A great victory for the future of animals in our world. They will stay in our biggest city, where they are safe, loved and well cared for. The carriage trade will continue as a successful, iconic and independent industry.
The Teamsters Union announced today that they can no longer support the horse carriage bill currently before the New York City Council. Minutes later, the mayor announced that his bill will be withdrawn, and would not be voted on as scheduled. The bill is dead.
It was an enormous victory for the horses and the carriage trade and for the idea that animals can remain safely and productively in our everyday lives, even in densely-populated urban areas.
The mayor ran for the hills in the face of ferocious opposition, his cruel and unjustifiable campaign against the carriage trade a disaster. In a statement that had to be humiliating for him, the mayor said the bill was predicated on the agreement of all parties, including the Teamsters, and if they withdrew their support, the bill would also be withdrawn.
It seems that the carriage horses are the most powerful and admired political entities in the city. This is a devastating, and perhaps final blow to the mayor’s overreaching crusade to remove the horses from the city.
“This chapter is closed,” a labor official very close to the negotiations told me this morning. Another great victory for the horses, for the environment, for the carriage horses, and for the true rights of the carriage drivers and the horses. “There will be no bill.” Just a few minutes later, the Wall Street Journal confirmed that the bill would not be voted on as scheduled.
A city council member told me this morning that the reports were true. “The bill is dead…,” he said. At the last minute, the mayor ‘s office had tied a 30 per cent pay raise for council members to the carriage bill, further raising the appearance of impropriety, to put it mildly.
They never consulted the pedicab drivers, who would have lost hundreds of jobs, the Central Park Conservancy, which has rebuilt the beautiful park, or any of the five community boards whose approval must be sought. And the mayor has refused to meet, speak with, or negotiate with anyone in the carriage trade since he took office and vowed to ban the carriage horses as his “number one” priority.
“I can tell you something,” the city council member said, “we are done diddling around with the mayor on the carriage horses. He has a big problem with this issue, and he will have to deal with it himself. We are not in the business of putting people out of work for no reason and killing animals for no reason.”
The mayor received significant amounts of money in his mayoral campaign from animal rights organizations seeking a carriage horse ban, especially NYClass, founded by a real estate developer named Steven Nislick.
It is widely believed that the mayor is trying to repay what is essentially a campaign debt, since he has never ridden a horse, taken a ride in a carriage, talked to a carriage driver, or visited the carriage stables.
The city has offered no evidence of any kind that there is a legitimate government interest in banning the horses, or that the horses have been abused or mistreated. The failure of the mayor’s bill has been labeled one of the worst debacles in the political history of New York. The mayor says he wants to do it again.
The bill would have crippled and almost certainly ruined the carriage trade by sharply cutting back on the number of horses, their hours, and their territory and force the carriage owners to sell and close their stables without any place nearly ready for them to move into. Good government advocates were furious at the idea that taxpayers should pay $25 million for a private industry to be housed in the middle of Central Park, the most precious park land in the city.
The Teamsters Union, which represents the carriage trade, initially agreed in principle to move the stables to Central Park, they believed that was the best way to ensure the survival of the carriage trade and save at least 68 jobs, their primary negotiating goal, against a powerful mayor determined – truthfully, obsessed – with removing the horses and the carriage trade from the city.
I think the Native-Americans are right. The horses have a lot of magic in them, they have been talking to me for two years now. They are not ready to leave us.
As the details of the legislation became clear, enormous opposition to the bill emerged from all across New York City – newspapers, community groups, pedicab advocates, organized labor, working people’s political parties, the Central Park Conservancy.
The only groups that supported the transparently hostile bill were the mayor, the very powerful Teamsters Union, and NYClass, the animal rights group that has spent millions of dollars in various ways to destroy the carriage trade in New York and ban the horses from any kind of work or life in the city. Without the Teamsters, the mayor is right back where he started – nowhere.
A statement I received this morning said “the Teamsters’ first priority is always our members and their livelihoods. With the legislation now finalized, our members are not confident that it provides a viable future for their industry. We cannot support the horse carriage bill currently before the City Council.”
“We were led to believe there would be more negotiating,” said one source very close to the negotiations. “We thought it was a great deal to move the stables into the park and ensure their survival forever, and we were ready for further talks. But the mayor suddenly refused to negotiate further. He thought he had it all locked up. Once again, he is wrong.”
Although the cancellation of the vote is a great victory for the carriage trade, their future is still uncertain. It isn’t clear if the mayor will try this again, or how long the stables can hold out in the face of the skyrocketing real estate values on the West Side of Manhattan. The stables are not worth many millions of dollars. The city could broker a deal to keep them in the city, but it isn’t clear the mayor will lift a finger to do that.
Still, this is great news. The horses have called out to us to honor their long and glorious relationship with human beings, to respect and understand their true needs, to give them the most basic right a domesticated animal can have – to do good and humane work among us, and in our every day lives. That is the path for animals to survive in our world, and to enrich us with their presence.
Truth does matter, facts do count.