By Tim Redmond
Mayor Gavin Newsom promised in 2007 not to try to undo the system the city uses for allocating taxi permits. Now, he’s doing exactly the opposite.
In an Ocotber 3, 2007 letter to Nathanial Ford, executive director of the city’s Municipal Transportation Agency, and Heidi Machen, director of the Taxi Commission, Newsom outlined his support for a charter amendment that would allow the merger of the taxi panel and the MTA.
But in the face of concern from cab drivers that the measure would be the end of Prop. K, the 1978 law that allows drivers, and only drivers, to use city cab medallions, Newsom wrote: “We are not supportivei of an effort to merge the Taxi industry unless propert guarantees are made to protect Proposition K.”
The letter was also signed by Sup. Aaron Peskin.
So why is the mayor now proposing a measure to privatize the cab medalions, in directly contradiction to the 1978 policy? Wade Crowfoot, Newsom’s liason on transportation issues, tells me:
The Mayor has suggested exploring how to reform the taxi medallion system while preserving the foundations of Prop K. Such reform would involve auctioning medallions with proceeds directed toward enhancing taxi oversight and improving Muni. Importantly, the Mayor has suggested continuing to allow only working drivers to hold the medallions. This provision we believe is the heart of Proposition K– avoiding the the ‘corporatization’ of the medallions and ensuring that the working men and women who drive the cabs possess the medallions. Under this view, tthe auctions of these medallions would be limited to drivers.
Good to hear that he wants to keep the medallions in the hands of drivers — although that’s going to be hard to do when the permits sell for more than $100,000. But in my mind, he’s missing what’s really the heart of Prop. K — the idea that the valuable permits belong to the city.
Peskin doesn’t like what the mayor is doing, either. “My name is on a letter that says we won’t do this, and now Newsom is going back on his promise,” Peskin told me. “I mean, if Newsom and Peskin were both long out of office and somebody else came along and said I’m taking a new look at this, that’s one thing. But this was a widely circulated promise not even two years ago. You can’t do stuff like this.”
UPDATE: I just reached Judge Quentin Kopp, who as a supervisor in 1978 wrote Prop. K. His comment on the mayor’s position:
“That is absolutely not the heart of Proposition K. The intent of that measure was to treat [medallions] as a public asset, with a fee based on the cost of preparing an application. It’s preposterous to say that the heart of Prop. K is anything but that.”