Union, NY Public Conduct: Aggressive Panhandling (2026)

Article IV of Chapter 151, adopted 8-9-2017 by L.L. No. 5-2017, is the Town Board's panhandling law. Its stated intent is to protect people from threatening, intimidating or harassing behavior and to keep the flow of pedestrian and vehicular traffic free on streets and sidewalks in the Town of Union outside the Villages of Endicott and Johnson City. Those two villages sit inside the town but run their own codes, so this section does not reach them.

The code defines "aggressive manner" six ways: touching another person or approaching within an arm's length without consent; following the person being solicited; continuing to solicit within five feet after a negative response; blocking safe passage or forcing the person, or a driver, to take evasive action; using words meant or likely to cause fear of imminent bodily harm or to intimidate; and approaching in a way meant or likely to do the same. "Solicit" covers the spoken, written or printed word and bodily gestures made to immediately obtain money or any other thing of value. A "public place" includes any street and its sidewalk, bridge, park, playground, recreation area, cemetery, school grounds, driveway, parking lot or garage, and the doorways and entrances to buildings.

Four location rules apply even when no one acts aggressively. Nobody can solicit within 20 feet of an automated teller machine, or an entrance or exit of an ATM facility, while the machine is available for use, or within 20 feet of an entrance or exit to a banking organization or licensed casher of checks during its business hours. Soliciting is barred when either the solicitor or the person solicited is in a bus shelter or at a bus stop. It is barred in any parking garage, parking area, parking facility or parking space, terms the code defines by reference to § 300-70.2. And a person on a sidewalk or alongside a roadway cannot solicit an occupant of a motor vehicle on a street or other public place.