📚 Chairperson's Discretion & Understanding TLC Rules

Ahead of the Wednesday, April 19th TLC Commission hearing, we discuss why details & process matter, how it can help drivers present compelling testimony and ultimately lead to better policy

Apr 06, 2023

In contrast to (or perhaps in alignment with) the lyrics of U2’s famous song…sometimes you find things you aren’t looking for.

After our piece covering the fairly widespread accusation around Revel potentially being allocated more than 25 EV FHV Licenses (a/k/a TLC Plates) in last week’s contentious “First Come, First Served” process, we were ready to move on to the next topic - a public TLC Commission hearing on Wednesday, April 19th at 10am 👇.

As we stated in that article, there are several possible reasons why Revel might have had a fleet of over 50 “unplated” Tesla Model Ys, with no indication of wrongdoing. However, we did understand the suspicion among the driver community and also believe an unaddressed rumor, that has some reasonable basis, can spiral out of control.

In addition, given vehicle ownership data will be public within months, the TLC knows it will need to address any unwelcome revelations.

For example, if Revel created or had several different EINs (LLC 1, LLC 2, LLC 3, etc) that it could apply from, but ultimately belonged to the same company (d/b/a Revel Transit), it would be shocking the TLC hadn’t created guardrails against that.

Imagine if Uber just created and dispatched from 100 bases under different technical names to avoid needing to follow the TLC Driver Minimum Pay formula, which is applicable to bases that do more than 10,000 trips per day (e.g., High Volume For-Hire Service Bases (HVFHS)). The TLC clearly has gamed these things out, they are not naïve.

We were confused 🤷‍♀️ about how Revel, if they indeed got claim to more than 25 EV TLC Plates, could legally (not by simply creating multiple LLCs) have gotten that allocation 🤔?

Well, as we were doing research for new content ahead of the TLC Commission hearing on Wednesday, April 19th at 10am, we stumbled across a potential answer that we had missed previously.

TLC Rules & Local Laws

Every single member of the AutoMarketplace team has passed the TLC Drivers License Exam. For some of you that exam is a distant memory, but for those who remember, you may recall this chapter index of TLC Rules and Local Laws.

The April 19th TLC Commission hearing, will deal with items in TLC Rules:

Chapter 51 - Definitions

Chapter 56 - Paratransit Drivers

Chapter 57 - Commuter Van Drivers

Chapter 58 - Medallion Taxicab Service

Chapter 59 - For-Hire Service

Chapter 61 - Commuter Van Vehicles & Owners

Chapter 66 - Licensing & Rules For Technology System Providers

Chapter 80 - Medallion Taxicab, SHL and For-Hire Drivers

Chapter 82 - Street Hail Livery

Simple enough, right? 🙄

We definitely appreciate that there needs to be rules and regulations, but when people have to trawl through the minutiae of sub-sections of multiple TLC Rules Chapters, it’s not possibly a reasonable governance standard. The TLC expects drivers and other industry participants to testify in a few weeks based on what expectation exactly? Well, at least they are keeping us busy!

We’re reminded of Australian media tycoon Kerry Packer’s brilliant 1991 testimony to an Australian government panel. The full two minutes is worth watching.

“I mean this idea of just passing legislation, legislation every time someone blinks is a nonsense. Nobody knows it, nobody understands them, you’ve got to be a lawyer with books up to here, purely and simply to do the things we used to do and every time you pass a law you take somebody’s privileges away from them…”
- Kerry Packer, Australian media tycoon

In any case, ahead of the Commission hearing on the 19th, we’ll make some written & video content trying to simplify, to the best of our abilities, what’s being proposed.

We know many of our readers have recently expressed confusion around what the rule changes mean for drivers. As Ira Goldstein, The Black Car Fund’s Executive Director, noted in a recent piece, it’s important to read the details of the proposed rules.

Chapter 59

Circling back to our discussion of Revel’s potential ability to get allocated more than 25 EV FHV Licenses, we just wanted to provide an example & hopefully motivation 🏋️ related to why it’s important for driver advocates, their counsel and other industry participants to read up on TLC rules ahead of the April 19th Commission hearing.

Not only will it allow TLC drivers, driver advocates and other industry participants testimony to be more precise and compelling, it will lead to richer policy debate.

For example, Chapter 59 “Section” A-06 (written as §59A-06) is titled “Licensing – Term of License”. We’ll get right to point here and keep it nice & short to conclude this article.

Under §59A-06(3)(i)(ii)(iii) you’ll see it lays out the rules related to the issuance of new EV FHV Licenses, but under §59A-06(4) a sentence may surprise many.

If we were to ask why that was written into the rules, what would the TLC’s response have been? Would it be acceptable to you?

The TLC, for some odd reason, thought there wouldn’t be enough applications for the 1,000 new EV TLC Plates (Note: there were over 100,000 interest forms submitted)? “Chairperson discretion” is an interesting term as well…what do you think that means?

As always, let us know your thoughts in the comments section below or by emailing us at info@automarketplace.com.

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