By Tim Redmond
So now Mayor Newsom wants to privatize taxi medallions. I get where he’s coming from — selling off the medallions would provide a quick infusion of cash for the city. But it’s the wrong way to raise money.
Right now, the medallions are the property of the city, and they’re available only to active drivers. The drivers who hold medallions, of course, would love to cash in on something they got free. But if the permits go up for auction, the drivers who have been on the waiting list for years will get screwed, the big cab outfits (or their surrogates) will buy up most of the medallions — and a lot of the rest will be bought as speculative investments by wealthy people whose only experience with the industry amounts to occasional rides in a cab when their limo drivers are sick. Cab drivers who actually want to own their permits will have to borrow huge amounts of money (and how many will qualify for $500,000 loans in this market?) and will wind up worse off than they are now.
Making this happen will require a ballot initiative to overturn Prop. K, the 1978 measure that set up the current system. The author of that measure, then-Supervisor and now Judge Quentin Kopp, is likely to mount a major campaign against Newsom’s move.
As a retired judge who still sits on cases, Kopp is limited in his ability to comment on political issues. But when I called him, he did say that when Newsom and Sup. Aaron Peskin were promoting a charter amendment that merged the Taxi Commission into the MTA, “each of them assured me that the intent was not to alter the current system of permit issuance and the requirements for maintenance of a permit.”
He added: “This would require a ballot measure to amend Prop. K, and I reserve the notion of taking a leave of absence for the purpose of assuring the defeat of any such a proposal. If that occurs, it will be consistent with my historical ballot measure activity.”
There’s some dispute about whether the city can implement this without going back to the ballot — the mayor clearly thinks he can. But Kopp could probably create a referendum campaign to undo what Newsom does anyway.
And Kopp will raise significant money and muster the significant political forces still at his disposal to fight Newsom — and knowing Kopp, it will be epic.