Companies accused of illegal idling through the city's Citizens Air Complaint Program will be able to access the video evidence of their alleged violation via an online portal starting on Thursday — a new level of transparency that city officials hope will reduce the number of idlers who fight the tickets.
Citizen idling complaints have exploded in recent years, with more than 100,000 tickets issued so far this year to commercial idlers through the program. Each complaint, which nets the complainant a small bounty if the violator is found guilty, must include video evidence of the alleged violation.
Companies often challenge the violations, resulting in a lengthy trial process. The Department of Environmental Protection hopes that making the video evidence readily available will reduce the number of trials.
"Until now, if you received an idling violation, the only way for you to get hold of the actual video evidence was to file a Freedom of Information Law request," DEP Commissioner Rohit Aggarwala told Streetsblog. “We’ve created a website ... that will allow anybody who receives a ticket just to go to a website, and download the video that is the evidence against them."
The new online portal will turn "a long, tedious process involving a lot of work on the defendant side and a lot of work on DEP side into what is basically a self service," Aggarwala said.
"If there's a very clear video that shows you're guilty, we are hoping that a higher percentage of them will just go ahead and plead guilty and get the paperwork done without waiting for a hearing."
Bureaucratic challenges to obtaining video evidence were among the issues raised by industry reps at a City Council hearing in September regarding the citizen complaint program.
Supporters of citizen enforcement also celebrated the new video portal — but called on Mayor Adams to juice the program with more funding to speed up the trial hearing process, which typically takes well over a year.
There are "tens of thousands" of hearing scheduled over 450 days after the date of the initial complaint — a delay that hurts violators and complainants alike — according to numbers crunched by the New York Clean Air Collective.
"While we applaud DEP making it easier for polluting companies to see the evidence of their illegal idling — so they can quickly change their deadly behavior — Mayor Adams has left DEP without adequate resources to issue idling summonses in a timely fashion," the anti-idling group said in a statement.
"The anti-idling program pays for itself, and there is no good reason that DEP typically 1) issues idling summonses months after citizens submit complaints and 2) sets hearing dates more than a year afterwards," the group said. "That is unfair to companies getting the tickets and to the public; we all benefit when our City promptly corrects illegal air pollution."
Idling complainants currently receive a 25-percent bounty on any violations they submit that lead to a conviction. Two proposals at the City Council would, separately, cut the bounty to 12.5 percent and 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.
Discussions over those bills are ongoing, Aggarwala said.
Companies accused of illegal idling can access new portal via the Citizens Air Complaint Program webpage.
