Mitch Perry
On Thursday, Hillsborough County Public Transportation Commission Chairman Victor Crist announced that his agency will temporarily postpone any work on the litigation involving the PTC and Uber until after the Florida Legislative session concludes next March.
All eyes are on Tallahassee next winter to finally come up with a statewide list of rules and regulations regarding Transportation Network Companies (TNC’s) that have been operating the past couple of years in Florida’s major cities. Crist said that the action by the PTC was a good faith show of cooperation with Uber, which along with Lyft has been operating outside the scope of the agency since it began operating in April of 2014 in Hillsborough County.
Crist also said yesterday that the dinner he shared with St. Petersburg-based state Senator Jeff Brandes last month cleared the air on a number of fronts. He said that they are now on the same page regarding insurance policies and, to a lesser extent, background checks. Those are key items that have been problematic for the TNC’s not just in Florida but around the country.
Brandes has been a leading supporter of the TNC’s in Tallahassee before they ever began operating regularly in Florida. When Uber Black, Uber’s premium ride service, attempted to operate during the Republican National Convention in Tampa in 2012, they were thwarted by the PTC’s regulations on a minimum fare of $50 per ride, which immediately led critics like Brandes to label the agency out of touch with the evolving forms of business models in the 21st century.
Brandes and fellow Tampa Bay area Republican lawmaker Jamie Grant unsuccessfully tried to push a bill during the 2014 legislative session that would have eliminated the PTC outright. The PTC was created by a special act of the Legislature back in 1976.
Crist told SPB on Thursday that he believes that Brandes no longer wants to can his agency, calling it a legislative tactic. “In the Legislature, you always reach for more than you expect to get in order to leverage what you want,” said Crist, who served in Tallahassee representing the USF area of Tampa for 18 years. “When we left the meeting he agreed to back off on that, and I went ahead and agreed to back off on ticketing,” he said, referring to how the PTC announced last month that their agents would stop citing Uber and Lyft drivers for illegally operating in the country until the end of this month.
Brandes says he hasn’t back off one bit from wanting to eliminate the agency.
“Absolutely,” he said on Thursday. “I believe that that organization is just unnecessary. It’s antiquated.” He says that in previous conversations with Hillsborough County Commissioners, the board doesn’t want to take on the added responsibilities of regulating for hire vehicles.
He says the policy question is that the agency should be modified “dramatically,” but adds that if the choice are to keep it or get rid of it, “I would get rid of it.”
