6 Photos
State lawmakers, as part of the still-in-limbo state budget, reportedly have reached an agreement to adopt legislation that would open the door to cellphone app-based “ride-sharing” companies like Uber and Lyft to operate throughout the state, preempting local governments from imposing any regulations—as East Hampton and Southampton towns have already done—beyond those adopted by a state licensing authority.
State Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr. said on Thursday, March 30, that lawmakers have been told that the leadership of the two houses of the legislature has reached an agreement to abandon the Assembly’s earlier stance that local governments should be allowed to continue holding some authority over the regulation of ride sharing.
The lone exception to state autonomy in the agreed-to bills, Mr. Thiele said, would be that individual county legislatures could choose to adopt a law barring ride-sharing companies from operating in that county. But if the county failed to block the practice entirely, it could be regulated only by the state and not by towns or villages, Mr. Thiele said.
“By this summer, local governments could be devoid of any regulatory authority over Uber,” Mr. Thiele said on Thursday”… Either it’s permitted or it’s not permitted—and, if it’s permitted, it’s regulated by the state alone.”
In East Hampton Town, where Uber got into a very public tiff with local lawmakers in the summer of 2015 over town licensing laws, Supervisor Larry Cantwell lamented the looming ride-sharing law in Albany, which would denude the town of its authority.
“It’s going to create chaos in Montauk and other places on Saturday nights in July,” Mr. Cantwell said Thursday. “I want the governor’s cellphone number, so every time someone complains about it, they can call him directly.”
But Southampton Town Supervisor Jay Schneiderman, who owns a hotel in Montauk, said that he thinks Uber and other ride-sharing services are sorely needed throughout the South Fork, and that allowing each individual municipality to regulate the company would be untenable.
“I think Uber has its place in the local community: It will help reduce drinking and driving, it supports the tourist industry, it provides predictable fares,” he said. “And I don’t think it should be [regulated] at the local level, because you’ll end up with a patchwork of laws that will be impossible to follow. Of course, we’ll have to look at whether we’re treating our taxicabs fairly—because if they have to pay $1,000 for a license and Uber doesn’t, that wouldn’t be fair.”
The sorts of problems Uber drivers caused in the past in Montauk could be addressed through other types of local laws, Mr. Schneiderman suggested, adding that many of them would be addressed simply through the company being able to hire local drivers—which could also be a financial boost for some local residents.
“We don’t have the New York City model here, where cabs drive around looking for someone to pick up. We already have the Uber model—it’s just a phone app instead of a phone call,” the Southampton supervisor added.
The Uber experience in Montauk in 2014 and 2015 was very different from the one the company describes as its business model.
In the summer of 2014, complaints poured in to town officials about Uber drivers—mostly from points too far to the west to return home between overnight shifts—sleeping in their cars at Montauk’s public beaches and on side streets during the day. Taxi drivers complained that the Uber drivers ignored accepted local convention for the orderly soliciting of rides from busy places like the Montauk Train Station and nightclubs.
The following spring, the East Hampton Town Board amended its taxi licensing law to require that all taxis be registered to a local business address. The new regulation effectively barred Uber’s drivers, who currently operate in the state only under licenses issued by the New York City Taxi & Limousine Commission and, therefore, drive cars registered to Metro-area addresses.
At the start of that summer, more than 20 Uber drivers were hit with tickets from town code enforcement officers—many netted in sting operations that caught them hacking rides rather than relying on the Uber app for finding customers— and received $400 fines for violating the town’s taxi codes. The company reportedly paid the fines and attorney’s fees for the drivers, but it then shut down its app in the town and launched a public campaign vilifying Mr. Cantwell.
“Based on what I’m told of the law … this undermines everything we’ve tried to do with respect to getting cabs under control over the last three years,” Mr. Cantwell said of the new proposal in Albany. “If I were a local cab driver, I’d be asking why they would have to comply with local regulations but Uber doesn’t. It’s not a level playing field for them.”
Southampton Town adopted a requirement in early 2016 that required taxi drivers to register with the town at a cost of $1,000 per driver. But just a few months later, the town reached an agreement with Uber that allowed the company itself to buy a single license that covered a collection of its drivers.
After Governor Andrew Cuomo had hinted that he would be pushing the state toward consideration of ride-sharing regulation, East Hampton Town had penned a letter to him asking that whatever approach was taken allow local municipalities to exert some authority over the coming flood of new taxi drivers by imposing the same restrictions on the freelance drivers as apply to taxis, like parking on streets, sleeping in cars, and “hacking” for rides rather than strictly using the app-based ride hailing the company operates. Under the state proposals, such mandates would have to be adopted by whatever agency becomes the oversight authority for ride-sharing companies.
Uber has been lobbying state lawmakers, and Gov. Cuomo in particular, to adopt new rules that would allow the company to operate statewide—pushing the services as job creators and as an option that would reduce drinking and driving.
The main impediment to ride-sharing companies operating in New York State has been insurance regulations that do not allow for the sort of blanket insurance packages that the company relies on to cover up to $1 million in liability for its drivers and their riders.
The State Legislature and Gov. Cuomo have been hashing out competing bills as part of the state’s budget negotiations this winter that would have made the necessary amendments to insurance laws and set up licensing authority over the new style of rides for hire. But the three branches of government had differed on whether local governments would be allowed to impose their own requirements on such companies.
The legislation proposed by the State Assembly had allowed local governments avenues to regulating ride-sharing companies, as they do with taxicabs. Gov. Cuomo and the State Senate, meanwhile, had each pitched bills that would have given only the state the right to impose any licensing or regulations on ride-sharing apps.
On Thursday, Mr. Thiele said that he and other legislators were told by the leaders of the Democratic majority that an agreement had been reached with the governor and senators for a bill that would allow state oversight of only ride sharing.
Mr. Thiele said he is opposed to the legislation as proposed. He also blasted the agreed-upon law, which imposes a 4-percent tax on all of the app-based rides. Early versions of the bills had allowed a portion of those taxes, about 25 percent of the tax revenue, to be directed to local transportation projects. But Mr. Thiele said the compromise bill reportedly puts all of the tax revenues directly into the state’s general fund.
State law requires that the budget be approved by the start of the state’s fiscal year on April 1. The deadline was not met, and the legislature approved an extension.
Mr. Thiele said that the budget wrangling is ongoing but that the writing is on the wall of the Albany statehouse as to the future of Uber in the New York.
“I’ll preface this by saying that nothing is final until everything is final,” Mr. Thiele said, adding, “It’s looking like it is something that is going to happen. The governor and the Senate wanted state preemption. We wanted local control. Apparently, we lost.”
on Mar 30, 2017