Under the thumb of the mayor, and badly strapped for cash, the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (MTA) has approved a so-called “pilot program” that would allow the sale of hundreds of taxi medallions to cab drivers for a fixed price to be determined.

The proposal was approved by the agency's Board of Directors on Feb. 26, despite huge holes in the plan:

The MTA's haste in approving the plan can be attributed to the agency's budget woes. It is trying to erase a $16.9 million shortfall with controversial fee increases and cuts to public transportation.

To keep its budget in balance for the rest of this fiscal year, which ends June 30, it needs to realize an additional $11.2 million in taxi revenues. The money was placed in the budget last spring, without any discussion on how it was to be raised.

If the revenues aren't in hand by the end of June, the agency will be in the red. Selling a bunch of medallions directly, and quickly, may seem to them their only out. Though no sales price for medallions has been set, $400,000 is the maximum the new rules allow.

The plan's approval undoes San Francisco's system of non-transferable medallions that has been in place since the voters approved Proposition K of 1978, authored by then-Supervisor Quentin Kopp.

Prop K provided for the issuance of medallions to committed cab drivers for an application fee. Under the law, well over 1,000 drivers have obtained medallions that most would have otherwise been unable to afford. San Francisco voters have reaffirmed Prop K eighttimes against well-financed challenges to the law. But with the passage of Proposition A in 2007, an amendment to the City Charter, the door was opened to change Prop K without voter approval. How that came to pass is a tale of betrayal and broken promises.

Prop A was billed as a Muni reform measure, but a few sentences in its lengthy text presumably gave the MTA the exclusive power to change any and all of the city's taxi ordinances and regulations, including Prop K.

The taxi language of Prop A was sneaked in through the back door. It was deliberately concealed from cab drivers and the Taxi Commission. It was not discussed in public hearings or the press.

When UTW found out that Prop A could potentially override Prop K, we submitted a ballot argument in opposition to the measure. But after Mayor Gavin Newsom and then-President of the Board of Supervisors Aaron Peskin pledged to preserve Prop K, we stopped active campaigning against Prop A.

In November 2008, MTA Executive Director Nathaniel Ford promised a Board of Supervisors’ committee that he would support Prop K. It was clear that Peskin had made that pledge a condition for the board's approval of the transfer of authority over taxis from the Taxi Commission to the MTA.

Just two months after the transfer was approved, andeven before it went into effect, Newsom went back on his word, calling for the auctioning of taxi medallions in order to provide millions of dollars for Muni.

The MTA has been moving in lockstep ever since. At numerous driver meetings to discuss ways to change Prop K, Christiane Hayashi, the MTA's Deputy Director for Taxis and Accessible Services, never wavered in her intention to initiate a program of medallion sales. The plan is being called a “pilot program”, a misleading label that implies it can be reversed. It can't.

The approval process still has a step to go. In addition to the absent financing, other essential elements are missing. These include procedures for the purchase and sale of medallions, the structure of the Driver Fund, and the composition of an industry advisory group to make recommendations for inevitable changes to come. The MTA Board will take up those and other proposed regulatory changes on Mar. 30.

So after 32 years, Prop K is no more. They couldn't get rid of it fairly and squarely, so they resorted to trickery and subterfuge, and it worked.

UTW is reviewing all remaining options.

click here for outline of UTW's medallion proposal

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