New Permit System Would Give Cabbies the Right of Way

Larry O’Toole tries to obey the laws as he drives his taxicab through the streets of Orange County.

He stops at red lights, keeps to the legal speed limit and generally transports passengers as quickly and safely as possible.

There is one set of laws that O’Toole, 35, finds it difficult to follow, however. They are the local ordinances requiring Orange County taxi drivers to be licensed separately by each of the cities they serve. To hold permits in all of the county’s 31 cities, O’Toole figures, could cost him $2,500 a year--quite a chunk of an annual income that can range from $25,000 to $50,000.

So O’Toole, like many other drivers, has opted to hold only one permit, in his case from Anaheim, the county’s biggest market for taxicabs. When would-be customers call from other cities, he either ignores them completely or, on slow days, picks them up and prays that he doesn’t incur fines ranging $150 to $500.

So far he’s avoided being fined. But he has also become a member of one of the county’s lesser-known groups of minor criminals: taxicab scofflaws.

“You have to do what you have to do,” said O’Toole, who has been driving for a company called A Taxi Cab for seven years. “The calls need to be answered, the customers need to be picked up and I need to make money. If I only worked Anaheim, I’d starve to death.”

Says his boss, Rick Schorling: “Our policy is that you should have a permit for every city you operate in, but we have no effective way of tracking where our cabs are every minute.”

The situation could change dramatically, though, under a plan being discussed by the Orange County Transportation Authority. The agency’s idea: to create a centralized taxi authority that will license, inspect and regulate cabs countywide. So far, the plan seems to have gained the support of such major taxicab centers as Santa Ana, Anaheim and Buena Park, while encountering opposition from several smaller cities that see it as a bureaucratic intrusion that undermines local authority.

“It makes lots of sense,” said Dave Elbaum, director of planning and development for the OCTA, which is expected to vote on the matter May 12. “This will make it easier for the cab companies, drivers and passengers.”

It was a major cab crunch, in fact, that gave rise to the plan. It happened on New Year’s Eve in 1994 when the city of Costa Mesa decided to crack down on its fleet of unlicensed cab drivers during the one night of the year when thousands of people needed cabs.

“We had close to 2,000 Wisconsin booster club members staying in our hotels for the Rose Bowl,” City Manager Allan L. Roeder recalls. “The Police Department and the Finance Department got together and concluded that they really needed to get the attention of the taxicab operators and decided to crack down on New Year’s Eve. So, on the one night of the year that we had all these guests in town and were stressing, ‘Don’t drink and drive, call a cab,’ we managed to drive all the cabs out of town. I spent New Year’s Eve on the phone dealing with taxicabs.”

In fact, city officials say, they’d been dealing with taxicabs for years.

Many drivers, Roeder said, had routinely failed--despite repeated requests by the city--to renew their taxi permits. Like most other Orange County cities, he said, Costa Mesa requires taxi drivers to come in annually to fill out applications, show proof of insurance, submit to background checks including fingerprinting and drug testing, and pay fees, which range throughout the county from $40 to $110 per city per year.

Some cities also require cabs to be inspected.

When Costa Mesa officials began examining the issue from the cabbies’ point of view, however, they soon began understanding the problem. “If the drivers have to go through this in 31 cities, it’s easy to see how, just under the weight of the paperwork alone, these things don’t get done,” Roeder said.

The upshot was a letter from Roeder to the OCTA last year requesting the agency’s help.

Those opposed to the idea say the potential loss of city revenue in taxi permit fees is not a major factor. A recent OCTA survey, in fact, showed annual revenue ranging from $100 for Tustin to $29,194 for Santa Ana--hardly large amounts.

But opponents say they are bothered by the potential loss of local control.

“Why would they establish another bureaucracy?” said Walter K. Bowman, a Cypress city councilman who recently voted along with his colleagues against participating in the countywide plan. “I’m in favor of local control. I don’t think we need a county bureaucracy handling this for us.”

And Robert D’Amato, the city manager of Placentia, which also opposes the plan, said his city doesn’t have enough cabs to justify participation. “The council just felt that we could do it ourselves,” he said. “We don’t need to have OCTA do it for us--we haven’t had any problems.”

Those on the other side of the debate say the program will eliminate problems.

The plan, to be called the Orange County Taxi Administration Program--is expected to be self-supporting. It will run on about $80,00 for the first year and $60,00 annually thereafter in income generated from licensing fees. In addition to issuing taxi licenses and inspecting vehicles, Elbaum said, the program, expected to begin by July 1, will maintain a list of approved taxicab companies from which participating cities can choose.

Participating cities will simply turn their taxi regulating activities over to the OCTA, according to Elbaum. Cities opting not to participate, officials say, will continue to be responsible for their own taxi licensing, but could risk the loss of services by taxi drivers unwilling to pay the extra fee.

Fees charged to the individual taxis have not yet been determined, but are likely to be more than any one city now charges, but less than the combined fees of the involved cities.

Among the plan’s most ardent supporters are the cab companies themselves.

“We’ve got a problem right now in that we’re dealing with multiple cities and multiple permit processes and multiple fee schedules,” said Tom Philbin, president and general manager of Coast Yellow Cab Cooperative Inc., which operates 85 taxicabs in 15 cities. “It doesn’t make a lot of sense.”

Schorling, executive vice president and general manager of A Taxi Cab, which operates 200 cabs out of Santa Ana, agrees. “It’s a way of streamlining the regulation,” he said of the proposal. “It’s an effective way for the county to control an operation that really is kind of hit and miss when the cities have it. It will benefit drivers, customers and all the cities of Orange County.”

At least one of those drivers says he’s definitely looking forward to the change.

“This is what puts food on my table,” O’Toole, the unwilling taxi rebel, said during an extended wait for a fare. “It would be helpful; I’m not in business to break the law.”