Why did we abandon the idea of taxi medallion deregulation? It seems like
an area where we could all agree on a small, pure step to take.
I've skimmed the archives of this mailing list but didn't find any
discussion of the issue. I asked Chris after our last meeting and I think
he said there had been some related propositions that were defeated in
recent years.
Well, I just went and reviewed all the taxi-related propositions on the
ballots for the last 27 years (eleven in total) and didn't find any that I
would have voted for myself. The one major reform that established the
current system, Proposition K in June of 1978, was actually sold on "free
enterprise" grounds, and every proposition since then has just been for
uninteresting re-regulation.
1978's Prop. K was explicitly in response to the fact that the Police
Commission had not been issuing new medallions for quite some time, so
there was a market in medallions running $10,000 to $20,000 each with a
total count of only 700 medallions outstanding. It required the Police
Commission to issue "enough" medallions for "adequate" taxi service. At
the same time, it eliminated the market in medallions by making them
non-transferrable and restricting the issuance of new medallions to
individual drivers rather than cab companies. Prop. K also made explicit
that taxis should be allowed to charge less than the regulated maximum
fare, though it made such lowered fees subject to review by the Board of
Supervisors.
(Prior to Prop. K, the Police Commission collected a $7,500 fee for each
new medallion and also demanded a $1,000 bribe -- sorry, "transfer fee" --
to approve the private transfer of a medallion. The current application
fee is around $500.)
There were a few attempts to partially or completely repeal Prop. K,
namely 1979's Prop. M, 1981's Prop. P, and 1988's Prop. P. The same 1978
ballot also had a less radical alternative, Prop. J, echoes of which came
back in 1996's Prop. J, a sweeping re-regulation attempt.
There had been an earlier big re-regulation attempt with 1993's Prop. Y,
which required increasing the number of medallions from the then-current
number of 811 to 1,200 over a few years, but it proposed to make the rest
of the law more complicated, such as introducing three "classes" of
medallions. 1995's Prop. I would have done nothing but add new layers of
regulation, this time over the still-legal medallion leasing market, and
would also have created a central City-run dispatch system.
The Taxicab Commission was created by 1998's successful Prop. D, taking
the responsibility for issuing medallions away from the Police Commission.
More recently, 2000's Prop. M would have allowed issuing new medallions to
cab companies again, rather than only drivers; it was blatantly funded by
the cab companies, which probably contributed to its defeat. And finally,
2003's Prop. N would have allowed a disabled medallion-holder, unable to
continue driving his own cab, to keep his medallion and continue leasing
it to other drivers. This latest attempt failed 72% to 28%, primarily
because the total number of medallions is limited.
So, after all that, the kind of proposition that comes to mind for our
purposes would simply require the Taxicab Commission to issue new
medallions to all eligible applicants, with no numerical limit. Given that
Prop. K's intent was to get more cabs on the street, but only resulted in
111 new medallions in the following 15 years, this proposition would be
totally consistent with the intent of that law. And when medallions are
free, a market in medallions is simply meaningless. Any extra workload for
the Commission would be entirely offset by application fees.
The wording could be something like this:
"The Taxicab Commission shall not impose a limit on the number of taxicab
permits outstanding. Priority shall be given to any applicants on the
waiting list at the time of the passage of this ordinance, and thereafter
all applicants who are otherwise eligible according to applicable laws and
regulations shall be issued new taxicab permits in the order that their
applications are received by the Taxicab Commission. The Taxicab
Commission shall no longer consider whether the public is 'adequately or
properly served' when issuing new taxicab permits."
This is a small step, but a definite and pure one, not adding any new
regulation of the taxi system. It surgically repeals a single anti-liberty
aspect of the current system, in a way that I think has a chance of
passing based solely on my reading of the arguments around the last 27
years of taxi-related propositions.
Am I missing something?
Justin
P.S. The San Francisco Public Library has an archive of Voter Information
Pamphlets back to 1907 here:
http://sfpl4.sfpl.org/librarylocations/main/gic/voterpamp/votepamp.htm
Besides the initial 1978 measures, which were on the ballot in June, all
of the propositions mentioned above were on November ballots. I only found
actual election results for the most recent proposition, 2003's Prop. N,
so I'm just assuming based on later descriptions that all of the other
propositions failed except for Prop. K and Prop. D.
By the way, as of 2002 there were 1,381 medallions outstanding:
http://www.sfgov.org/site/taxicommission_page.asp?id=17692
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