Chicago Alderman's Plan On City Budget Crisis: Let's Just Charge Uber And Lyft More To Fix It
from the that's-not-a-plan dept
Big city budgets are hellaciously complicated affairs. That much is obvious, but the actual level of management of a budget likely goes far beyond what the average member of the public realizes. Even with that stipulated, the city of Chicago's budget is an absolute mess. Budget shortfalls abound for any number of reasons, ranging from bloated payrolls, to pet projects that have missed the mark on cost projections, to a shortage of income related to police and parking activity from our infamous redlight cameras and our equally infamous privatization of parking meters. Anyone looking to solve this budget crisis is likely to begin pulling their hair out immediately, wondering where to even begin.
Except for Alderman Anthony Beale, longtime stooge for the taxi industry, who has suggested an easy fix: just go crazy in taxing the hell out of innovative ride-sharing services like Uber and Lyft.
Beale, who chairs the City Council Transportation Committee, said he hopes Emanuel will revisit the idea of higher fees and tougher regulations on the burgeoning ride share industry as part of budget talks for 2018. He said the move would help even the playing field for cab drivers finding it increasingly difficult to compete. Beale wanted a per-ride charge of $1 on ride share companies as part of Emanuel’s 2016 budget. Instead, Emanuel raised the charge from 30 cents to 52 cents per ride.
“We should have went for the dollar and we negotiated down to the 50-cent (fee),” Beale said Wednesday. “Now here we are again, going for the dollar. And so, I think we could have been much further along if we had just stuck to our guns and gone for the dollar a couple years ago.”
Chicago has been a battleground of sorts in this fight between taxis and ride-sharing services. The per-ride fee instituted in 2016 came on the heels of a city-wide protest by taxis in 2015, where cabs refused to pick up fares in the downtown area and instead just honked their horns a bunch while those of us that work down here tried to actually do our jobs. The protest was designed not so much to rally public support to their side, as the public's voting with their wallets is what got us here in the first place. Rather, it was designed simply to be a pain in the city's ass enough for city officials to write in higher per-ride fees into its licensing legal framework.
And to that extent, it worked. The fee went up by a third or so. For Beale to lament the lack of a 300% increase in fees and, more fallaciously, to frame the desire for that increase as a budget solution when it is nothing of the sort, is fairly laughable. The real reason for Beale's angst is that he is the errand boy of Chicago's taxi companies, plain and simple. This is pure entrenched player protectionism and regulatory capture in reverse, with taxi companies looking to regulate more innovative and useful companies to death, or at least into some sort of insane fairness coma.
That isn't how government is supposed to be done, but it sure is the Chicago way.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Filed Under: anthony beale, budget, chicago, ride sharing
Companies: lyft, uber
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
Which really means lets turn them into tax collectors, collecting tax from the people who use their services. Any company that wishes to remain in business simply passes such taxes onto their customers, with a little extra to cover their book keeping expenses, plus a little more for profit.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Local government backed monopolies
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Uber's sole advantage is subsidized by "venture capitalists",
Undercutting prices isn't a new idea, kids, and it used to prosecuted as unfair competition. It's solely the current bought and paid for crony capitalism that allows Uber to exist at all.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Uber's sole advantage is subsidized by "venture capitalists",
http://money.cnn.com/2017/04/14/technology/uber-financials/
I guess Geigner believes that enough time has passed that Uber's corporate culture of sexual harassment, and Kalanick's explosive anger when a driver complained have been forgotten.
The worst that this tax could do is partly balance Uber's crime of unfair competition.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Uber's sole advantage is subsidized by "venture capitalists",
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Normal Leftish Government
It's also the California way, Illinois, New York, Connecticut, Washington DC and Venezuela way. Destructive, outrageous tax & spend government occurs wherever leftists are in charge.
Chicago is one of the worst cases in America but it's long been in a fiscal death spiral after 86 years of Democratic Control.
US Congressmen think just like Chicago Alderman, but Feds can print all the money they want. Chicago has hiked every tax and fee it can think of --- but it's never enough.
The trouble with socialism is that eventually you run out of other peoples money to spend.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Normal Leftish Government
The trouble with your analogy is that is just simply is not applicable. The political system in place in the city of Chicago is not socialism - but you knew that.
Now, why does a big city need all that money? Did you mention all those bribes that the captains of industry need because they just might move their business out of the city .... or that pet project some big wig wants ... or any of those other non-socialism related expenditures - yeah, didn't think so
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Normal Leftish Government
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Normal Leftish Government
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
cabs refused to pick up fares in the downtown area and instead just honked their horns a bunch
So, like, it wouldn't be a problem if someone "accidentally" ran over the cabs, right?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Innovative ride-sharing?
The only "innovation" they've come up with is a new way for rich people to make more money on the backs of the workers.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Innovative ride-sharing?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
The vice tax
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Taxing sources of economic growth
James C. Walker, National Motorists Association
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]