City Comptroller Mark Levine is opening an investigation into the city’s outdoor dining permit process, seeking answers from the Department of Transportation (DOT) and the Mayor’s Office of Contract Services as restaurants head toward the summer season with hundreds of applications still moving through a multi-agency review system.
In a May 14 letter to DOT Commissioner Mike Flynn and MOCS Director Kim Yu, Levine’s office requested records related to the city’s outdoor dining revocable consent approval process, including application timelines, staffing levels, pending and completed applications, and any steps planned to speed up reviews. The agencies were asked to provide the records by May 29.
“Restaurants are struggling to cut the red tape on a slow and cumbersome permitting process,” Levine wrote.
The Comptroller’s office said DOT has submitted 1,225 permit applications to the office to date, including 765 — or 62% — in calendar year 2026. But DOT estimated in January that the agency had 2,390 applications in the pipeline, a figure Levine’s office says suggests many applicants remain somewhere in the review process before reaching the Comptroller’s Office, the final registration step.
The letter argues that the permits submitted so far represent only a small share of New York City’s restaurant industry. Levine’s office cited Live XYZ platform data showing 25,161 places in the city tagged as restaurants as of May 6.
At issue, according to Levine’s office, is not the Comptroller’s registration process but the earlier review by DOT and MOCS. The Comptroller’s Office said it is the only part of the process subject to a fixed legal timeline, requiring contracts to be registered within 30 calendar days.
The office said it has registered outdoor dining permits in an average of eight calendar days.
The office also said it has taken steps to keep approved restaurants from being held up at the final stage. Since Sept. 16, 2024, the Comptroller’s Office has authorized DOT-approved Dining Out NYC applicants to operate while their permits await registration with the Comptroller. That authority was extended on April 24, 2026, through Dec. 31, 2026.
Outdoor dining has remained a flashpoint since the city replaced its emergency pandemic-era program with a permanent system.
In February 2025, then-Comptroller Brad Lander said only 40 restaurants had received permits ahead of the April 1 outdoor dining season, while DOT officials said they were reviewing nearly 4,000 applications. DOT later pushed back, saying the process was dictated by a City Council-created law requiring multiple stages of review, including DOT, community boards, public hearings, Council members, and the Comptroller.
Lawmakers have since pushed to loosen the rules. Council Member Lincoln Restler introduced legislation in October 2025 to restore year-round outdoor dining on roadways and ease the permit process, arguing that the current system had become too costly and burdensome for restaurants.
Earlier this year, City Council Speaker Julie Menin confirmed that she planned to revive year-round outdoor dining and reduce regulatory burdens.
The New York Post reported this week that six weeks into the 2026 outdoor dining season, only 2,100 restaurants had permits, down from roughly 2,500 last year and about 13,000 during the COVID-era program. The Post also reported that some restaurants had been waiting more than a year for permits.
Levine’s records request asks DOT and MOCS to provide a step-by-step explanation of the revocable consent process, average end-to-end lead times from application to contract registration, the number of DOT staff supporting the process, projected and actual review timelines for both agencies, current and planned efforts to expedite reviews, and a full list of pending and completed applications with status dates.
amNewYork has reached out to DOT and MOCS for comment and is awaiting a response.
Dining and Cooking