Mamdani will offer compensation to horse carriage owners

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani said that his administration would pursue offering compensation for workers in the horse carriage industry as the city moves to ban the use of horse-drawn carriages in Central Park. 

“We want it to be real and tangible,” Mamdani said at an unrelated press conference in Sunset Park. 

While he noted that conversations are ongoing about what form the compensation would ultimately take, the mayor’s confirmation that this was something he’d pursue offered some insight on how the Mamdani administration will address the economic fallout from ending the industry for the roughly 200 carriage owners, drivers and stablehands who depend on it. 

This has been a major area of concern voiced by these workers after the New York City Council decisively passed legislation last week that would ban the use of horse-drawn carriages citywide starting in June 2028. 

The bill, which was renamed Romanch’s Law in honor of the 18-year-old tourist who died jumping from an out-of-control horse carriage this summer, was recently amended to include additional labor safeguards under a deal struck by Mamdani and City Council Speaker Julie Menin. The update requires the Mamdani administration to create a workforce transition program by April 2027 to help those in the industry find and transition into new jobs. Notably, it also instructed the mayor to “consider” a program to compensate horse-drawn cab owners for the value of their business, license and equipment. 

Opponents, including the powerful Transport Workers Union International, have railed against the legislation, arguing that the labor protection components offer few concrete details on what would become of the industry workers who would soon find their jobs eliminated. The use of the word “consider” in reference to compensation has drawn outright alarm. 

“There’s nothing concrete written into the bill. There’s no guarantee of compensation for individuals, business owners, that invested their life savings into horses and medallions,” TWU International President John Samuelsen told City & State in an interview earlier this month. “There’s nothing – there’s garbage in the bill.” 

Samuelsen has said he intends to file a lawsuit to block the bill. 

On Tuesday, Mamdani again emphasized his commitment to protecting workers. 

“Our preference throughout all of the conversations was how to sunset this industry while protecting the livelihoods of all the workers who have built their lives around this industry,” Mamdani said when asked whether he’d wanted the legislation to leave it to his administration to actually craft the plan.  “That is what a lot of the focus is of our internal facing conversations.”