New York just rewrote what it costs to run a security company
The Aland Etienne Safety and Security Act takes effect on July 28, 2026. Most of the coverage has focused on the wage numbers. The part that will actually catch people out is the paperwork.
New York City Local Law 61 of 2026 requires private security employers in the five boroughs to pay guards what the city already pays guards on its own building service contracts. If you hold a security contract worth more than $1,500 at a covered location, it applies to you. The wage schedule is public, the phase-in dates are fixed, and the enforcement mechanism is the interesting part: if your records do not show what you paid and what you told people, the law presumes you did not comply. Underpayment carries triple damages. Records have to be kept for six years.
That last sentence is the whole story. A company can be paying correctly and still lose, because the burden of proof sits with the employer. The winning move is not to memorize the statute. It is to make your own operating data answer the question before anyone asks it.
What the law actually asks for
| Date | What changes | What it means for you |
|---|---|---|
| July 28, 2026 | The law takes effect | Every guard must receive a written Notice of Rights within 30 days, in English and in their primary language. |
| January 1, 2027 | Wage requirements begin | Pay has to match the prevailing wage schedule for city building service contracts — by seniority and by armed status. |
| January 1, 2028 | Paid time off | Paid leave has to match the city standard. |
| January 1, 2029 | Full supplemental benefits | The supplemental benefit rate applies on top of the hourly wage. |
The wage schedule in force for the first phase looks like this. It is not one number — it is a small table, and which row applies to a given guard depends on two facts you are already tracking somewhere.
| Tier | Hourly | Supplemental |
|---|---|---|
| Unarmed, under 2 years | $18.02 | $8.12 |
| Unarmed, 2 years and over | $21.20 | $8.47 |
| Armed | $32.70 | — |
Those figures change. The city publishes a new schedule, and every rate in the table moves. Anything hard-coded in a spreadsheet or a policy document is wrong the day after publication, and nobody notices until an audit.
Why this is hard in practice
Nothing here is conceptually difficult. It is hard because the answer is spread across four systems that do not talk to each other. Seniority is in HR. Armed status is in a certifications binder. The rate is in payroll. Whether a post is even inside the city is in someone's head. Every quarter, someone has to reconcile all four by hand — and the moment they stop, the record stops being provable.
So we built the reconciliation into the product
Compliance in InstaNotified is an advisor, not a gate. It never blocks a schedule, a timesheet or a payroll run — you always keep the ability to do the thing you came to do. What it does is read the records you already keep, compare them to the rule pack for your jurisdiction, and tell you where you stand. Here is each step of that loop.
It works out which of your locations are covered
Coverage is decided by where the post actually is. We read the geofence you already drew, fall back to the address when there isn't one, and tell you how confident we are. You confirm, and that answer is locked until you change it.
It works out what each person has to be paid
Seniority comes from the hire date on the employee record. Armed status comes from the certifications you already track. Those two answers pick the tier, the tier sets the floor, and the floor is compared against the rate that shift would actually pay.
It gets the notice signed
Send the Notice of Rights by push, text or email in one action. Employees read and sign it in the app or from a secure link — no account needed — and every signature is stored with a timestamp. New hires are sent theirs automatically.
It tells you where you stand, in dollars
A nightly scan turns all of it into one number, a list of what to fix, and what each gap is worth if it is ever claimed. Deadlines are counted down from the day they land, not the day you remember them.
It keeps the record that proves it
Rates, tiers, notices and signatures are written to an audit trail built for the six-year retention rule. Export it on demand or schedule it, and you have the evidence before anyone asks for it.
The two decisions that shaped the design
The rates live in the database, not the code. Every wage figure, deadline and penalty is stored as an effective-dated rule pack. When the city publishes a new schedule in September, we add a row with a start date. Your scan picks it up that night, findings re-price themselves, and the advisory you see while typing a pay rate quotes the new floor. Nobody ships a release. And because the packs are dated, a scan of a date in the past uses the rules that were in force then — which is exactly what you need when a claim is about last year.
The AI explains, it never calculates. Ask the assistant what the law requires and it reads the rule pack back to you in plain language, tells you which of your people are affected, and drafts notice wording if you want it. It does not compute a wage. Every number it quotes comes from the same deterministic evaluator that writes the findings, because a language model guessing at a prevailing wage rate is precisely the failure mode this feature exists to prevent.
What to do this week
- Fill in hire dates. Seniority decides which wage tier applies. An employee with no hire date has no tier, and no tier means no floor to check against.
- Record primary languages. The notice is owed in the employee's own language as well as English. This is the single most commonly missing field, and the easiest to fix now rather than in July.
- Draw geofences on your NYC posts. Coverage is decided by where the post is. A geofence turns a guess into a definite answer, and it improves clock-in accuracy while you are at it.
- Check armed certifications are current. Armed status comes from certifications. An expired credential on someone being paid the armed rate is a finding, and a real problem independent of this law.
- Send the notice early. The 30-day clock starts on July 28. Sending in June costs nothing and takes the deadline off the table.
None of that is specific to our product. Do it in a spreadsheet if you like. But whatever you use, the test is the same: if someone asked today what you paid a particular guard in March and whether they had signed the notice, could you answer in minutes, with evidence? That is the bar the law sets, and it is the bar we built to.
This post describes how our software works and summarizes publicly published requirements. It is not legal advice — talk to counsel about your own obligations.
See where you stand before July 28.
Point Compliance at the employees and locations you already have in InstaNotified and it will tell you what is missing, what it would cost, and what to do first.