Cashing in on San Francisco’s Taxi Medallions

We have a long history of investigating San Francisco’s taxi industry. It’s been more than 12 years since we first revealed how a common dispatch technique led to a terrible accident in which one pedestrian died and another was badly injured. When a call went out over a cab company’s radio, a driver could answer “bingo” if he or she just happened to be at that same location as the person requesting a cab. The problem was, drivers often lied just to get the fares -- several drivers often responded “bingo” to the same call. The dispatcher usually responded, “Let me know who gets it,” and that started a high-speed race to the waiting passenger.

Last year, we revealed how a taxi driver convicted of burglarizing a customer’s home after he dropped her at the movies became Director of the San Francisco Taxi Commission. He resigned after our report.

Tonight, we show you people who own city permits called “taxi medallions”, but they don’t drive, even though it’s required by law. It’s a heated issue among drivers, and there are other aspects to the medallion story we’ll be pursuing in the coming weeks. I’d like to hear from you if you have any information on this or other investigations.

Comments

[Keith Reiter]

doesn't Supervisor Ed Jew have a taxi medallion? I wonder how often he drives!

[Rich Koury]

It's disappointing and disturbing that you failed to get a number of facts right and you gave Machen a free pass on her accusation that 50% of medallion holders aren't driving. First, med holders get far less than 40k for the use of their permits, it's closer to 20k and often less. Also, there aren't
6000 drivers in SF, more like 3500-4000. True, the Dudums and Ms. Tacchini are gaming the system, however, by accepting lies from Machen as truth you do a great disservice to the overwhelming majority of med holders who comply with the law. People like Charles Rathbone are examples of the dedication and commitment to service that go uncredited in the rush to sensationalize the issue.
There are many, many other driving med holders who are similarly committed to the industry. Please do more research before you smear the real cab drivers with the same brush you used on the cheaters. Try talking to more people who are
driving and less to Machen. She's
empire building on the backs of working people, don't make her vendetta any easier.

[zahira Cortes]

If you got a picture of Commander Tachinni driving a CAB I would like to see that! cause that would be funny a Commander in the SFPD is also a CAB driver

[A. Cab Jerk]

The lady has had the medallion 8 years right? SFPD is giving her a pass and there is more than medallion that is connected to SFPD and gets a pass. Check it out Dan

[Robert Vitcha]

The SF Taxi Commission has developed into a more serious regulatory agency in the past several years. Its' budget and staff have grown. It is now investigating medallion holders who don't drive.

But there other problems with the taxi industry, particularly the poor service available to the public at peak business times that the Commission is not focusing on. If you're a tax-paying citizen who lives in the Richmond, Parkside, Ingleside or Excelsior you know that peak time service out there has been bad for many years. Shouldn't this service to the public take priority at the Commission rather than who has the medallions and is driving the cabs?

A medallion holder who actually drives 40 hours a week makes around $50,000 a year. That's not a king's ransom in a high priced town like this. And it's a difficult, dangerous job.

The kind of cheating the $135,000 a year Executive Director of the Commission is pursuing often looks like this: A driver in his or her late 50's gets a medallion after 20 years of driving and 12-14 years waiting on the medallion list. After 10 years or so the medallion holders' health isn't good enough for him or her to meet the driving requirement. This person very likely never developed an adequate retirement plan. Ok, maybe the law requires that this person surrender the medallion, but this still isn't "corruption" and "fraud" writ large. It's not Michael Milken or Enron.

Finally, it’s widely believed that United Taxicab Workers, a small vocal minority in the industry, has the Executive Director’s ear and has urged her to focus on medallion holders. The U.T.W. has existed since the early Eighties and has been instrumental in speaking for drivers often. But while they are articulate and politically well connected, their membership is miniscule: about 15 or 20. Their insistence on strict enforcement of the rules for medallion owner/drivers is probably at least partially driven by inter-industry resentment.

[Jim Nakamura]

Your take on the Taxi Commission as bureaucratic heroes was very disappointing.

First, egregious examples of politically connected permit holders "not driving" have been an issue for 10 years. Ms. Machen has known of this issue throughout her 4 yrs as Supervisor Newsom's aide. Now as her gigantic budget increase is getting final approval (taxing permit holders even more) this story is being peddled as if it were a new revelation. It smells of press manipulation.

The many permit holders who have tried to reform the taxi industry were once leaders of the UTW. Many of us have quit because the UTW has become a radical fringe element. Former Commissioner Mary McGuire edited the UTW newsletter for many years. Your interviewee, Charles Rathbone, was once UTW president. I was on the UTW executive board for many years. UTW has since evolved into a winnable union trying to push employee status on independent contractors so they can finally tax the rank and file, while the average driver avoids them like the plague.

The vast majority of permit holders are working stiffs who make about $20,000 more than the "green pea" driver, not the $40,000-70,000 cited by Ms. Machen in various publications. Nowhere have I once seen a retraction of this exaggeration. On the other hand, Ms. Machen pulls in $200,000 a year (with benefits) from fees collected illegally (according to Supervisor Aaron Peskin) from cab drivers.

As everyone knows, the cab business is a cash business, an underground economy. The medallion foists legitimacy onto senior drivers who must now account to the IRS. Much of that $20,000 goes to taxes and health insurance.

Last week, the Taxi Commission revoked the medallion of Lindsay Welcome, a driver for 30 years, a permit holder for about 10. She committed suicide within 3 days of that revocation because she did not want to spend her final days with multiple sclerosis in an institution, which would have cost the City vastly more money. Last year another disabled medallion holder committed suicide after his revocation. This is how one ends one's career as a cab driver in the city named after St. Francis: a humiliating, public revocation proceeding for being too sick to drive.

Ms. Machen does her Mayor a real disservice by slowly and inexorably turning the attitude of the rank and file driver against the Newsom administration. As a force, drivers talk to about 20-40 passengers a day, almost 100,000 interactions with the public a year. Simply watch the July 13 Taxi Commission meeting's public comment section to see how many drivers are coming out of the wood work to publicly distance themselves from the UTW-Machen axis. Please note that during public comment, Director Machen almost always leaves her seat to take a break.

Newsom came out last year and overruled the previous Taxi Commission's firing of Director Machen for having a convicted felon (and former roommate) on her payroll while at the same time replacing several members of the Commission as punishment. Now Machen runs the Taxi Commission and not the other way around, sets her own salary and hires friends without going through the Civil Service Dept. Her power is virtually nonappealable, and recently she fined one permit holder $633,000 for filing some forms in pencil rather than pen.

This is a bureaucracy that is out of control and destroying the industry. That's the real story.

Thank you.
Jim Nakamura

http://sanfrancisco.granicus.com/ViewPublisher.php?view_id=28

[John Kiernan]

Nakamura's comments are exactly on the mark.

My one comment: -- it doesnt "smell of press manipulation", it "reeks" of it. It's amazing that veteran reporters like Dan Noyes can be played for such fools by Machen, over and over.

Maybe it's not so surprising, though. I noticed that Noyes is still bragging about that ridiculous report he did on the "deadly bingo game" years ago. I straightened him out at the time with a very lengthy letter patiently explaining to him how he completely misunderstood the "bingo" feature in voice dispatching, but apparently he still doesnt get it.

John Kiernan

[Jim Nakamura]

Oops. I meant to say wannabee union, not winnabee union, in my previous post. Sorry.

[Robert Vitcha]

Just wanted to amplify and clarify what I said about a medallion holder's earnings. The $45 - 50 thousand a year he or she makes for full time work includes the dividend paid by whatever cab company the medallion is with. So the driving he or she does really pays close to the $24 thousand a year it's estimated a San Francisco cabdriver makes.

If the medallion holder can no longer drive regularly he's cheating to the tune of 20 thousand a year by still getting that dividend check. Given the fact that this person has probably given 20 or more years of service to the riding public, the question becomes:is this cheating at all?

To be sure, there are instances of egregious cheating, like the cop's wife with the purse shop in Blackhawk. But the Commission's Executive Director makes no distinction between her and the working medallion holder who just isn't strong enough to meet the driving requirement anymore.

[Rick deOlazarra]

How much do medallion holders make?
A little background:
I've been driving a cab in S.F. for 26 years.
In the beginning, I wasn't even aware that I could get a medallion. No effort was made by anyone or any govt. agency to tip me off to the fact that, if I went down to the Taxi Detail and paid a "fee", I'd be put on a list to eventually get a medallion. Eight years after I began driving a cab, I overheard some drivers talking about it; I asked some questions, and went down to put my name on the list.
Ten years later, almost to the day, I got an envelope in the mail informing me that I'd be getting a medallion. That was when Mayor Brown put 500 more medallions on the street. I was lucky; the average waiting time on the list is longer than 10 years.

Up 'til then, I'd been driving a cab for 18 years. I kept records of how much cash I'd bring home at the end of a shift. It averaged $65. A hundred dollars was a good day. More than a hundred and twenty was the kind of day that you'd think life could be really good if it was always like this. Anything approaching $140 was very rare; a couple, three times a year. On the other hand, you could also count on a handful of 30-40 dollar days every month, and though rare, less, or even owing at the end of the day. This was me, personally; mileage varies driver to driver, depending on how much the drivers can stomach the grind, how hungry or desperate they are, and how resilient (read young). Sixty-five dollars average means working about as many ten hour shifts in downtown traffic as you can stand. The way it's set up, the drivers have to bring in $120-130 just to break even (go home with nothing after expenses), Eight hour days are a thing of the past for cab drivers; you've got to work the full ten unless you're ok with renting a cheap room in a troubled neighborhood. So that's the general cab driver's financial picture before getting a medallion. You might want to ask yourself at this point whether a driver, enduring 15-20 years of the above, deserves a medallion..

After getting a medallion, I went to a local cab company and offered them the use of my medallion (to put out cabs and make money off of) for all the shifts I do not work in exchange for $1800 per month (the lawful rate) and providing the cab, it's maintenance, and all the administrative neccesities for running it. I paid gates (the fee for driving a cab for a shift) before getting the medallion and I still do. Everything's the same, except for the $1800, getting to choose which shifts to drive, and the modicum of respect one gets from people who're making money off you.
$1800 comes to $21,600 per year. That's how much the medallion brings in for me, the medallion holder: $21,600. Reports of any medallion holder bringing in more than that is a lie, or someone's playing the system and most likely breaking the law.
So then, now; as a medallion holder, I make $21,600 per year plus whatever cash I go home with at the end of each shift for that year. (What I make driving plus the check)
Depending on business, I now make about $2,500 to $3,000 per month or about $33,000 annually before taxes, and that includes the monthly $1800 check from the medallion.
Essentially, I've gone from poverty to low income.
The reports of medallion holders getting 40, 50, 70(!) thousand a year is a crock, or their breaking the law, or it's purposely put out there to further someone's political agenda. It smacks of sensationalism, so that's what gets on the news. If anyone is making that much money, they should be investigated and dealt with, but the vast majority of medallion holders are a bunch of middle-aged or old working stiffs who're getting old early and really not all that well off.
And guess what? When us medallion holders are too old to bend over and get in our cabs, the Taxi Commision takes our medallion away. How do you like them apples? Yup; that's the current policy; in order to retain the medallion in our names, we're required to drive a minimum of 800 hours per year. If we get so old we can't drive the 800 hours anymore, the Taxi Commission takes the medallion away. That's the bloody law. Nice, huh? Thirty years of driving a cab and now your too old, so we're going to take away your sole income. You don't believe me... If you could ask those who were disabled or too old to drive and slotted for medallion revocation in the past you could get personal confirmation on it but you can't; they've commited suicide or they've become wards of the state, or they're sleeping under a freeway off-ramp somewhere with a life expectancy not worth mentioning.

There's always people out there more than willing to play the system or do whatever it takes to make more money, or manipulate and deceive to get whatever it is they want, and to hell with the collateral damage, from heads of state down to medallion holders and everything in between. And the last I looked, they're always in the minority. Fifty percent of medallion holders cheating the system is a bit of a stretch, don't you think? If anybody could be excused from cheating, it's the terrified 78 year old with Parkinson's desease or dementia whose $1800 medallion check is the only thing between him and suicide or dying of exposure in the street.
Every story has 2, 3, 4 or more sides. Your reporting on medallion holders could affect the lives of hundreds of people. Please be aware of this and make sure you and your staff put out accurate information and a perspective that reflects reality.

[Rene]

Economic crash one more way for corporations to pick up assets once
help by private individuals.
The city to seize and auction off the medallions. FACISIM

The corporate media more than willing to go along to get the sheeple to cheer it.

[hen wu]

i have been a taxi driver with my partner, but i never see my owner of medallion to drive a single hour as i know for many years. resently the owner increase the gate for $20.0 a day and also write way bill for the owner,i told him no and he said i let you 2 months to looking for other cab.
so it is very difficulty situation. finally i have to agree what the owner demand and order. and i knew many other owners are the same,they do not drive a single day. so what is the proposition K for,
please explain.
hen