Report on the Taxi Advisory Council: Part 1

Before reporting on the TAC's report, I thought it might be enlightening to look at the TAC itself. After all, votes aren't made in a vacuum. There are politics involved in everything.

The council started as a directive  from former Executive Director of the MTA Nat Ford, the format was worked out by Deputy Director of Taxi Services Chris Hayashi and the councilors were chosen by Ford from a list of people who applied.

Format

The council was set up to represent as many of the viewpoints as possible. It has fifteen members which originally included:

• Three representatives from the largest three companies: Yellow, Luxor and DeSoto - Bill Gillespie, John Lazar & Jane Bolig respectively.
• Three representatives from smaller companies = Chris Sweis of Royal Cab, Dan Hinds of National Cab & Athan Rebelos of Green Cab.
• Three medallion holders not employed by a company - Barry Korengold of the SFCA, Carl Macmurdo of the MHA and Lori Graham.
• Three drivers on the waiting list - John Han, Bill Mounsey & Dmitry Navarov.
• Three drivers not on the waiting list - Timothy Ajaegbu, David Khan & Bill Minikel.

The council was also originally supposed to include Mark Gruberg as a representative from both the UTW and Green Cab but he declined because he thought the UTW should have its own rep.

In any case, the aim of the set up was to achieve a balance amonst the various forces in the industry.

Whoops!

Once the meetings started it quickly became obvious that this was not the case. The early votes ran 11-4 or 10-5 in favor of the owner's positions. What had happened?

Well ... a few people were clearly not representing the groups that they had been chosen to stand for, most spectacularly Lori Graham, Timothy Ajaegbu and Dmitry Nazarov.

Ajaegbu's problem was attendance, which was most dramatically illustrated on the occasion when he arrived in the middle of a roll call vote on a meter increase and sprinted into his seat as though he was sliding into third base just seconds before the vote closed. He clearly had no idea what the issue was. Three or four people told him to vote "yes" so he did.

Graham, chosen as a "medallion holder not employed by a company," had obviously failed to tell her interviewers (what she would later write on sftaxi's mail list) that she didn't believe that cab drivers knew enough about the taxi business to criticize the companies and voted with her boss, Yellow's Jim Gillespie, every time.

Nazarov (on left in photo) did her one better. Supposedly representing "drivers on the waiting list," he not only always voted with his lease holder, Luxor's John Lazar, but he also expressed Lazar's positions whenever he spoke.  Once Lazar reached around and gave Nazarov a neck squeeze, leading to a running joke on the council that Lazar kept his hand on the back of Nazarov's neck in order to make his head go up and down or back and forth as needed.

Two TAC's Not One.

Then, several council positions changed hands. Nazarov bought a medallion and Graham was replaced for lack of engagement during the meetings - though I thought this was unfair because she followed Gillespie on the voting roll call and didn't need to pay much attention to know when (or when not) to raise her hand. Tone Lee replaced Nazarov.  Ruach Graffis  of the UTW replaced Ajaegbu. Tara Houseman replaced Graham and, because of the change of management at DeSoto, Athan Rebelos switched seats to represent DeSoto instead of Green, and Richard Hybels of Metro Cab stepped in to represent smaller companies.  These changes fundamentally altered the character of the council.

In short, there have actually been two Taxi Advisory Councils. The original, which represented the owners, and the current version, which comes closer to representing all parties in the business including last year's horn honking "strikers." These differences had an effect on the voting - on occasion, dramatically so.