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Posted by on Tuesday, May 10, 2016 | Leave a Comment
Austin Provides a Preview of Chicago’s Proposed Uber & Lyft Regulations
The supposedly progressive city of Austin, Texas, is offering Chicago a free lesson on the consequences of placing unnecessary regulatory burdens on popular businesses.
In December, the Austin City Council voted to regulate ride sharing services Uber and Lyft in the same way they regulate taxi cabs. The new ride sharing regulations included a requirement for drivers to be fingerprinted. Uber and Lyft argue that “that the fingerprint databases are often out of date and biased against minorities, who may have been fingerprinted but never charged with a crime” and that the requirement “slow[s] down the process drastically and leads to fewer part-time drivers” for the services.
Over the weekend, Austin voters rejected Proposition 1, which would have altered the Austin City Council’s regulatory actions to keep ride sharing going in the Texas capitol. In response to the failed ballot measure, both Uber and Lyft announced they would be halting operations in Austin.
Austinites looking for safe and affordable local transportation are being left in the lurch. But they certainly aren’t the only ones being harmed by this taxi cartel protectionism in Austin:
Last week, Austin resident Michael Haymond was making a stable income and supporting his family. But as of 5 a.m. Monday, his life — and income — is in flux.
Haymond, 39, started driving for Lyft more than a year ago. In addition to supporting himself, Haymond is the breadwinner for his wife — who has a chronic condition that leaves her in and out of the hospital — their two 13-year-olds, and his two college-aged children.
Because of the instability of her illness, Haymond had lost three sales gigs and had to rely on food stamps, assistance from the government and from his church.
He calls Lyft his saving grace. He works between 30 and 50 hours a week, earning roughly $1,000 per week. His wife, Shannon, a former Lyft driver, started a Facebook group called Lyft Austin Weird, where more than 3,300 Lyft drivers communicate and share tips, stories and encouragement.
Assuming the Austin City Council is proud of what they’ve done, it’s rather perverse to be celebrating putting thousands of people like Michael Haymond out of work.
Here is where it is also worth pointing out that fingerprinting as a means of security is overrated, since there is no scientific proof that fingerprints are unique.
In Chicago, Alderman Anthony Beale has proposed regulating Uber and Lyft in a similar manner. The consequences of such a measure would probably be a similar to the ride sharing exodus in Austin. Beale’s efforts have produced some rather surprising and interesting statements on what exactly should be done. First, from the Chicago Sun-Times‘ Fran Spielman:
“For years, the taxi industry never serviced the South Side or the West Side of Chicago. They never went there. Never picked up anybody. Never dropped anybody off. We now have an industry not only servicing all parts of Chicago, [but] also giving employment opportunities to people — a supplemental income. The majority of the drivers are doing it part time,” [Mayor Rahm Emanuel] said.
“Through the competition, there’s choice. And more importantly than that, parts of the city that were cut off and not serviced before by the traditional taxi industry are finally getting service that never existed before,” he said.
Then here’s Mark Brown, also in the Sun-Times:
Do we really need all these regulations to make us safe?
That’s what that eight-step process is all about: the belief the public needed certain safety protections from cabdrivers.
A level playing field makes sense to me, but maybe there are other ways to get there.
Finally — and you’re going to want to sit down for this one — there is Eric Zorn at the Chicago Tribune (warning: long excerpt coming, because, seriously, wow):
I became a convert during a trip last month to the San Francisco Bay area, where my wife and I decided not to rent a car but to get around via Lyft, the company our son, an Oakland resident, prefers. No matter where we were or what time of day it was, cars came quickly after a few taps on my phone and got us to our destination for reasonable prices with no fumbling for payment at the end.
We felt safe. The company tracks each trip in real time via GPS and the credit card information stored in my user profile. And, perhaps because of this implicit accountability, our drivers followed traffic norms.
Not that I don’t feel safe in taxis, but the experience got me to thinking: Did these Lyft drivers need to have special training and licenses? Did I need the government to protect me against the chance that they might be substance abusers or have criminal tendencies?
Clearly no.
The companies themselves, with their enormous investments in the technological and human infrastructure necessary to run the services, have all the incentive they need to guard the interests of their customers and keep a close electronic eye on all their drivers.
Technology could make the cab industry virtually self-regulating in the same way and on the same terms.
Current regulatory distinctions between various ride-for-hire services “appear utterly arbitrary,” in the words of U.S. District Judge Sharon Johnson Coleman, who is presiding over the suit but has so far declined to dictate transportation policy to Chicago.
So, aldermen: Get rid of those distinctions not by adding new regulations but by getting rid of all the old ones that don’t have a measurable relationship to public safety, such as mandatory training courses and medallion requirements.
The few that remain — mandating certain levels of insurance, requiring up-front pricing information and prohibiting the employment of those with driving or criminal records that set off alarms, for example — should cover all forms of private commercial transportation equally. And they should be aimed not at saving an old industry or boosting the fortunes of a new one, but at advancing the interests of Chicagoans and tourists who just want safe, convenient rides at reasonable prices.
Before we move on, one more time, with feeling:
Did these Lyft drivers need to have special training and licenses? Did I need the government to protect me against the chance that they might be substance abusers or have criminal tendencies?
Clearly no.
Huzzah!
In fact, that’s so spectacular that I really want to tell Eric Zorn to ‘just keep going with that thought.’ For example, the TSA: After all, that’s the logical conclusion about airlines of Zorn saying “[t]he companies themselves, with their enormous investments in the technological and human infrastructure necessary to run the services, have all the incentive they need to guard the interests of their customers and keep a close electronic eye on all their drivers.” Let’s dissolve the TSA!
Apply the same thought to the FDA, food trucks, and requirements on car manufacturers. And to professional licensing. After all, do we really need the government to protect me against the chance that I might get an awful haircut?
But more importantly, do we really need the government wrapping red tape around people who want to work?
“If we don’t level the playing field, we are in jeopardy of losing the taxicab industry. The cab industry has been a vital part of our city. They’re ambassadors for the city,” he said. “I’m not going to sit back and allow an un-level playing field for one side or the other. Level the playing field and let the market take care of itself.”
Given some of the experiences I had in taxi cabs over the 10 years I lived there, I don’t know if they are exactly who you want as “ambassadors for the city.” I had far more unpleasant experiences in a taxi in any one given year than I had in about three years of using Uber.
But Beale is right about one thing: we should level the playing field and let the market take care of it self. The right way to go about that is the way suggested by Eric Zorn. Rather than foisting more unnecessary costs on Uber and Lyft, thus making rides unnecessarily more expensive for riders, remove the red tape and high compliance costs that currently encumbers the taxi industry and let them compete away with Uber and Lyft. We can let the market — the consumers who actually utilize these services — decide what they prefer.
Then, when we’re done with that, let’s next apply the same logic to occupational licensing.
Last week, AFSCME Council 31 released a short online video taking some swings at the Illinois Policy Institute:
All in all, this is pretty ho-hum stuff, and just about what you’d expect rhetorically from AFSCME. Up to and especially including the obligatory, “Ahhhh, the boogeyman!” mention of the Koch Brothers.
But let’s take a quick look at some of the liberties AFSCME took with this video.
First up, the Chicago Tribune column from Diana Sroka Rickert. Rickert is VP of Communications at IPI, and regularly publishes a guest column in the Tribune. Here’s the freeze-frame from the video where they highlight the headline and the byline:
Notice the byline. Now look how it actually appears on the Tribune‘s website:
Just a name. No identifier. Here’s now the identifier shows up in a footer at the bottom of the column, emphasis mine:
Diana Sroka Rickert is a writer with the Illinois Policy Institute. The opinions in this essay are her own.
I’ve looked, and I can’t find where this article appears with the byline as displayed in the AFSCME video. I’m left to assume that the video image has been edited to add “a writer with the Illinois Policy Institute” behind Rickert’s name or to remove the second half of what appears in the footer, clarifying that “the opinions in this essay are her own.”
The second part is important. Rickert is not writing this piece in an official capacity for IPI. She’s expressing her own opinions. I would like to imagine that AFSCME would appreciate the same courtesy being extended to their members and officials when expressing their opinions in a private-citizen capacity and not as speaking on behalf of AFSCME. Otherwise, it’s fair game to attribute everything AFSCME members say to the union itself. Things like, perhaps, this.
Also left on the cutting room floor? The real, complete thrust of Rickert’s proposal:
Lay off the entire state workforce, and close the pension system. Work with the General Assembly to open a different retirement plan for newly hired government workers, modeled after the nation’s most popular retirement vehicle: the 401(k). Then offer to rehire state workers under the new retirement plan.
Guess they forgot to mention that whole “hire them all back part.” Oops.
Overall, there’s no sourcing for anything in this video. Most political campaign ads include some kind of citations where, if you’re really interested, you can go find and examine their justification for the claims being made. But AFSCME doesn’t tell you where you can find any context for what they’ve chosen to excerpt here.
For example, they’ve attributed the words “abandon pensions” to IPI CEO John Tillman. A quick Google search for John Tillman “abandon pensions” returns no results. And even if I stipulate that Tillman has said these two words consecutively at some point in time, there’s no way to access any greater context for those remarks. They’re two words. I imagine if we went back through the statements of AFSCME officials we could have some tremendous fun excerpting two-word phrases out of context from their greater statements.
Later on, the video asserts that IPI’s agenda is to “Wipe Out Unions.” Their justification for this claim is this:
Establishing local right-to-work zones = “wipe out unions?”
First of all, we’re only talking about localized right-to-work zones. In this particular case, this is about legislation that was approved in Lincolnshire that only governs that village. Simply put, there are unions within right-to-work zones. There are 26 right-to-work states in the country, including union-heavy Michigan. There are unions existing and operating within all of those states. The only difference is that there are no closed shops. No one has to join a union (or pay tribute) in order to take a job and work in those states. They can choose to. But they’re not compelled against their will.
Claiming the establishment of local right-to-work zones is tantamount to “wiping out unions” is absurd, and pretty self-indicting the part of the unions. What they’re really saying is that they believe when people are extended a choice on whether or not to join a union, people will overwhelmingly choose not to join, thus resulting in the union being “wiped out.” They’re saying that they themselves believe unions are only sustainable when people are coerced and compelled into joining and supporting them. What does that say about unions?
If this is really the best that AFSCME has to offer, then that’s pretty weak sauce.
There are plenty of people who are disenchanted with the current election cycle. But I think it’s safe to say that Reboot Illinois publisher and Chicago Sun-Times columnist Madeleine Doubek is not looking forward to this fall’s state contestso:
Why should we care about what happens in contested state legislative races all over the state this year? Each really is about the battle for control between GOP Gov. Bruce Rauner and Democratic House Speaker Michael Madigan. You knew that, but perhaps you didn’t realize we all will lose no matter who wins.
I can empathize with the general feeling. I’ve accepted that, for me, this year’s presidential election ends in tears no matter what happens. I’ve taken to describing it as the Alien vs. Predator election. Whoever wins… we lose:
Anyway, let’s get to why Doubek thinks this:
Every election cycle, there typically are a couple dozen hotly contested state legislative races, even after one political party or the other gets done rigging maps in their favor. Each party in both chambers has seats they can swipe from the other side. It’s in those races, traditionally, where most of the money is raised and spent.
This year is no different. But where it has changed, is that Republicans now are energized because of GOP Gov. Bruce Rauner. Rauner changes the political landscape in Illinois with his determination to shake up Springfield and his bottomless checking account. After years and years of failure, Republicans have their best shot in decades at winning the nuclear arms race that is funding and winning campaigns. …
Rauner shook up Springfield all right. Now, instead of one dictator, we now have two.
Rauner and Madigan control how much money goes into the key races like never before.
::eye roll::
Tthe importance of money to political elections is generally overstated. Yes, it’s important. But it’s not everything. If you think money is everything, be sure to tell that to people like Republican Presidential nominee Jeb Bush or Illinois U.S. Senator Blair Hull. Or Bryce Benton, who challenged State Sen. Sam McCann, backed by a large amount of money, and lost by a sizable margin. They’re all examples that spending all the money in the world can’t make people vote for you if they don’t want to.
And the “dictator” line is just ridiculous hyperbole.
But this general consternation over how much money is being spent in Illinois political races, of the type being expressed here by Doubek, seems to be a recent phenomenon. And, at that, one prompted mostly by Gov. Bruce Rauner’s regular and significant investments in Republican candidates and infrastructure.
But for years, House Speaker Mike Madigan was the central bank of political contributions in the state. He controlled a fortune that was doled out to the candidates of his choice. And yet, it seems that far fewer people ever batted an eye at that hegemonic control of the campaign purse than they are at Rauner’s attempts to level the playing field for Republican candidates.
Doubek closes:
How can we constituents fight to be heard when the politicians all owe their jobs to Madigan and Rauner?
I’d say they can be heard in that there’s an alternative to Madigan’s singular control over politics in this state. At least there’s an alternative. And I think she gives far too little credit to voters, assuming they don’t know what they’re buying, or what is generally at stake in this election.
We’ll find out in a few weeks time what the voters think.
If there is one thing that Chicagoland politicians are good at, it’s finding all kinds of new and creative ways to separate you from your hard-earned money. Take, for example, Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle, who has the benefit of being viewed as reasonable and competent by far too many people mostly because she’s not Todd Stroger. According to Fran Spielman of the Chicago Sun-Times, she’s currently mulling a tax on soda and other sugary drinks as a desperation ploy to try to close the county’s budget gap:
County Board President Toni Preckwinkle is “looking hard” at a new tax on sugary soft drinks — anywhere from half a penny to a full penny an ounce — to close a $174.3 million budget shortfall without employee layoffs, sources said Tuesday. …
Now, Preckwinkle is returning to another controversial revenue idea she considered last year: a tax on sugary soft drinks long championed by public health advocates to curb obesity and diabetes that drives burgeoning health care costs.
Anything to avoid admitting the need for structural reform, I guess.
Back when the state was considering a similar tax, I wrote about why taxing soda — and other so-called vice taxes — are inherently contradictory in rationale and just generally terrible public policy:
First, the notion that obesity is an epidemic is commonplace but also grossly overstated. And the idea that people aren’t aware of what the First Lady of the United States has spent the last 5-plus years working to combat is absurd.
But the bigger insult to logic and reason is the 2nd paragraph in the quoted text above. We hear this same kind of reasoning, typically from Democrats and the left, when it comes to cigarette taxes. It goes like this: “This tax increase on [cigarettes, soda, whatever] will be a good thing because that tax revenue will help fund this really, really, really important government program. And, also, by raising the price of [smoking, drinking soda, whatever] it will discourage people from doing something that really just isn’t all that good for them.”
I hope you can clearly see the problems there. Cigarette taxes, and now soda/sugary drink taxes, are seemingly the one area of life where the left will acknowledge that what you tax you get less of. You tax cigarettes, you get less smoking. You tax soda, you get less consumption of soda. You tax income/work … you get less work? Of course. Except the left usually never makes that connection on that last one. Weird.
On the other side of the argument is the notion that said cigarette or soda tax revenue is going to help pay for some critical government program. Except that typically there won’t be enough revenue generated by the tax to actually fund the program, especially when you consider the diminishing returns on the tax revenue by the higher cost of consuming the drinks. The cigarette tax that was to fund the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, or S-CHIP, had one major problem: it needed about 22 million MORE smokers in order to fully fund the program. Oops.
That’s all assuming that this tax will actually be successful in driving people to other drinks. …
For the tax to have the effect Rep. Gabel desires, to drive people to drink something other than soda or other sugary drinks, it needs to be significant enough to make it costly enough for people to seek other alternatives. Will a penny per ounce do that? Unlikely. Adding extra $.12 to a can of soda or $.20 to a bottle, or $.32 or $.64 to fountain drinks isn’t likely to be enough of a cost burden to drive people to seek alternatives. There are a whole gaggle of people who regularly shell out $4 or $5 for a coffee or cappuccino at Starbucks. Do you really think that less than a dollar of extra cost is going to make that big of a difference? For most people, again, unlikely.
Which brings us to the last big problem: the problem of acceptable alternatives. Say the tax is effective in driving people to want to buy something other than soda or the other sugar-filled drink they like. It won’t be, but let’s say it does work. What alternatives exist out there? It seems clear that most people won’t be satiated with just water. Not everyone is going to want to drink coffee instead — into which people often put a significant amount of sugar. Nor does it seem likely people will flock to tea — iced tea often being sweetened, as well.
There just doesn’t seem to be a lot of alternatives out there for people to choose from if they don’t want to bear the cost of the tax on sugary drinks. So, they’re then still likely to just bite the bullet and buy the drink they want.
This tax just isn’t significant enough to have the discouraging effects that they proponents claim to want.
Which makes the real point of this gambit clear. It’s about revenue. It’s not about a concern for people’s health. And, why is it any of Rep. Gabel’s business what people want to drink any way? It’s a clear example of politicians feigning concern for your well-being in order to regulate the minutia of your life. And, finding new and exciting ways to separate you from your hard-earned money, to boot.
It was a terrible idea then. It’s a terrible idea now. And if Preckwinkle pursues it in this year’s budget, it’s nothing more than kicking the can of real, meaningful reform down the road even further for Cook County.
If you haven’t seen it yet, the Illinois Policy Institute has a new documentary film coming out on Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan. The trailer:
The kicker: the website for the documentary is www.MichaelMadigan.com. Which begs the question, even if he famously eschews technology, how on earth did Madigan’s team not own that URL?
Capitol Fax‘s Rich Miller is in the film. But he’s claiming that he was “duped” into participating. From Miller’s Crain’s Chicago Business column:
I was duped by a right-wing organization into appearing in what will probably be a propaganda movie. It’s my own fault. The producer claimed that while some people were pointing fingers at House Speaker Michael Madigan, his company was interested in doing a fair and balanced film about “what’s really at the center of it all.”
Two days later, I found out that the forthcoming “documentary” is backed by an arm of the well-funded Illinois Policy Institute, one of Madigan’s fiercest critics and a staunch ally of Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner. The institute’s top executive is also a close Rauner adviser. I’m not exactly popular with that group, although I have strongly supported several of its small-business initiatives in Chicago. I’m not expecting to come out of the editing room looking too well.
Such is life.
I’m curious if Miller really thinks that the film will slice and dice what he said to make him look bad, ala the modus operandi of The Daily Show. Anyway, I can’t wait to see what he had to say if he’s openly fretting that he won’t “come out of the editing room looking too well.”
As for this controversy… look, I wasn’t there. But I’ll say this much: there’s a lot of pre-judging of a film that no one has seen yet going on here. It’s hardly uncommon for documentaries to have a distinct point of view. Take a look at some of the recent Oscar winners for Best Documentary:
- 2014: Citizenfour, which is a very sympathetic look at NSA whistleblower/leaker Edward Snowden.
- 2010: Inside Job, which contends that the 2008 financial meltdown was, well, an inside job perpetrated by the corrupt financial services industry.
- 2006: An Inconvenient Truth, a very one-sided and widely disputed take on global warming/climate change featuring Al Gore.
- 2002: Bowling for Columbine, Michael Moore’s anti-gun take on the Columbine school shooting.
And those are just some of the winners. Nominees with distinct points of view have included films like Super Size Me, Jesus Camp, Sicko, Food Inc., Gasland, and plenty of others that were never nominated. If “propaganda” is now being defined as a film having a point of view, then you’d have to say all of these films are propaganda. And it’s pretty hard to judge the Madigan film, since it hasn’t been released yet. Let’s cross that critical bridge when we come to it.
But something caught my attention in the comments on the first Capitol Fax post about this story. Here’s a supposedly anonymous comment:
And Miller’s response:
Jeez.
Sounds awful threatening. And so much for anonymous comments being anonymous, I guess.