Chris Hayashi's New New Plan

Used to be that bureaucrats were predictably dull and boring. You could go to a meeting, take a seat and sleep behind a person with a weight challenge knowing that you wouldn't miss a thing.

Then along came Christiane Hayashi. Not satisfied with the new plan she presented on Friday, the Deputy Director came on yet another, more radical, one on Monday.

Did I say radical? In the long history of labor conflicts, there be may nothing quite like this.

What Ms Hayashi wants to do is negotiate an agreement between all the interested groups that would give something to everybody in such a way that what is taken away magically balances out. If that doesn't make any sense, it's because I don't fully understand everything that she is trying to do.

It'll take hours of discussion to begin to work this plan out. For the moment, all I can try to do is give you some highlights.

What Ms Hayashi proposes (if I understand this correctly) is a structured settlement agreement between the city and all other parties with a "recognized interest" in the taxi business to do the following things:

1. Suspend the lawsuits regarding the ADA and the Gates thus feeing up money that would be spent on legal fees by the city, the MHA, the UTW and others.
2. Raise $18 million for the City of San Francisco by selling 100 cabs to drivers on the list for $180,000 a piece.
3. Give another 100 cabs to people on The List without charge.
4. Qualified (10 years of driving + age 65) medallion holding drivers would be allowed to retire for the next three years. This retirement would be guaranteed regardless of whether the settlement continued or not.
5. There would be no permit fees for anybody during the next three years.
6. A driver's fund would be set up for non-medallion drivers.

There were also other features that would be traded in a Quid Pro Quo manner, such as:

• Taxi companies would be allowed to pass their credit card charges on to the drivers.
• But the drivers would pay the corporate rate of 2.5%
• In return, the Companies would reduce the Gates 5%.

And,

• Drivers on The List would have the choice of buying a medallion or taking one for no charge.
• It was assumed that most of them near the top would take pass on the buy option.
• But, at a certain point, people down on The List would opt to buy and could thus jump the people ahead of them. It was unclear whether there would be a fee charged for this or not.
• It was also unclear as to what guarantees the drivers buying the medallions would have that they would get their money back.

Many other points were also not clarified but we'll be discussing this plan for at least the next couple of weeks. Things should become clearer and clearer as we go along - or not?

Over the three year period $18 million would be dived thusly:

• $6 million would go to the MTA for no apparent reason.
• $6 million would go to the SFPD for enforcement of laws against phony taxis, illegal limos and other things.
• $6 million would go to the Taxi department to pay for staff, materials, driver training, etc etc.

The settlement would be binding as a legal contract, would last for three years and the signees would include:

• MTA
• Police
• Credit unions
• Taxicab companies
• Color schemes
• Litigants in related lawsuits
• MHA
• UTW
• Taxi coalition
• SFCDA

It would also include a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between different departments with the city, including:

• SFPD
• Treasurer
• SFMTA
• Department of Human Resources
• DA

A Request for Information (RFI) on rates of loaning money from credit companies would also be necessary in order to help finance the medallion purchases.

At the end of the three year period, the agreement could be renewed, modified or dumped.

There were a lot of questions asked and scenarios worked out. Most of the people were very interested. Some, including myself, were enthusiastic. The usual hardcore suspects, however, remained hardcore.

Mark Guberg of the UTW thought the plan too complicated and instead wanted to continue his vendetta against medallion holders by making these worthless freeloaders pay for the retirement of all drivers.

Barry Korengold of the SFCDA didn't like the idea of selling cabs for a fixed price because the buyers would lose money on the interest. He was also afraid that this would open the floodgates for future auctions which would unfair to the average driver.

Hansu Kim, who only last week was telling me that he could accept fixed price sales and wanted to maintain The List, reverted to form by singing a lengthy praise to auctions and saying that drivers not on The List should have a right to bid too.

Michael Spain claimed that everyone would think like him in 20 years so we should do the inevitable and start auctions now.

Deputy Director Hayashi said that what the final plan would consist of would be what everybody would agree to in writing.

"What if everybody won't sign the agreement?" a man asked.

"That's not an option," she told him. "We'll keep having meeting until we have an agreement."

Does she intend to take a page from Robert Kennedy Jr. and lock us all in a room until we all sign a settlement?

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.