Murai, Taxi Driver Extraordinaire

The media keeps talking about this rude cab driver who  races around like a lunatic, turns down credit cards, won't take anybody beyond Divisidero, has the personality of an orc and the I.Q. of an ox. I've personally never met the dud and think he's had enough press.

The truth is that most taxi drivers are just ordinary people working hard to feed themselves and their families by doing a very difficult job and getting little or no appreciation for their efforts.

I'm winding this blog down and I do intend to write a piece honoring the average cab driver before I leave the scene, but first I want to celebrate a few of the exceptional people I've met in this business.

I don't think I can do better than start with Murai (photos) who grew up in the Kansas dust bowl; lived the high life in Libya, Rome and London; ran her own fashion business; raised a family as a single mom: has travelled almost everywhere; drove cab for over two decades while earning a bachelor's and a master's degree; holds wonderful salons; and constantly experiments with an art that she creates daily and sends out to us lucky few.

I met Murai ...

... shortly after she started driving for Desoto in 1989. What caught my attention (aside from her being a feminine woman in a macho trade) was that she told me she liked cab driving because it was relaxing.

I'd heard cab driving described in many ways – from "a rolling party" to "the moral equivalent of war" – but Murai is the first driver I'd ever met who found the experience soothing and restful. I knew immediately that I was dealing with a unique character.

An example of this is her name. There is no first or last – "only Murai." She started calling herself this as a nome de art when she was living in London. She later found out that the name was Japanese which she considered an act of synchronicity because she loves Asian art. She once told me her birth name but I've forgotten it. I've never heard her called anything but Murai.

If you only looked at her name and her multicolored hair you might think her a hippie or an artsy flake but nothing could be further from the truth. Murai is as shrewd as they come and has a firmly grounded sense of reality.

Although she started driving a taxi five years after I did she earned a medallion six years before me. Being a typical cab driver, I thought that I wouldn't be in the business long enough to get a medallion. Murai, on the other hand, sized up the situation quickly and tried to put her name on the Waiting List almost immediately. She read that she needed to work for one year before she would be eligible so took the application form home with her and filed it with the Taxi Detail on the first day that she legally could.

She got the medallion when Willie Brown put out 500 medallions in 2000.

Background

Murai was born and raised in Elkhart Kansas, which was the center of the Dust Bowl, and had a population of around 1,000. Her family ran the Elkhart Hotel.

As a teenager Murai longed to move to a city like New York or Paris. She later married an oil man from Kansas and eventually moved with him and her growing family to Libya in 1968.

You can find out more about Murai's early life from her book Heirs and Forebears which contains a series of water color sketches and what she calls "vaguely autobiographical" poems and essays.

Europe

After Libya she moved to Rome (which she liked but didn't speak the language) and finally to London which is close to her idea of paradise. She and her husband rented an apartment in a part of the city which she says is now the most expensive property in the world. Living there gave her a chance to pursue her love of art, fashion and artists.

Contrary to stereotype, Murai found the English to be "very creative and a bit avant-garde both with the theatre and with the clothing ... it was just a very creative place to live so I just loved everything about it."

Her little film, Rhythms of the Heart, will show you more of what her life was like at the time than I can possibly do. It's also a great introduction to the collage artist Bulgar Finn.

Fashion

Murai and her family moved back to Houston, Texas in 1978. She and her husband soon realized that they had nothing in common except Europe and broke up. She received a small settlement and moved to San Francisco to raise her children alone.

She found herself "unemployable" and didn't know what else to do so she started designing coats and accidentally became part of a movement later called "Art to Wear." "I was just making things," she said.

"I started out at I. Magnin's – the most exclusive store – and they did private shows of my clothes in three of their stores including their Beverly hills store where they did four windows of that store with my coats and I didn't know that was a big deal ... I'd been living in Europe ... I had no idea people would kill to get four windows with their stuff."

 Later she went into business for herself selling directly to customers through her connections in New York and Europe. This lasted from the late 70's to the late 80's.

When I asked her if she was making good money, she said:

"It's hard to know because I was freaked out all the time... I had three teenagers to support who were used to living very well with little support from my Ex ... So I was just frantic with employees and supplies and kids but we always lived in great looking places that we rented. We used them as showrooms so we could write them off ... I had a space in New York and London where people represented me ... I'm creative and versatile so I could come up with a whole lot of designs in a hurry... I could make very expensive things out of not very expensive fabric ... I did amazingly well but I was frightened all the time."


Cab Driving

How did you get into the cab business?

"At the end of the coat business I was just freaked out by the stress of it ... when the kids were out of college or married, I felt free do do what I wanted ... so I wanted to go back and get a Master's in psychology ... that's why I did the cab. I was going to do the cab until I became a counselor."

During her studies she discovered,  "I was a classic ADD character ..." and "the cab is a classic ADD vehicle because it's always unplanned, it's always spontaneous ... it's a lot of fun–I love the customers ... I have the most interesting customers and the greatest conversations ... I've loved it from day one."

"So I did finish and I did get my Master's. At that point I thought I liked the cab better and didn't want to work outside of it so I stayed in the cab business."

Murai was one of handful of medallion holders (along with Victoria Lansdown, Barry Korengold and a couple of others) to push for the Pilot Plan instead of open auctions in order to keep the medallions affordable for more drivers.

Spirit

It's no secret that Murai has had cancer for the last 16 months but she hasn't given in to depression or despair. Instead she's continued making art and recently held a Salon that attracted her many friends from her many walks of life. These included: fellow artists, business and fashion people, friends from Europe, cab drivers, administrators and a young Polish woman who told me that she'd met Murai sitting next to her on a flight from London and that it was the greatest trip of her life.

But it's time to let Murai speak in her own words.

We Say, "Down with Lyft": CPUC Say, "Down with Us"

San Francisco taxicab drivers held the biggest protest yesterday in the thirty years that I've been driving a cab. As a low estimate, 1,000 taxicabs circled City Hall. There may have been more. A crowd filled the steps. There were numerous brilliant speeches given by cab drivers, handicapped people, a taxi company owner and the head of a credit union.

At approximately the same time as the protest ended, I received this e-mail from the CPUC.

antonina.swansen@cpuc.ca.gov	3:43 PM (5 hours ago)
to me

This email provides service of Cmmr Peevey's Proposed Decision. The full text is made available through the link provided below on July 30, 2013. A Notice of Availability has been served by mail to all persons on the service list.

Summary: Proposed Decision Decision adopting rules and regulations to protect public safety while allowing new entrants to the transportation industry. Opening comments, which shall not exceed 15 pages, are due no later than August 19, 2013. Reply comments, which shall not exceed 5 pages, are due 5 days after the last day for filing opening comments. .

In the event of problems with the e-mail or the internet link, please contact Antonina Swansen at avs@cpuc.ca.gov, (415) 703-2546.

The afore-mentioned "internet link" did not work for me. So, the above is all I have for the moment. ABC news has reported that the decision will allow the illegal rideshares to become legal. But any relation between what ABC reports and reality is purely accidental. Until I can actually read what Swansen sent me, I won't understand what the decision really means.

In the meantime, we have thirty days from either now or the 24th to formulate arguments to sway the CPUC commission of the virtues our positon. In the meantime here are some photographs of the rally.

The City vs the Cab Drivers: Now!

How rapidly the past becomes the future. Yesterday morning I wrote a post about a bleak moment in our recent past and today I find that it could become tomorrow's reality. The SFMTA has a new proposal.

It appears that Director Malcom Heinicke has convinced his colleagues that he is an expert on the taxicab business and they have taken in his gab hook, line and sinker.

Certainly, I doubt that anyone else on the MTA Board is cold enough to come up with a scheme like this.

Philosophically, the plan holds that public needs are more important those of any individual - especially if said individual drives a taxi. ("The city needs money, driver, and we volunteer YOU to foot the bill.") If enacted, the proposed legislation (on rough calculation) would result in the transfer of $100 million to $200 million from taxicab drivers to the SFMTA over a period of time - maybe more ... probably more.

I haven't gone through the specifics yet but in general the Medallion Reform Proposal would:

• Increase the transfer fee to the MTA from the sale of a taxi from 15% to 30% while increasing the price to $300,000.
• Allow Pre-K medallion holders to sell ... er ... I guess the world is "surrender" (as if the drivers had stolen the medallions when, of course, it's the MTA that wants something for nothing). Anyway, the "holders" can "surrender" their medallions to the MTA for $150,000 as opposed to selling them for $200,000 as they could have under the Pilot Plan.
• Force Post-K medallion holders to "surrender" their medallions to MTA for $150,000 instead of selling them for $200,000 as they could have under the Pilot Plan.
• Allow the MTA to turn around and sell the same medallions for which they had just paid $150,000 - for $300,000.
• Leave the drivers on the Waiting List who have worked the job hard and served the public well for fifteen or twenty years, who have followed all the rules and were promised a medallion if they did so, who have chosen to drive cabs instead of doing other jobs or following other careers,  hundreds of whom are over sixty waiting for - NOTHING.

Maybe this should be re-named Medallion Deform.

There will be two Town Hall Meeting to discuss the particulars of this moral and political abortion on: 

Tuesday, August 7 at #1 South Van Ness, 2nd floor Atrium from 1:30pm - 4:30pm  & 5 pm - 8pm.

The following items will be on the agenda for the August 21, 2012 SFMTA Board Meeting, meaning that nothing we say at the Town Hall meeting is expected to have any effect. Talk about transparency, huh!

MedallionReformCalendarItemfor08212012_000(1).pdf 24K   View   Download

MedallionReformLegislationfor08212012.pdf 72K   View   Download  To Brad Newsham, Sorry, Brad, if I said anything unkind.

The City vs Cab Drivers? A Micro History 1.

The issue in 1984 was putting more taxis on the street for the Democratic convention. However, as long as she was at it, then Major Dianne Feinstein decided to reform the cab business as well.

The problem was addressed by the Police Commission which regulated cabs at the time. They assigned a young police lieutenant (whose name I forget) to do a thorough study of the taxi industry including in-depth interviews with cab drivers.

What I don't forget is the interview. It turned out that instead of talking to drivers individually, the L.T. chose to meet a group of us in a room. I was a newbie but the rest of the drivers had been around many a block. We totalled about 140 years of cab driving experience. We were confident that we could give the man many insights into how the taxi business really worked and how to improve it.

The L.T. popped suddenly into the room and started to tell us what would be in his report without asking us one single question. He informed us that during his research at SFO he'd spend over two hours observing the situation during a Tuesday afternoon in April.

I raised my hand and politely suggested that he had a few details wrong.

"Well," he interrupted shouting, "I disagree! And, if it comes to a fight, the cops'll beat the cabbies!"

I kid you not. That was the in-depth interview.

Surprisingly, the report agreed exactly with Feinstein's analysis of the situation: namely that cab drivers were poor in quality but there should be more of them. The L.T. was praised by the Police Commission and promoted to Commander of the Taraval Police Station a few years later. Last I heard he was doing well with a private law practice.

His report had no lasting effects what-so-ever on the taxi business but it leaves me with an observation and a question.

Cab drivers were considered neither part of the public nor the working class.

The situation was officially framed by the press as Cab Driver Income vs Public Good but you didn't have to read too far between the lines to see that what they actually meant was Greedy Cabbies vs Us.

For me, the most startling aspect of the farce (I was a newbie remember) was that a gaggle of liberal democratic politicians didn't see us as workers. They treated almost us like a criminal class. Or, as Chris Hayashi's predecessor Heidi Machen once put it, cab drivers were "either criminals or soon would be."

 In 1984, the city actually set up a cab stand in the Sunset and assigned a policeman to make sure that a cab driver stayed on the stand to take radio calls.

This conception of cab drivers as future-cons was brought home to me a few years later when "left-wing liberal" Supervisor Carol Ruth Silver herded a bunch of us (apparently chosen at random) into the Board of Supervisor's chamber. I'm not sure why we were there but these were some of the best and most experienced cab drivers that I knew. I think Silver intended to include "Taxicab Reform" in her re-election package.

She shouted and snarled at us like a Drill Sergeant, had us line up standing at attention and demanded that we show her our identification. When I started to ask her why we were there, she screamed at me to, "Shut Up!"

She took our A-cards and IDs into another room - apparently to photocopy them. When she returned she told us that we'd better shape up by the next year.

"I wouldn't worry about that," I told her.

"Why not?" she demanded, incredulous at my temerity in speaking to her.

"Because we're going to vote you out of office!" I said ... well ...  I think I lost it and yelled.

In any case, it shut her up. She walked out of the room staring at me with hostility and confusion. It might never before have occurred to her that we were capable of reading a ballot much less voting.

She did lose the election but there probably were issues other than my vengeance involved.

What I take from this incident is the image of a woman who had been jailed in 1961 for fighting for the rights of Afro-Americans in the segregated South talking to us exactly like a bigot might have talked to a "N......" in the South of that same period.


Why didn't the L.T. actually interview us?

I mean,  he didn't make that decision by himself. Not this guy. His supervisors, the Police Commission, maybe Feinstein herself dictated his behavior. But why?

They'd already gone to considerable expense, they already had the cab drivers available, why not interview us? Why not try to understand the business? Why not have a real reform? Feinstein could've taken credit for it. Why not do it?

I've been pondering this question for a long time and the only answer I can come up with is that Feinstein thought that her ideas about the taxi business were THE TRUTH.

Another way of putting it, would be to say that Feinstein, and the other city officials, thought that cab drivers were either too stupid to understand their own business or that the business was so simple that any "educated person" could understand it, probably both.

This conception of "cabbies" as a semi-literate, future-criminal class would dominate city politics for the next twenty years.

Why I Am Not Standing with "THE" Drivers

A long-time, cab-driving friend of mine demanded to know why I "chose not to stand with the drivers" on the issues of their recent MTA protest and also demanded to know "who appointed" me to defend Chris Hayashi.

The fanatical, "you're either for us or against us,""she's guilty - why waste money on a trial?" tone of my friends interrogation pretty much answers these questions by itself. I was right. The protest was an ambush. And, the fact that my friend, who is ordinarily intelligent and thoughtful, should be so filled with anger and fear that she wouldn't even listen to another point of view is yet another reason for me to stand against "THE drivers."

As for the Deputy Director, when you consider all the things she's done for the taxi industry and the drivers, she shouldn't have to be defended for trying to create another "win-win" solution to a difficult problem.

More reasons why I don't stand with THE drivers.

1. There is no such thing as THE cab drivers in San Francisco. We are contentious group. There is no one, or no one group, that speaks for us. The claims made by the protesters of representing 5,000 drivers is completely bogus.
2. "THE drivers" who showed up were attacking on the basis of half-truths, hysterical fears and misinformation. 
3. Screaming and shouting is rarely conducive to clear thought.
4. I stopped letting other people do my thinking for me when I was 15 years old and made the mistake of telling a burly Christian Brother that I thought there was no God.
5. In short, the day that I let Mary McGuire and Tariq Mahmood decide what my opinions should be will be a long, cold day in hell.

I've been a cab driver for over twenty-five years and I've always found that one of the greatest virtues of my fellow professionals is that they do think for themselves.

Therefore, whenever I speak my mind, I am standing up for THE cab drivers of San Francisco.

Supes Pass Watered Down Enforcement Against Illegal Cabs et al

At yesterday's Board of Supervisors meeting, the board unanimously voted to pass their watered down version of legislation making it a misdemeanor to operate illegal taxis or limos, or to solicit or accept payment for referral of passengers, or assignment of shifts or dispatched calls, or other illegal activities that suck money off of legitimate cab drivers and both cheat and endanger the general public.

The Supes voted to okay their own amended version of the ordinance that lessened the penalties that the police can give from $2,500 and $5,000 to $1,000.

A confused message: crime doesn't pay ... too much.

Whatever - as my mother used to say, "it's better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick."

The legislation will allow MTA investigators to issue tickets to illegal vehicles et al. Taxi Services Director Christiane Hayashi hopes to hire two full time investigators who can devote all their energy to enforcing the laws against illegal cabs, sticky palmed doormen and the like. This will mark the first time that anyone has seriously and systematically gone after these felons.

The Board of Supervisors also passed a resolution supporting Peak-Hour Taxi Permits.

A Short History of San Francisco's Taxi Crisis: Bigoty & Cabbies, Part 2

When Mayor Newsom discovered that he was $600 million in debt, one of the first things he DID NOT DO was tell the people of San Francisco that he was going to cut back on their bus service. Instead he came out with his plan to "improve" taxi service by taking taxis away from cab drivers, auctioning them off and keeping the money for the city.

People in San Francisco take ten times more buses than cabs. In short, the issue was and is a red herring, a pump fake, a sound bite designed to take the public's mind away the fact that they are going to be waiting longer for buses.

Mayors from Dianne Feinstein on have used taxicabs for similar ploys, but Newsom is the first mayor to claim that he could improve taxi service by attacking San Francisco's cab drivers.

His justifications rest on a series of half truths coupled with assumptions that are essentially racist. But first - the facts, just the facts.

San Francisco has a unique cab system.

• Taxi medallions are not for sale. They are leased to drivers on a first come first serve basis.
• There is a waiting list to get a medallion that is currently 3,000 applicants long.
• The wait for a medallion is about 15 years.
• The medallion goes back to the city when a medallion holder either stops driving or dies.

Now some half truths followed by facts.

Half truth: Auctioning off cabs would give more taxi drivers a chance to own one.

• Fact: Almost 1,400 out of 1,500 of San Francisco's taxicab medallions are owned by individual drivers. About 1 driver in 5 owns a medallion. In other words 90% of the taxis are owned by individual drivers. This is by far the highest percentage in the country.
• Fact: In New York City by comparison, 5,525 out of 13,107 are owned by individual drivers. This works out to 42% of the medallions - less than half the percentage in San Francisco.
• Fact: Johnny Marks of www.nycabbie.com/ writes: "That % (the 42%) sounds a little high, what with the cost of the city license (medallion) presently going for $750,000.00 which does not include the cost of the cab itself."
• Fact: According to the Asian Law Caucus only 1 driver in 20 can afford to buy a taxi in NYC.
• Probability: Most of the cabs in NYC are actually owned by people financing the cab drivers, not the drivers themselves.

Half truth: According to Mayor Newsom's man at the MTA, Director Malcom Heinicke, taxi medallions are "essentially free."

• Fact: The medallions are not dropped from the sky or won in a lottery.
• Fact: A driver puts in an average of 15 years of hard labor to get the medallion and pays about $200,000 in rental fees. Therefore, the medallion is "earned" not free.

Half truth: Aging medallion holders are not working and because of this the service is bad.

• Fact: About 20% of the medallion holders are indeed too old to drive. This does not, however, mean that the cabs are sitting idle. Ordinary drivers work the cabs when the medallion holder doesn't. Almost every cab in the fleet is in operation 20 hours a day, seven days a week.

Doublethink: According to Newsom, "If drivers had more of a stake in their industry ... that could translate into better service for the customers."

• Opinion: I don't see how somebody would have "more of a stake" by getting a cab in an auction than working 15 years to own one.
• Fact: If you own the medallion you own the medallion. It doesn't matter how you got it. The stake in the industry is the same.

There are subtexts to Newsom's arguments that basically racist. He's morphing the stereotypes formally associated with blacks. What's he's saying in other words is:

• The service is bad because the drivers are lazy.
• We're paying them too much money so they aren't working.
• If we pay them less (put them in debt to pay for the auction price) they'll work harder.

Newsom has no idea if the cab service is good or not. (The average waiting time in front of his most famous restaurant, The Balboa Cafe, is about 15 seconds.) But Newsom does know that he can always gain political points by appealing to people's prejudices and bashing "cabbies."

• The truth is that the medallion system has created a class of professional drivers. The promise of being able to own a medallion someday keeps experienced drivers in the business.
• Fact: San Francisco has the most knowledgeable cab drivers in the USA.
• Fact: Replacing San Francisco's veteran drivers with deep-pocket newbies would most certainly make the service much worse.

The idea that medallion holders aren't working because they make too much money is absurd.

• At one public hearing, a woman claimed that medallion holders weren't working because they were home eating pizzas. Did she mean to say that they were home eating watermelons?
• Facts: Medallion holders average about $45,000 per year. The average salary in San Francisco is $65,000. Medallion holders get paid $2,000 a month to lease out their cabs. Studio apartments start at $1,500 per month. Most cab drivers can't afford not to work.

According to a source who wishes to remain anonymous, Newsom came up with a plan when he was a city supervisor to solve the homeless problem by detoxing homeless people and having them drive taxicabs.

Newsom's callous disregard for the fate of the drivers is certainly consistent with this attitude. In his world, cab drivers are lowlifes and undesirables. They are not "one of us," not real San Franciscans. If the drivers are too old, you just take the cabs away and let them fend for themselves. If they waited 15 years and paid $200,000 in fees with the idea that they were going to own something at the end of it, that's their problem.

This is the way you treat a member of an underclass, not a fellow human being.

When these stupid, lazy cab drivers mounted a series of protests against his plan, Mayor Newsom had his man Heinicke take it off the table.

This was in March 2009. But that wasn't the end of the matter. Only the beginning.

A Short History of San Francisco's Taxi Crisis: Bigoty & Cabbies, Part 1

An African American customer of mine was waxing sympathetic.

"I don't know how you do this job," he said, "I mean they're rude, they abuse you, they demean you ... it's almost like being black."

"Except," I said, "I don't have to drive the cab home."

But he had a point. The stereotype is almost exactly the same. Cab drivers supposedly are dumb, dishonest, lazy, dirty and smell bad. Although they're stupid, you have to watch them because they're clever and they'll cheat you if they can.

The cliché is also fed by the fact that many cab drivers are immigrants and minorities of various kind. Snobs who are way too PC to utter a racial or ethnic slur can still get their jollies by slandering "cabbies."

Of course labeling a class of people as inferior leads to more than mere insults. Inferior people are treated differently. If you want to complain about a bus driver, you call your local MTA. If you want to complain about about a cab driver, in most cities you call the police.

Far too many people would probably agree with the former Director of the San Francisco Taxi Commission, Heidi Machen, who wrote, "All of the ex-cons and alternative types who can't make it in another profession ... eventually wind up driving ... taxis."

At best, we're seen as a collection of foreigners and lowlifes.

Certainly San Francisco's "liberal" mayor, Gavin Newsom, was not thinking of cab drivers in February 2009 when he wrote, "Our job (during the recession) is ... to save San Franciscan's from losing their homes, losing their jobs and losing their small businesses."

On the contrary, Mayor Newsom intended to help fight San Francisco's budget deficit by taking the taxis away from San Francisco's cab drivers, selling them at auctions and keeping "most of the money..."

Newsom never mentioned the fact that his plan would cause most of San Francisco's 1,200 taxicab owners to lose their small businesses, their jobs and no doubt their homes.

"This city asset (taxis) has been underutilized and the (taxi) industry has underperformed," said the mayor who ran for election on a platform of balancing the budget. The city was $600 million in debt at the time he spoke.

And he talks about us underperforming?

That's the nice thing about spouting stereotypes. You don't have to worry about facts. If by "underutilized" the mayor means the taxi industry isn't paying its fair share, this is nonsense. The cab business actually pays millions of dollars per year in fees and taxes. Medallion holders alone pay $1.5 million per year in licensing fees.

If the mayor means (as he seems to imply) that he can solve San Francisco's deficit problems by selling cabs, he's dreaming. If he auctioned off all of the fleet's 1,500 taxis for $400,000 a piece, it would indeed cover his deficit. But (legal issues aside) who would buy the taxis in such a scenario?

Can you imagine the outcry that would take place if Newsom tried to pull a stunt like this in another industry? What if he decided to take over the city's trucking businesses? Or beauty salons? Or even massage parlors?

He would be condemned by the unions on one hand and civil libertarians on the other.

But cab drivers? Who cares? They're "underperfoming".

Mayor Newsom fought against a 1.395% business tax that could have raised millions of dollars for the people but would have hit his friends and himself.

Gavin Newsom apparently thinks that somebody has to sacrifice themselves for the good of the city but it's not going to be him or his cronies.

Let it be the cabbies.

Chris Daly Withdraws His Charter Amendment

Supervisor Chris Daly shocked a room full of cab drivers this morning when he passed around a note saying that he had withdrawn his charter amendment regarding taxicabs. There was no explanation given so the matter is open to speculation.

One possibility is that he realized that the Two-thirds Rule predicted by a certainly blogger was indeed working against him. In fact, my sources tell me that the UTW was outnumbered eight to four at the general Board of Supervisors meeting on Tuesday June 30.

This may have opened Daly's eyes to the reality behind the UTW's claim to represent most of the cab drivers in San Francisco. In fact, the UTW was itself divided over Mark Gruberg's insistence on putting medical benefits in the proposal because this kept the SFCDA from backing it. Instead the SFCDA lined up alongside the MHA against Gruberg.

At least one medallion holder who had attended the meeting thought that the rest of the Board had turned against Daly on the issue.

Daly may also have been influenced by City Controller Ben Rosenfield's financial analysis of the amendment which stated that "the estimated costs of the proposed benefits represent 30% to 100% of the (taxi) industry's gross revenue. If the taxi industry absorbed some of these costs, it would need to increase revenue ... possibly by increasing fares, or by some other means."

Another way to put it might be to say that the amendment wasn't financially feasible.

In any case, Supervisor Daly appears to have seen the writing on the wall and it spelled out defeat.

For the rest of us, count it as one victory in a long war.

Millionaire Mayor’s Plan to Bail Out San Francisco by Soaking Its Cab Drivers: Part 1.

 San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom who has used his movie star good looks and mastery of misleading sound-bites to become a leading Democratic California gubernatorial candidate, recently tried to fix his city's $600 million deficit by attempting to take 1,500 taxi medallions away from their owner/drivers and sell them at an auction.

• Saying vaguely that the city "would keep most of the money" from the auction "but some would go to the drivers," Newsom wanted the profits to go toward regulating the taxi industry and helping finance San Francisco's sinking public transportation system.
• At approximately the same time as he tried to impose a sales tax of 51% to 99% upon cab drivers - one of the lowest paid groups of workers serving the city - he also tried to veto a ballot measure to re-impose a 1.395% Gross Business Tax - which would raise far more money. Newsom, who along with billionaire Gordon Getty owns numerous bars and restaurants that would be affected by the business tax, said that while the proposition "would raise city taxes by tens of millions ... raising taxes does not necessarily raise revenue."
• The San Francisco Board of Supervisors overrode the Mayor's veto and put the measure on the ballot.
• Newsom, who has also claimed that the "challenge" for his administration is to save "San Franciscans from losing their jobs, losing their homes and losing their small businesses" would have taken jobs and businesses away from as many as 1,000 cab owner/drivers with his plan. They wouldn't have to worry about losing their homes, however, because very few cab drivers can afford one.

When over 100 angry cab drivers (many of whom were pretty good at sound-bites themselves) showed up at an MTA meeting to protest the plan, Newsom had it withdrawn.