Taxi Blog

Taxiblog Rides Again

After an incredibly long brief hiatus, taxiblog is once again trolling the streets of the internet flagging down misconception, inequity and out and out stupidity on a (hopefully) weekly basis. As you can see, we got a new high tech overhall, and those of you loyal fans who have been waiting paiently he new pages, buckle your seatbelts and get out your credit cards (kidding about the credit card).

So our last post was January of 2009. Since then we have lost a number of  luminaries. It apparently was not a very good year to be famous. The King of Pop  is gone, and yet he has a new movie coming out. Kung Fu was found hanging naked in his hotel closet. Sources say that Carridine, of Kill Bill  fame, was definitely not a victim of the five point expoding heart technique. Billy Mays  will no longer be hawking OxyClean, although his family was actually encouraging people to dress up as Bill for Halloween, and Steve McNair found that getting caught by your wife is not the worst thing that can happen in an affair.

How does this affect the taxicab industry? Well, it doesn’t. Not really. Just puts things in a bit of perspective. And what’s more, I do not intend to open up a movie review section, but I feel compelled to warn you that the new George Clooney movie that came out today, “The Men Who Stare At Goats” is about as entertaining as root canal, and only slightly less painful. Nuff said.

Here’s what’s been going on since January. In New York, some fleet owners and I sued the city to prevent implementation of the new mpg regulations and we got an injunction based on federal preemption statutes. For those of you who don’t know, this means that states or municipalities cannot mandate higher emissions standards than those mandated by the federal government. So, having lost round one, Mayor Bloomberg (now of the third term) and the Taxi and Limousine Commission created a new theory, that they had the right to not only offer incentives to taxi operators who purchased hybrids, but they had the additional right to enforce disincentives, in the form of lowered lease caps, to people who did not operated hybrids. The disincentives would affect not only vehicles purchased after the date of the new regulations, but it would immediately impact all of the vehicles purchased in good faith when no such regulations were on the books. Once again, my two fellow fleet operators and I went to court and the federal court ruled that this was simply a ploy to get around the injunction, and that it was effectively an emissions mandate, which was already under injunction. We are now in negotiations with the city to come up with a plan to get them where they want to be without destroying the industry.

The fallout from this whole affair, however, could be more damaging than the hybrid incident itself. As an additional penalty for suing the city, the Taxi and Limousine Commission decided that their lease cap regulations INCLUDED the sales tax, as opposed to how they have always been, where the sales tax was in addition to the lease cap. So where a fleet could previously charge $105.00 plus $3.21 sales tax on a day shift, or $108.21, which made sense since the driver was the end user and should be paying the tax separately, they could now only charge $105.00.  And the fleet owners would now simply eat the tax. To make matters worse, at the same time the State of New York imposed an additional sales tax of 6% on leased taxicabs, or an additional $1.44 per shift which also had to be absorbed by the fleets. The logic of the counsel to the TLC was that gasoline prices always included the sales tax, so why shouldn’t taxicab lease prices? Well, if you have not looked lately gentlemen of the TLC, gas prices are not capped by statute, so when the tax rate goes up they have the ability to raise their rates. Furthermore, and possibly most damaging of all, is that the New York based politicians have convinced Congress to consider a bill that would specifically exempt taxicabs from federal preemption statutes, thereby allowing all of our municipalities free reign in imposing regulations that are practically impossible, and certainly expensive and dangerous, to comply with.  The Taxi Limousine and Paratransit Assn is actively pursuing opposition to this bill, and futher updates will be forthcoming.

It is good to be back in the saddle. Those of you who have been patiently awaiting the new TAXIBLOG, thank you all, and you can expect updates on a biweekly basis.  Those of you wishing to submit articles to taxiblog for publication may contact me at  mlevine@arthurcab.com . Till next time.

Oh, and congratulations to the Scarsdale Raider girls volleyball team for an excellent season and a strong showing at sectionals. Go Raiders.