More than a year after the City Council overrode Mayor Bloomberg’s veto of the Prevailing Wage Law, a judge has supported his administration’s legal challenge to the law and struck it down. The law required landlords of whom the city was a major tenant, and businesses that received city benefits, to pay higher wages to their janitors, security guards, and other low-wage employees. State Judge Geoffrey Wright ruled that while it “could benefit the people of New York,” it effectively raised the minimum wage for some businesses and was therefore preempted by state law. The ruling comes just after the mayor vetoed a separate pair of bills (to create an NYPD monitor and make it easier to sue the department) in the face of an imminent Council override. He hasn’t threatened to challenge those in court, however, not that he’d be in office to see the case through.
