No food carts were in sight on Sept. 9, when the Harlem Teen Choir serenaded dignitaries attending the opening of the new $65 million plaza in front of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, with its pristine granite fountains and allées of little leaf linden trees.
But the carts were back the next day — growing in number, some days, to more than 20 — vexing museum and city officials.
“What we have now is a blight on a magnificent new civic space, and a huge impediment, bordering on a safety hazard, for the thousands of people who visit the museum every day,” said Harold Holzer, the Met’s senior vice president for public affairs.
The issue is a difficult one, because the vending regulations the city would like to enforce are viewed as somewhat at odds with a 19th-century state law that provides licenses to disabled veterans to vend in certain areas of the city. City officials became so concerned that the growing number of food carts at the Met were not being operated by veterans that they dispatched undercover investigators last year to see if the licensed veterans were actually manning their own carts, according to a recently released report.
The Department of Investigation said in a January memo that it responded to complaints of a “rent-a-vet” scheme in which “cart owners pay disabled veterans to remain near the cart so that when approached by law enforcement, the disabled veteran shows his specialized license to prove that he, and essentially the mobile food cart vendor, is permitted to vend in the area.” The memo was recently obtained under a Freedom of Information request.
During two days of surveillance last year, the investigators found that four carts had no veterans present. In two of those cases, the vendors said the license holders had gone to get something to eat.
One license holder was spotted sitting on a bench inside Central Park. Two others license holders were sitting on the museum’s steps.
City investigators said they initiated the surveillance after receiving more than 20 allegations of ineffective or selective enforcement of illegal food vending outside the museum.
The investigation was closed without any enforcement action this year, because officials concluded that there was no consistent way to interpret the statute that provides free licenses to disabled veterans, including the question of whether a nonveteran is allowed to work the cart. A pending appeal of a recent State Supreme Court decision that has effectively hamstrung police from issuing tickets against the food cart vendors beyond safety issues complicates matters more.
On Tuesday, there were 16 carts in front of the museum serving hot dogs, halal chicken, knishes, and nuts and juices, including specialties like the Fruity Tooty and Passionate Peach.
Elizabeth Rossi, a former Marine, surveyed the scene that day with frustrated disgust. She and her father, Dan Rossi, own their carts and only employ other veterans to work their grills. They both said their competitors are subverting the law by hiring veterans to front for them. The result: Ms. Rossi said she has seen her business plummet by 75 percent in the last few years as others flooded the area.
Her hot dogs go for $2; an extra dollar for cheese or chili. “On a good, good day I sold 600,” she said. “Now, I’m lucky to sell 100.”
Many of the veterans who hold the free licenses are rarely around, she said, except to pick up their money at the end of the day.
“No one is a legal vendor,” Ms. Rossi said. “I know it, and they know it.”
Just south of Ms. Rossi’s cart stood Howard Dalton, an Army veteran, who has worked in front of the Met for the past three years, after he had been forced out of other spots around the park by city authorities. As a nonveteran worked the cart, Mr. Dalton said he had no compunction about hiring immigrants or anyone else to serve the hot dogs.
“I don’t see it as a terrible thing,” he said. “You have to get your workers where you can. It’s the American way.”
He said the city’s surveillance operation was another example of its misplaced priorities.
“The city needs to stop trying to run disabled vets off the streets,” he said.
In an odd twist, it’s actually a legal battle Mr. Rossi has been waging against the city that has helped lead to the influx of food carts.
After he fought a flurry of citations for selling his food in front of the museum, the State Supreme Court eventually ruled last year that the city’s interpretation of the law was erroneous. Food, it said, was excluded from state laws regulating specialized licenses for disabled veterans.
The city has appealed, hoping to regain control over the museum’s food cart scene and perhaps recapture lost license fees. A cupcake-and-milkshake seller, for example, used to pay more than $100,000 a year for a permit to operate in a specific spot, while a license for a hot dog stand went for more than triple that amount.
But in 2012, the last license-paying vendors moved away because of the competition.
It is not clear what David H. Koch, the museum trustee who paid for the renovation and for whom the plaza is named, thinks of the vendor issue in the plaza, which he described on the day of its opening as “a welcoming, warm and vibrant open space.” A request to his spokeswoman for comment was not answered.
Mr. Holzer, however, said museum officials, who have no authority over the vendors, are concerned that the number of carts can create hazards for schoolchildren and the elderly as they try to navigate through the conga line of carts to reach cabs and school buses at the curb.
“The situation is impossible, and we are deeply worried that it can become dangerous,” Mr. Holzer said. Sheryl Neufeld, administrative law division chief of the New York City Law Department, said that the city, while awaiting the appeals court ruling, “actively monitors the situation, and takes appropriate enforcement action when necessary.”