On NY TUrf.com Wrote:
“Intro. No. 663-A amends existing law to mandate community service in a graffiti cleanup program as the minimum penalty for getting caught. Another bill announces a new possession ban, making it illegal for anyone under 21 to carry spray paint, inks, or other graffiti supplies on public property.

Those first two mostly extend current laws, but the third moves the city’s law in a new and disturbing direction. Intro No. 299-A requires owners of commercial and residential buildings to remove graffiti from their property within 60 days of its appearance, or face fines. We’ve seen this kind of thing elsewhere in the country, but to my knowledge this is the first mandated-buff law in NYC.

NY TIMES: Students, supported by designer Ecko, plan graffiti lawsuit
By ADAM GOLDMAN
Associated Press Writer

April 24, 2006, 3:32 PM EDT

NEW YORK — A group of students, supported by the fashion designer Marc Ecko, says it is preparing a lawsuit against Mayor Michael Bloomberg, claiming the city’s anti-graffiti legislation is unconstitutional.
In the suit, seven high school and college students will ask a federal judge to prevent the city and New York Police Department from enforcing anti-graffiti laws that went into effect Jan. 1.
The federal lawsuit also takes aim at City Council member Peter F. Vallone Jr. and New York City.
The students’ lawyer, Daniel Perez, said he’ll file the suit Tuesday in Manhattan federal court.
Ecko, the chief creative officer and founder of Marc Ecko Enterprises Inc., said the city’s laws were “overly broad” and were designed to pre-emptively censor artists. Ecko declined to say if he was footing the students’ legal bill.
Perez said Vallone amended the city’s anti-graffiti laws last year, making them unacceptable and illegal. Bloomberg signed them into law.
The previous legislation said a person under the age of 18 could not purchase graffiti tools but could possess them. The amended laws stipulate that anyone under age 21 cannot possess or buy graffiti instruments such as aerosol spray paint, broad-tipped indelible markers and etching acid.
The students Perez represents are ages 16 to 20.
Vallone said the suit was a publicity stunt meant to enrich Ecko.
“We have to look at the motive of this suit,” he said. “It’s about corporate profits.”
Vallone said he was confident that the courts will uphold his legislation. “Someone’s First Amendment right to express themselves ends where someone else’s property begins,” the Queens councilman asserted.
Perez denied anybody was interested in profiting from the lawsuit. He said the students contacted Ecko, whose company generated $1 billion in retail sales in 2004.
“This is not about money,” Perez said. “Nobody is asking for compensation.”
Ecko also said he was not trying to make money off the lawsuit and took issue with Vallone’s comments.
“The fact that I have a successful business and that’s thrown back in my face, I find that offensive,” Ecko said in a telephone interview.
Perez successfully represented Ecko in a 2005 federal lawsuit. In that case, the city tried to block an exhibition in which artists planned to spray paint graffiti on models of subway cars.
A federal judge ruled against the city, saying the city’s denial of a permit was a flagrant violation of the First Amendment’s free-speech protection.
Gabriel Taussig, chief of the city’s Administrative Law Division, defended the legislation.
“The law strikes a proper Constitutional balance between First Amendment rights and the need to control the long-standing plague of graffiti,” Taussig said in a statement.
The New York City Council has passed three new anti-graffiti bills which Bloomberg is no doubt itching to sign into law. Intro. No. 663-A amends existing law to mandate community service in a graffiti cleanup program as the minimum penalty for getting caught. Another bill announces a new “possesion ban,” making it illegal for anyone under 21 to carry spray paint, inks, or other graffiti supplies on public property.

Those first two mostly extend current laws, but the third moves the city’s law in a new and disturbing direction. Intro No. 299-A requires owners of commercial and residential buildings to remove graffiti from their property within 60 days of its appearance, or face fines. We’ve seen this kind of thing elsewhere in the country, but to my knowledge this is the first mandated-buff law in NYC. Just reading the text of the bill, you can tell that at least some councilmembers had serious objections on free speech and property rights grounds:

[I]t is important that graffiti in public view be cleaned as quickly as possible, while respecting property rights and First Amendment free speech rights.The goal of this legislation is to. . . addresses the need to rid our communities of graffiti as well as protect our important freedoms.

Right. It’ll be interesting to see how this new law is enforced. These kinds of regulations are regularly included in zoning rules in small cities or suburban towns — New York’s size and the prevalence of absentee landlords who barely provide heat for their tenants should probably make implementation much more difficult.

Photo at top: “Epitaph” by Lee Quinones, from Martha Cooper & Henry Chalfant’s book Subway Art.

By Visual Resistance http://www.visualresistance.org/wordpress/