New York’s city council has some strange "progressive" priorities...

Progressive Values in Action?

by Seth Barron

If these bills are exemplary of the city council’s progressive values in action, New Yorkers should brace themselves for a steady stream of meddlesome intrusions into their private, professional, and recreational lives over the next four years.

At her January inauguration, New York city council speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito told her colleagues, “Now is the time to embrace our progressive moment and put our values into action.” 

One of the Democrat-dominated council’s first acts was to override former mayor Michael Bloomberg’s vetoes of bills from previous sessions. 

Then the 51-member legislative body got down to business: 

• regulating the minutiae of New Yorkers’ lives, 
• empowering city agencies to enter private property at will, and 
• setting up task forces to study leisure activities.

At its semi-weekly “stated” meeting—where members pass bills and introduce new legislation—the council directed the Department of Health to develop a registry of convicted animal abusers, along the lines of the sex-offender registries that all states maintain. 

The registry would ensure that animal abusers cannot own animals for at least five years following their conviction or incarceration. 

Abusers will have to submit to annual reviews of their living situations, and pet stores and animal shelters will need to check the registry before selling an animal. 

Preventing animal abuse is a laudable goal, but the new law suffers from several deficiencies. 

For one thing, the Department of Health opposed its passage. The DOH has no enforcement capability or experience in monitoring criminals.

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Read more: www.city-journal.org