration's intention to reduce what enforcers can make currently, but we do think that it is necessary to create a reasonable cap on that to enable the fines to be increased appropriately."
But Intro 941's combination of reduced bounties and fines, increased permissiveness towards school bus idling and vehicles equipped with so-called "anti-idling technology," stricter submission guidelines and harsh approach to complainant behavior will "gravely threaten" the program, according to opponents.
"The choice is clear: Reject this bill or watch while companies like Con Ed, Verizon, and Amazon steal New York’s breath, one idling engine at a time," the New York Clean Air Collective wrote in a memo detailing its opposition.
DEP frames the 15-minute exemption for school bus idling as a response to rulings by city administrative trial judges dismissing many complaints because the current law allows for maintaining "appropriate temperatures for passenger comfort" and another city rule that requires school bus drivers run their air conditioning for medically vulnerable students.
Intro 941's opponents argue that judges can determine on a case-by-case basis whether a bus has a right to idle — and that increased emissions from the proposed 15-minute rule will harm the health of the vulnerable children DEP claims to want to protect. Submissions against five major school bus operators have an extremely low (4 percent) dismissal rate, they noted — undermining DEP's claim.
Anti-idling technology, meanwhile, doesn't actually prevent idling, according to Intro 941 opponents, since drivers can easily "switch off" the tech to run their engines longer than the maximum three minutes allowed by the law.
DEP still thinks the tech merits a fine reduction, arguing that leveraging idling violations to increase its use will inevitably lead to fewer emissions.
“The technologies that we are enthusiastic about are ones that are an aftermarket retrofit, that can be installed in an existing truck, that literally after a certain amount of time shuts off the engine, and therefore requires the driver to go ahead and restart the engine in order to keep idling," Aggarwala said. "Of course, what could happen? It malfunctions. It's uninstalled. It's disabled in some way. If the truck keeps idling, it'll still be liable for a fine."
Code of conduct — or cone of silence?
Anti-idling enforcers — affectionately dubbed "Narc Yorkers" by the Daily Show — worry that DEP's push for the power to set rules and a code of conduct will discourage members of the public from submitting complaints.
DEP has been at loggerheads with the most-prolific citizen complainants, filing charges against several individuals allegedly filing "false or misleading" complaints, Curbed reported last week. The city's Office of Administrative and Trial Hearings has dismissed most of those prosecutions — some of them over mere clerical errors — which have nevertheless cost defendants thousands of dollars in legal fees, according to NY Clean Air Collective.
By empowering DEP to create its own rules, the Council will "surrender" its legislative power to the whims of City Hall, according to opponents. The vague requirement that members of the public maintain "decorous" behavior "weaponizes rules that chill participation with threats of arbitrary retribution, scares citizens into silence and makes participants afraid to even engage with DEP by transforming public critique into a punishable offense," the group said.
Innocent mistakes by new participants may result in "unfair" penalties under the proposed rules, they warned.
But Aggarwala insisted the agency simply wants an official process whereby it can hold accountable "a very small number of people who ... have behaved in highly inappropriate ways to DEP and OATH staff member," he said.
"The citizen enforcers really have to be at a behavior standard of somebody who is acting on behalf of the government," Aggarwala added. "This is not just some right — this is about taking people and making them deputies of the government with law enforcement powers.
"Our staff deal with a lot, and especially when you've got people who are bragging about making $150,000 or $200,000 a year," he continued. "Our air noise inspectors make $50,000 to $60,000 a year. For them to get abused by some of these people because their checks aren't written quickly enough is, frankly, intolerable."
Idling enforcers, who often wait up to two years to receive their "bounties," believe that giving DEP power to disqualify individuals from submitting complaints amounts to a violation of their First Amendment rights.
The city should instead focus on staffing up to meet the increased demand and expand the program and anti-idling enforcement generally, they contend.
"By pushing Intro 941, the Adams Administration is siding with trucking companies and against the First Amendment," NY Clean Air Collective said in a statement. "The Council should stop wasting time on dangerous bills like Intro 941 and instead pass the widely popular, common-sense bills that actually protect our health and environment."
Citizen idling enforcers must submit time-stamped video evidence for each alleged idling violation. Clips must show an engine run non-stop for 3 minutes and one second, or one minute adjacent to schools or parks. Intro 941 would require videos last over 15 minutes for alleged school bus idling violations.
Because idling fines go into the city's general fund, the money has not gone back to DEP to enhance its capacity to handle the surge in complaints. That means agents who could be on the street enforcing air and noise quality statutes are stuck behind desks reviewing citizen submissions, Aggarwala said.
"The reality is that because we need our air and noise enforcers to review each and every one of these videos, that means this program has led to a decline in the amount of time that we can send our air and noise inspectors out into the field," he told Streetsblog.
Yet despite the "war" between idling enforcers and the city, as Curbed dubbed it, Aggarwala insisted he remains committed to citizen enforcement. DEP would just prefer to leverage the tickets to win officials commitments to reduce idling, as it has by exempting corporations that have pledged to electrify their fleets, he said.
“The value that this program creates is it helps us enforce against a behavior that is very difficult to enforce against. No matter how many inspectors we hire, we are never going to hire as many as we have, potential civilian enforcers," Aggarwala said. "The rapid uptick in the number of fines being issued demonstrates there's some real value to it."
"However, this program needs to be seen not as an end in and of itself, but it needs to be part of an overall strategy that reduces idling. I tend to think that we will have a better long term impact through mechanical fixes, either through vehicle electrification, which eliminates the need for idling, or through after-market anti-idling devices that make it far more likely that a truck will not idle."
