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