‘I think most of it is a political ploy,’ said Joe Germanotta, owner of an Italian restaurant in Manhattan and Lady Gaga’s dad.
To many of New York City’s struggling small business owners, Governor Andrew Cuomo’s recent admission that “we simply cannot stay closed” means little after months of stonewalling.
Ever since Cuomo announced the first pandemic lockdowns in March, small businesses in the city have been throttled by burdensome restrictions. Earlier this month, the state allowed restaurants to resume indoor dining at half-capacity, but left the city out of the equation. Thousands of businesses have closed over the past year, and New York City’s 12.1 percent unemployment rate in November was nearly double the national rate of 6.7 percent over the same period.
“I had always been under the premise that the governor wasn’t going to do anything until the election was over, because I think most of it is a political ploy,” Joe Germanotta, owner of Italian restaurant Joanne Trattoria on the Upper West side, told National Review.
During his annual address to the state last week, Cuomo said that New York cannot wait for the COVID-19 vaccine to hit “critical mass” before beginning to reopen the economy. “We will have nothing left to open. We must reopen the economy, but we must do it smartly and safely,” he said.
The comment, a change of tune for Cuomo that echoed the rhetoric of Republican governors in other states, was barely noted in the mainstream press — its only reference in the New York Times writeup of the speech was in a reaction quote from Senate minority leader and Republican Rob Ortt.
But for attorney Jim Mermigis, who has represented Germanotta — the father of pop star Lady Gaga, who performed at Joe Biden’s inauguration — and others in lawsuits against the state over draconian restrictions, Cuomo’s reversal means little so far.
“I don’t buy his comments, I don’t buy a statement, until I see him actively go up there on the podium in his press conference and say, ‘today we’re going to open up entertainment centers, today we’re going to open up indoor dining,’” Mermigis said. “I’m not buying anything that this man says, and all my clients are similarly frustrated.”
The Long Island attorney, profiled last month by the New Yorker, sees litigation as the last resort for his clients in an environment dominated by what they see as hypocritical and scientifically baseless restrictions.
Greg Hunt, owner of NYC-based Amsterdam Billiards, is reopening this week after he and 15 other New York pool halls successfully won a case that Mermigis brought against the state on their behalf. He told National Review that the lawsuit came only after Cuomo’s office ignored their repeated requests in August and September to revisit the rules — which allowed bowling alleys and casinos to open but not pool halls.
“We understand he’s busy and we understand that he’s probably getting a lot of these inquiries, but to not even respond to us we felt like we had no choice, except to sue him,” Hunt explained. “Because the other alternative was to just sit around and wait for God knows how many more months before his office decided to allow us to open.”
“I have no idea what goes on in Andrew Cuomo’s head, I mean I wouldn’t even start to guess,” Catherine Hall, who runs the Theater Center in central Manhattan and is also suing the state to reopen, told National Review.
Hall has not been allowed to host productions since the initial shutdown, even though she spent a Small Business Administration loan on costly air filters. A key part of her legal challenge points out that, while her theater remains closed, it is used every Sunday morning for a church service.
“It’s the same venue, the same air scrubbers, the same hand sanitizers, the same masks, the same distance — six feet apart, socially distant, separate from the stage,” she explained. “Everything’s exactly the same, the only difference is the content: one is a religious service, one is a theatrical production.”
Hall said that she hoped Cuomo meant what he said, and that her off-Broadway theater could be part of the initial spark that revives New York City’s entertainment industry.
“It’s really important to me to be able to start working again. It’s great that the government wants to give me money. I’ve never been on unemployment in my life, I’m 65 years old. I’ve always worked,” she stated. “I would rather the government say ‘here, you can open, we’re going to check to make sure you’re doing everything right, start paying people, start offering people entertainment, start paying rent so people can pay property taxes.’ I feel like if we’re allowed to open our businesses in tiny ways, the small businesses can start the economy going again.”
“I’m a bleeding heart liberal but I guess I sound like a libertarian right now,” Hall concluded.