The City Council’s Recovery-Killer

City lawmakers are racing to stop Gotham’s post-COVID economic recovery in its tracks, by pushing the same kind of rent regulation for commercial property that has locked the city’s residential housing into an eternal “crisis.”

At a hearing Friday, the City Council will take up two wildly destructive bills: one to create a “commercial rent guidelines board” that would set annual rent hikes for stores and offices under 10,000 square feet and manufacturers under 25,000 square feet; another to grant automatic one-year lease extensions at a commercial tenant’s request.

The most efficient market, of course, is one that’s allowed to adapt on its own, without government meddling: When pols set artificial rents, it creates all kinds of perverse, unintended consequences.

Example: Though meant to protect small businesses, rent regulation could hurt them because large businesses (say, Starbucks or big-bank branches) often take small spaces.

They’d be more desirable tenants than less financially secure mom-and-pops, especially if rent hikes are capped.

Landlords might even put off renting to anyone until the economy grows hotter, since their rents could be largely frozen.

Madness: The lockdowns forced many businesses to close, leaving storefronts vacant and rents down. Indeed, it’s a tenants’ market: In June, the Real Estate Board of New York reported that asking rents for retail space plunged in 16 of 17 sections of Manhattan.

The bills, notes East Midtown Partnership President Rob Byrnes, are “driven by a view of the real-estate industry that is almost completely divorced from reality.”

Yes, small businesses could use smart help — like ending the commercial rent tax.

But New York pols are often lured instead by simple-minded, socialist-style prescriptions like rent control that only make matters worse. Cross your fingers they come to their senses and nix these bills