Today was supposed to be the day that St. Louis voted to allow tech transportation companies, including San Francisco-based Uber Technologies Inc., to roll out peer-to-peer ride-sharing. Instead, St. Louisans will have to wait until at least next month for a final answer.
Three months of negotiations and passionate pleas from the public (and even some amusingly childish name-calling) have resulted in two competing, last-minute proposals for code changes that would lift restrictions on transportation network companies like UberX and Lyft. One is from St. Louis County Executive Stenger’s office, and one is from St. Louis Mayor Francis Slay’s office. The proposals weren’t released to the public, but Metropolitan Taxicab Commission chairman Louis Hamilton characterized the mayor’s proposal as more friendly to Uber, which says it requires low levels of regulation to operate in St. Louis.
See also: Uber Balks at St. Louis Safety Requirements: “Every Ride Is a Drug Test”
Speaking with the support of the county executive's office, Slay's chief of staff, Mary Ellen Ponder, asked the taxicab commission to delay its vote, pending a meeting this week about changes to the taxi commission's ride-for-hire rules. She says the meeting will include representatives from the mayor’s office, the county executive’s office, the taxicab commission, taxi-company owners, Uber, and any other transportation-networking companies who want a seat at the table.
“There’s still a lot to negotiate,” Ponder tells SLM. For example, one proposal requires that Uber driver candidates submit to a medical physical, a requirement that is already “too burdensome” for taxi drivers and repellant to Uber, whose drivers often drive fewer than six hours per week, Ponder noted.
The closed meeting will likely lead to a public special commission meeting, where commissioners can vote on changes to allow ride-sharing. The proposal must have the support of two city commissioners and two county commissioners to pass.
Before the vote, Slay released a blog post calling for compromises that would allow UberX to operate in St. Louis. “The fact that you can use Uber in most other metropolitan areas of the world, and in St. Charles, Columbia and Kansas City—but not St. Louis and St. Louis County—is wrong,” Slay wrote.
The commission, which regulates all ride-for-higher businesses in St. Louis city and county, has already agreed to major concessions that would allow Uber to enter the market here, such as streamlining the driver application process and allowing ride-for-hire companies to independently establish drug-testing protocols.
The stickiest of the sticking points between the taxi commission and Uber is the issue of fingerprint background checks.
The commission wanted each UberX driver to submit to a fingerprint background check, as it says is required by Missouri law. Uber wants to skip the fingerprint background check, as it does in nearly every city where it operates (except New York and Houston) and instead conduct its own background checks through a third-party service called Checkr, which runs each driver’s info through sex offender registries, national and county criminal records, and motor vehicle records.
Here’s how the compromise would work, according to the taxi commission and the mayor’s office: For now, UberX applicants will get preliminary driving permits pending a fingerprint scan. In the meantime, Stenger and Slay will request that Missouri's legislature change the law about fingerprint checks when it reconvenes in January.
Neil Bruntrager, the Metropolitan Taxicab Commission's attorney, pointed out one major flaw in Uber’s background checks during the commission’s June meeting: first-time DUI offenses. For most Missouri drivers, first-time DUI charges effectively vanish from public record after the driver completes probation, meaning Uber’s background checks likely wouldn’t catch them. One DUI arrest is grounds enough for the commission to reject giving a license to an Uber candidate.
The St. Louis City NAACP said it supports removing fingerprint background checks for potential ride-share drivers.
“The U.S. Department of Justice’s report with respect to Ferguson, Mo., clearly documented that many more young men of color are disproportionately arrested, fingerprinted and mis-adjudicated than white men,” the NAACP said in a statement. “And once their fingerprints are in the system, it is difficult to remove them if the charges are dropped (creating a large number of false negatives).”
Contact Lindsay Toler by an email at LToler@stlmag.com or on Twitter @StLouisLindsay. For more from St. Louis Magazine, subscribe or follow us on Facebook and Twitter.
