Taxi Law Is Idling While City Hall Foes Grind Their Gears

As the Los Angeles City Council saw things last summer, the New Year would mark the beginning of a kinder, gentler era for taxi drivers and their passengers.

Cabbies would adhere to a dress code that banned such items as tank tops and cutoff shorts. New drivers would undergo training programs and veterans would attend refresher courses. “Communications skills” and “passenger relations” would be emphasized. Neatness and cleanliness would be stressed.

And if the reeducation efforts needed a push, a system of fines--the city’s first for cab drivers--would be on the books as an added incentive.

But the elaborate new taxi industry regulation program, approved by the City Council in August, is languishing in the City Hall bureaucracy. It has no chance of taking effect by Jan. 1 or anytime soon, city officials concede.

The ordinance that would allow the city’s Department of Transportation to begin teaching, policing and fining cab drivers has been sitting in the council’s Transportation Committee for months, apparently awaiting approval of a technical change added by the city attorney’s office.

The situation has infuriated Mayor Tom Bradley’s office and rekindled its feud with Councilman Nate Holden, who chairs the Transportation Committee and is a Bradley foe. Earlier this year, Holden was blamed for holding onto Bradley’s rush-hour truck ban proposal, delaying it for months before sending it to the council for a vote.

The taxi ordinance was a compromise worked out by Bradley’s office after the city’s Department of Transportation recommended that existing taxi franchises not be renewed, but be put out for open bidding.

In return for keeping their franchises, the cabbies agreed to the new system of fines for infractions of a new set of rules.

“There are several important transportation initiatives that are bottled up in Councilman Holden’s committee, including new taxicab regulations,” Deputy Mayor Mark Fabiani said Tuesday. “We would hope that these . . . could be moved forward as soon as possible.”

Several council members and assistants familiar with the issue also blame Holden, who, they say, will not send the measure to the council for final approval because it originated with Bradley. Speaking about the situation on the condition that they not be quoted, they said they did not want to get into a public fight with Holden, who controls most transportation-related legislation.

Holden on Tuesday denied he was delaying the taxi regulation and blamed the city attorney’s office and the mayor’s office for the snag, saying they had sent him a poorly drafted ordinance.

Nevertheless, Holden said, “If the taxi thing is in the committee, then I want to hear it at the next meeting.” He said he plans to deal with it at a committee meeting in January.

Whatever the cause of the delay, the city has been losing an estimated $12,000 in fine revenue it could be collecting each month and using to pay for taxi driver school.