NYC Council Dems to let Mayor Eric Adams' Bally's casino veto stand, but plan fight on unlicensed vending

Chris Sommerfeldt, New York Daily News on Aug 5, 2025

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NEW YORK — City Council Democrats are planning to override Mayor Eric Adams’ veto of a bill that’d decriminalize unlicensed street vending — but they’re likely to let stand another veto he recently issued that relates to a proposal for building a Bally’s casino in the Bronx, according to multiple sources familiar with the matter.

The Council Dems staked out the split plan during a private conference meeting Monday, the sources told the Daily News, speaking on condition of anonymity.

In the meeting, the sources said Council Democrats, including Speaker Adrienne Adams, agreed to try to override the mayor’s veto of a bill they passed recently that would make it so that unlicensed vending of food and other products is subject to civil fines, as opposed to criminal summonses, as is currently the case.

Council Democrats and other supporters have argued it’s important to decriminalize such violations at a time President Donald Trump’s administration is pursuing an aggressive crackdown on undocumented immigrants in New York. Many street vendors are immigrants, and Council Dems have argued subjecting them to criminal summonses for violations could make them easier targets of the Trump administration’s deportation efforts.

The mayor, who has faced accusations of being beholden to Trump since the president’s Justice Department dismissed his corruption indictment, argues it would pose a public safety risk to prevent NYPD officers from being able to write criminal summonses for some forms of unlicensed vending.

It wasn’t immediately clear exactly how soon the Council could vote on overriding the street vendor bill veto, but sources said it’s likely going to take place later this month. In order to successfully override a mayoral veto, two thirds of the Council’s 51 members must support it.

Spokespeople for the mayor didn’t immediately return a request for comment late Monday.

On the Bronx casino front, the sources said Council Democrats agreed in the meeting there’s too little time and too little political willpower in the lawmaking body to override the mayor’s recent veto.

Benjamin Fang-Estrada, a spokesman for Speaker Adams, wouldn’t discuss the internal conversations on the matter. In a statement, he said: “If the mayor wants to do the casino applicant’s work for them and carry their water with all his conflicts of interest, that’s his decision.”

Adams issued that veto last week, too, undoing a decision by the Council to deny Bally’s, a gambling operator, a key land use permit it would need to be in contention for getting a license from the state to build a casino in the Bronx’s Ferry Point Park.

The mayor issued the veto because he said Bally’s — which two of his close political advisers have done lobbying and consulting work for — deserves to stay in contention for a potential casino license as the state continues to mull which bidder to award the lucrative permit to.

Had the mayor not vetoed the Council’s decision, the Bally’s casino bid would have been dead on the vine.

The Council condemned the casino veto after it happened. However, its Democratic members agreed in Monday’s meeting that trying to override it would be too complicated, the sources said.

That’s, in part, because the Council would have to pull off an override on the Bally’s matter by early next week due to rules that set a tighter timeline for objecting to mayoral vetoes on land use matters.

The sources told The News that Democratic leaders in the Council conceded in the meeting it would be difficult to get two thirds of the lawmaking body’s members to coalesce around such a push in just a few days, especially this time of the year, when many are vacationing.

“There’s little appetite to go into a big fight for something where the state ultimately has the final decision-making power,” one source said.

Before this summer, the mayor had already in his first term vetoed three other Council legislative packages, including a measure placing more reporting requirements on NYPD officers. In each of those cases, the Council overrode his vetoes.