#Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s new bar rules are killing NYC businesses

New York City this June had at most 40 percent of the food service and bar jobs it had last June — and Gov. Andrew Cuomo seems intent on killing off more with his dictatorial decree that bar patrons can’t drink without dining.

“Outdoor dining is now permitted statewide. Outside drinking is not,” the drinktator tweeted Tuesday.

Actually, bars have been permitted to serve seated patrons outside since June 22. And it hasn’t proven harmful: The number of New York’s coronavirus cases continues to drop, with not a single person reported dying of the disease on Monday. But King Cuomo has seen images of a few crowded outdoor bars and made another last-minute ruling from the throne that threatens even more damage to an industry struggling simply to survive.

“It’s a crisis,” Javier Ortiz, manager of HandCraft Kitchen & Cocktails on Third Avenue in Kips Bay, told me.

Cuomo adviser Rich Azzopardi told The Post last week that a cheeky cantina adding $1 Cuomo Chips to its tabs was in compliance. But late Tuesday night, four days after the edict went into effect, the State Liquor Authority posted more “guidance” — and chips don’t count.

The SLA said the purpose “is to ensure that patrons are enjoying a sit-down dining experience, and not a drinking or bar-type experience which often tends to be problematic from a public health perspective.”

But the ridiculous rules indicate what a joke that “explanation” is.

A salad is OK — but a bowl of nuts, which can be more filling and offer more calories, isn’t. Desserts count, but only some — a piece of cake or an ice cream sundae works, but a cookie, no matter how huge, doesn’t.

A patron can’t even sit down and enjoy a cold one while waiting for a to-go order of food. The gov apparently prefers the patron stand in the street.

The order applies statewide, but King Cuomo added something special just for Gotham: “Three Strikes and You’re Closed.” Three violations of social-distancing requirements close an establishment, and “egregious violations can result in immediate loss of liquor license.”

That’s why I saw Ortiz clasp his hands in prayer as he begged two patrons to sit down with their drinks over the weekend after they’d stood up to chat with friends who’d walked by.

“If you lose your license, you’re done,” noted Sara Chamberlin, a server at a prestigious Gramercy spot. The place takes social distancing seriously but has had to turn away locals who just wanted to cool down with a quick drink, as had every other spot I visited ­recently.

“It’s a bummer,” Chamberlin told me. Her restaurant isn’t trying just to keep itself afloat; its cuisine and cocktails include fresh ingredients from nearby Union Market. At least it hadn’t planned to open indoor dining at half capacity on July 6. Chamberlin knows of places that hired people and spent thousands on food — only to see King Cuomo decree days before that it wouldn’t be allowed.

Ortiz wasn’t happy with that “pretty much last-minute” change, either — or Cuomo’s latest dictate.

“The regulations each day are changing constantly, and they’re being produced by people who are not in the restaurant-service industry,” he said. It’s hard to comply with rules that “do not make sense.”

It’s not easy on his customers, either: “They’ve been confined for such a long time, they’ve paid their dues, obeyed the rules, they’ve abided by every single regulation, and then something changes in ­between.”

“It’s very tough times for everybody in this industry,” he concluded — and the state is not making it any easier. “It feels like, wow, not only do we have the pandemic against us, but we don’t have the help that we should be having.”

A server at a spot in Kips Bay told me that a nearby bar had received a $10,000 fine for social-distancing violations, though the scene there looked nothing like the ones in Queens that got the gov’s goat.

New York is facing a huge budget deficit, but Cuomo has found money to add investigators to his Liquor Authority.

“The state’s come by twice today,” a server at a Gramercy bar told me one weekday. It’s offering a free hot dog with every drink, grabbing a wiener-warming machine from a sister establishment that might never reopen. The next batch weren’t ready yet; the server asked me to take a wrapper to place at my table in case the state returned.

“Bars and restaurants are the problem,” King Cuomo declared this week. What a thing to say about an industry serving the community and employing thousands of working-class people. As I discovered, these hardworking New Yorkers are finding Cuomo’s diktats to be the problem, as they fight to live amid the lockdown.

Kelly Jane Torrance is a member of The Post’s editorial board.