Thursday’s Headlines: Veto Oh No Edition

Mayor Adams has gone so far to the right in his quest to retain his office that he's not even listening to his own damn self.

On Wednesday — as our Instacart-watcher Sophia Lebowitz previewed a day earlier — the supposed champion of working people vetoed a Council bill that sought to ensure that grocery delivery workers make the same city-mandated minimum wage as restaurant delivery workers.

The mayor's flip-flop is outrageous. As Lebowitz previously reported, he said in 2022 that he favored “expanding minimum labor standards to more app-based delivery workers" — also known as closing the so-called "Instacart loophole" that lets big tech giants avoid paying supermarket workers the city mandated delivery worker minimum wage.

That bill, Intro 1135, was on his desk, and he symbolically scrawled four letters across it. Worse, he did it as delivery workers risked their lives in last night's torrential downpour to bring food to the warm and wealthy, as several workers pointed out:

Outrage was not limited to underpaid, badly treated workers:

"Mayor Eric Adams Sides with Corporate Lobby Groups, Ignoring Underpaid Delivery Workers’ Demands," ran the headline on the National Employment Law Project website.

"Mayor Adams’s veto is a step backwards for worker protections in our city," said the bill's sponsor, Council Member Sandy Nurse (D-Brooklyn). "This legislation simply asked that grocery delivery workers, many of whom are immigrant New Yorkers, be paid a living wage. That should be the bare minimum in our city.

“The mayor has aligned himself with Instacart, a multi-billion-dollar company that refuses to pay their workers fairly and instead is spending countless dollars on lobbyists and ads to spread lies," she added, vowing that the Council will override the veto, which could happen as early as today.

The Daily News, Gothamist and the Post also covered.

In other news:

• Speaking of Mayor Adams's veto, we actually liked DOT Commissioner Ydanis Rodriguez's op-ed in the Daily News about how the app companies have made roadways less safe. Too bad he didn't show the column to his boss before he vetoed the bill to rein in the tech giants.
• The old man who killed two people and himself by driving recklessly on an Astoria street was told by his doctor not to drive. Wouldn't it be nice if we had a department, perhaps a department of motor vehicles or one of police, that could prevent dangerous drivers from getting behind the wheel? (amNY)
• Proof! As Streetsblog has been saying for more than a year, the decision by the City Council and the Adams administration to eliminate full-year outdoor dining has caused real suffering, as one restaurateur said in this New York Times story about our struggling jobs numbers.

• President Trump's takeover of Washington, D.C. is awful in so many ways — not the least of which is the authoritarianism and the restriction on public movement that will result — but it's also a reminder of the thinking process of people who drive or are driven around our "dirty," "ugly," "crime-ridden" cities which are not actually dirty, ugly or crime-ridden. This 1973 essay by the great philosopher André Gorz is a reminder of that. (Uneven Earth)
• Take that, Moynihan Station — Grand Central Madison has seats. (NY Post)
• Gothamist and Streetsblog covered the greenways master plan, which establishes what the next mayor could do.
• The Atlantic Yards boondoggle is the gift that keeps on giving ... to reporters, at least. (Gothamist)
• Is the fare fair? Here's your chance to grouse. (NYDN)
• The annual bus festival is here. (amNY)
• And, finally, the New York Times Metro desk continues its embarrassing coverage of the mayoral race: