About the Business Integrity Commission

The mission of the Business Integrity Commission (BIC) is to protect New York City consumers through regulation of the “trade waste” (or commercial waste) industry and the City’s public wholesale markets (e.g., Fulton Fish Market, Hunts Point Produce Market, Hunts Point Meat Market, etc.).

BIC Goals:

Industries remain free of organized crime and other forms of corruption and the violence, fraud, rackets, and threats that once plagued them,
Ensure that regulated businesses are able to compete fairly,
Customers receive equitable treatment, and
Regulated businesses do not present a harm to public safety and conduct their affairs with honesty and integrity.

The Commission:

The BIC Commissioner is chair of the Commission with members consisting of the Commissioners (or their designees) of the following agencies:

New York City Police Department
New York City Department of Investigation
New York City Department of Sanitation
New York City Department of Consumer and Worker Protection
New York City Department of Small Business Services.

The Commission meets several times a year to vote on:

Final determinations of the denial of applications for a license or registration
Any new BIC rule or rule amendment after the rulemaking (or CAPA) process is complete.

BIC History

Since the mid-1950's, New York City's private trade waste and wholesale market industries and their associated unions were heavily subject to the influence of corruption, primarily from organized crime.

Anti-competitive forces used a variety of tactics, some violent, to extort, control and drive out competition, and ultimately leave customers with no choices.

The trade waste industry was characterized by the "property rights" system, a mechanism for local county associations (typically run by a borough's dominant organized crime family) to dictate supply and demand.

In 1996, the City Council passed Local Law 42 in response to a 114-count indictment by the Manhattan District Attorney's Office of various trade waste license actors. Local Law 42 created the Trade Waste Commission (TWC) to regulate the industry.
In 2001, via charter revision, the TWC was combined with the Markets Division at Small Business Service and the Gambling Commission and renamed Business Integrity Commission. The City's wholesale markets and gambling industries have had long-standing influence from organized crime and corruption.

Merging oversight of these industries into one agency was done to leverage the collective data, knowledge and expertise, and combat similar patterns of criminality that characterized these sectors.

BIC’s mission was further expanded by Local Law 198 of 2019 to include traffic safety in the trade waste industry. As a member of the City-wide Vision Zero Task Force, BIC works with our partner agencies on policy initiatives and enforcement efforts to promote traffic safety.

Increasingly, BIC has seen anti-competitive forces at work in the form of financial, tax, and other types of corporate fraud. While BIC has deterred the wide-scale reemergence of organized crime in these industries, the influence and appearance of these actors and behaviors remains as BIC continues to impede their efforts.

Protecting consumers by preventing fraud and other criminality requires steady and robust regulation through investigation and enforcement of these historically problematic industries.

BIC's goal as a regulator is to promote public safety and ensure a competitive and fair environment for those operating within the industries and their customers.