Council: Rowdy Sports Fans Could Face Up to Year in Jail

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The New York Sun

The City Council yesterday passed a bill to curb disruptive behavior at major city sporting events. Rowdy sports fans could face up to a year in jail if they throw objects onto the playing surface at a venue that seats at least 5,000 fans.


In a busy day at City Hall, lawmakers also voted to limit a property-tax hike for city residents and to stiffen the penalty for defacing religious property.


The sporting-event bill would broaden what is already the toughest such law in the country. Throwing debris onto the playing surface or spitting at a player would be a crime, rather than a violation, punishable by up to a year in jail and a $25,000 fine. The new legislation amends an earlier bill that increased penalties for running onto the field.


The bill was spurred by the chairman of the council’s Public Safety Committee, Peter Vallone Jr., who said it occurred to him as he sat with Mayor Bloomberg in the front row at Yankee Stadium in 2004, ducking debris fans were hurling at the field. In a now infamous play, umpires had ruled Alex Rodriguez out for slapping the ball out of a fielder’s hand on his way to first base during Game 6 of the Yankees’ playoff series against the Red Sox.


“It was a scary moment, and the need for greater penalties became obvious,” Mr. Vallone said. “Real fans and families should not be endangered by drunken idiots.”


A spokesman for the mayor’s office said Mr. Bloomberg supported the bill.


In another public-safety bill, the council voted to increase the civil fine – to $25,000 from $10,000 – for vandalizing religious property. The civil fines would be added to any criminal punishment, which already includes up to a year in jail. The bill comes amid statistics showing an increase in religious vandalism, particularly against synagogues and Jewish community institutions.


Lawmakers also passed adjustments to the property-tax rate which will save city residents a total of $203 million by capping annual state-mandated property-tax hikes due to changes in market value.


“Homeowners and co-op owners have been overly burdened” by rising real estate values, the chairman of the council’s finance committee, David Weprin, said. The adjusted property-tax rate will save single-family homeowners $82, owners of large condos $213,and renters $67 a year. The owner of a Manhattan office building, on the other hand, will pay nearly $170,000 more in taxes.


Although many council members hailed the bill as necessary aid for city residents, a few said it was an insufficient stopgap that ignored the much larger problem of an escalating tax burden. “This wasn’t property-tax reform today,” the chamber’s minority leader, James Oddo, said. Mr. Oddo, a Republican of Staten Island, said he voted against the adjusted rate to protest what he said was the city’s exorbitant spending that created constant budget shortfalls and the need for high property taxes. “This body always sees it as a revenue issue. It’s a spending issue. We spend too much.”


The City Council also passed a bill yesterday that will allow unions to donate more money to candidates as long as they meet certain criteria. The bill will count local affiliates of larger entities, like unions, as separate organizations and make it legal for each to donate the maximum amount under the law.


The New York Sun

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