Attention Consumers: Westchester Has Your Back, Now More than Ever

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co-authors David Imamura (fourth from left) and Colin Smith (fourth from right) join County Executive Jenkins in heralding the new law

June 13, 2025

By Jeff Wilson–

On June 10, with members of the Westchester County Board of Legislators in attendance, County Executive Ken Jenkins signed into law new legislation, updating the county’s 50-year-old Consumer Protection Code to combat 21^st-century fraud.

Specifically, the new law provides for “the expansion of prohibited business practices, stronger penalties and increased power to recoup losses for defrauded consumers,” according to a press release from the Legislators’ office.

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“We’re living in a digital age where swindlers hide behind screens and deceptive fine print,” said County Executive Ken Jenkins in announcing the new law. “The threats today are more sophisticated, and this law gives us the tools to fight back.”

Jenkins went on to cite some of the fraudsters the law has in its sights: contractors who take a deposit and disappear; driveway pavers operating without licenses; businesses that trap consumers in subscriptions they can’t cancel; companies that use language barriers to overcharge or mislead. Among the most egregious offenses are phone scams targeting vulnerable seniors or schemes to trick new homeowners into signing over their deeds.

In a separate interview, Legislator David Imamura, an Irvington native and co-author of the bill along with Legislator Colin Smith, stressed the impact of the federal government’s abandonment of its role as consumer advocate. The United States Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, he explained, was created by Congress in 2011, during the Obama years. Although it succeeded in recovering $21 billion for defrauded consumers, the agency was gutted by the Trump administration this April, when 1,500 employees were furloughed and the bureau’s headquarters shuttered. “We’re just trying to fill in the gap,” said Imamura. How? First, by increasing penalties. Under the old law, fines that were set at $1,000 for a violation are now $5,000, with three violations incurring a $15,000 fine.

The signing ceremony got a big boost of energy when the Department of Consumer Protection’s spirited Executive Director Jim Maisano took the podium. With several of his inspectors chearing from the sidelines, Maisano praised the bill effusively. “This [new law] is going to give us more juice, a tremendous tool for our office, to protect the consumers of Westchester County,” he enthused.

Maisano was especially pleased with the changes in language, which the entire team of inspectors had painstakingly studied for effective updates. He cited two specific adjectives to the agency’s codes, which he claimed would vastly expand inspectors’ grounds to “write tickets” to unscrupulous retailers. Deceptive and unconscionable trade practice of the past are joined by unfair and, more important, abusive trade practice. “We really love the abusive section; as soon as we read it we realized that will be better language to write a ticket than what we already had,” said Maisano.

The director praised other improvements in the new law as well. The increased fine, he claimed, would strengthen the office’s leverage to negotiate and possibly plea bargain. The new mandate for retailers to provide receipts (a requirement inexplicably missing from the old statute) eliminates a loophole exploited in particular by shady tow truck operators who were known to charge customers up to four times the going rate. Finally, licensing procedures for the home improvement industry – which occupies a huge chunk of the agency’s time and resources – have been updated. Maisano closed his remarks by thanking the lawmakers profusely, adding, “We can’t wait to get to work!”

While Imamura acknowledged that even with the new law, the county won’t have all the power once wielded by its federal counterpart, Maisano did have good news about budget and staffing increases: there are none. The director stated in an email that the existing team will enforce all the new regs within its existing budget.

That’s added consumer protection right out of the gate.

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