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Texas Legislature Clears Road For Uber and Lyft To Return To Austin (austinmonitor.com)

Posted by EditorDavid on from the messing-with-Texas dept.

schwit1 shared this article from the Austin Monitor: The Texas Legislature has cleared the road for Uber and Lyft to return to Austin on their own terms. On Wednesday, the state Senate overwhelmingly approved House Bill 100 on second and third readings, sending the statewide ride-hailing regulations to Governor Greg Abbott's desk for his signature. If Abbott signs it, as he is expected to do, the new law will preempt regulations City Council passed in December 2015 that both Uber and Lyft deemed too restrictive on transportation network companies such as themselves.
The new rules still require criminal background checks, but drop the requirement for fingerprinting. "We find it unfortunate that the 36 lobbyists deployed by the Silicon Valley giants were effective in convincing the State Legislature that there was a need to overrule the Austin voters," said a local ride-sharing company, which vowed to continue operating -- and to at least continue fingerprinting their own drivers. Houston's mayor complained the new statewide rules handed down are "another example of the legislature circumventing local control to allow corporations to profit at the expense of public safety."

7 of 107 comments (clear)

  1. taxi robbery by KiloByte · · Score: 3, Insightful

    "another example of the legislature circumventing local control to allow corporations to profit at the expense of public safety."

    As opposed to taxi mafia bribing the legislature to profit at the expense of the public?

    Uber might have its flaws, but they're strictly better than taxi corporations (for everyone who's not a member of the taxi mafia, doesn't profit from selling medallions/etc, and doesn't get bribes^Wcampaign donation from said mafia).

    --
    The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
    1. Re:taxi robbery by SumDog · · Score: 4, Informative

      > Uber might have its flaws

      Have you been reading Slashdot? Every week there's a story about Uber. We know their work environment is over-competitive and toxic. They have a "Hell" map that uses fake accounts to show all rival ride-share driver locations (including Lyft and taxi companies with their own apps), several high ranking Uber staff have left this year, two women have written posts about sexual harassment, information about Greyball shows how they used tech to get around fines from local laws, Google is suing them for stealing self-driving tech ...

      Uber is terrible, their wages for drivers drop every year, they have a toxic business structure and yet no one seems to give a shit and still uses them with the "Uber might have its flaws" bullshit argument.

      Fuck Uber

  2. Small government republicans win again! by mrmaster · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It's quite frustrating to read, multiple times, how state government continues to override local municipalities. Another instance is in regards to city fracking ordinances. It's also worrisome that Texas has done nothing to reduce the bribes...sorry..I meant to say campaign contributions and the conflicts of interests that exist in the state senate. God, I just sent can't get enough of small government!

    1. Re:Small government republicans win again! by Koby77 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      With state law versus the federal government, the constitution enumerates certain states rights. That is, they defined the things for which the federal government controls, and left other issues to be decided for the states themselves. Not necessarily so with city rights. It is not the place of cities to carve out their own little fiefdoms for which large-scale projects such as the internet, energy projects, or mass transit, are things to which everyone else must be subservient. Cities are there to provide local services, such as police, fire, garbage collection, and perhaps some road repairs. When individual cities start stomping on the rights of state citizens, then it is well within the scope of the state to step in and restore those rights.

    2. Re:Small government republicans win again! by thrich81 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      It wasn't the faceless "City of Austin" which passed the ride sharing rules, it was Austin's voting citizens who passed the rules in a hard fought referendum where the ride sharing companies outspent their opponents by several times. So that's it -- the people WHO LIVE THERE wanted those rules. The State of Texas does have the legal right to overrule the expressed desire of the citizens of Austin, but why, just for spite (or bribes)? For the people that don't like the Austin laws and ways of doing business there are plenty of other places in Texas to move to; not any other big cities (except Fort Worth) as they all have similar politics now, but plenty of smaller cities with "real Texas values", but for various reasons those smaller places aren't seen as such desirable places to live. If the cities are there to "to provide local services, such as police, fire, garbage collection, and perhaps some road repairs", then what in heck is the State there for? The feds provide national defense and the Interstate highway system, the cities provide local services, the local school districts provide for the public schools. What is really left for the states?, mostly just corruption and overrepresentation of the rural areas , at least here in Texas.

    3. Re: Small government republicans win again! by SvnLyrBrto · · Score: 3, Insightful

      They weren't just trying to *regulate* Uber and Lyft though. The ordinance in question specifically targeted them and was crafted so as to be so onerous as to drive them out of the market. Tellingly, it didn't include the legacy taxi companies in the regulations; only "transportation network companies".

      And it wasn't just background checks. There was a requirement to open up local offices, restrictions on Uber and Lyft picking up passengers at "special events", restrictions on automated surge pricing, a requirement to hold "community outreach events" whatever that was supposed to mean, a money grab, and (perhaps worst of all from a tech company's POV) a demand that Uber and Lyft hand over access to their internal rider and trip data to the city.

      And let's not forget: This was not a case of Uber and Left moving into an existing regulatory structure and demanding that the rules be changed because they were special or whatnot. Both companies had already been operating in Austin for some time. The city then imposed entire new regulations after the fact to target and drive away Uber and Lyft. That's corruption and regulatory capture (Remember, the ordinance targeted TNCs only, and excluded the legacy taxi corporations.) at it's worst. Perhaps this state law was not the best way to go about it; but Austin's city politicians really did need to be slapped down hard on this one.

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      Imagine all the people...
  3. The "Goldilocks" level of government. by whoever57 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    State legislators continue to show that their concern for local government doesn't extend downwards from their own level.

    The Federal level is too high, the city level is too low. The state level is just right: the "Goldilocks" level.

    --
    The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!