Here at Shenwick & Associates, our practice involving
debtors with “underwater” taxi medallions is growing by the day, so we pay
close attention to the latest developments in the area. On September 25th, the New York City Council
Committee on Transportation held a hearing that was attended by several
dozen medallion owners pleading for relief from the decline in medallion
values. As we previously blogged, at
an auction earlier this month, 46 medallions sold for under $200K each. The
New York Post article about the hearing mentions William and Gloria Guerra,
who purchased a medallion in 1984 for $86K and hoped to fund their retirement
to sell it. Instead, they’ll break even
or suffer a slight loss in inflation adjusted dollars.
The Transportation Committee indicated that it’s considering
several measures to help the industry, including:
· Creating a task force and a six-month study of
how ride share services are impacting taxis;
·
Capping the total number of cars operated by
ride share services (an idea originally proposed by Mayor De Blasio in 2015, which
was abandoned after Uber strongly campaigned against it);
·
A bailout fund for medallion owners funded by a
surcharge on livery cars;
·
Allowing each medallion to cover two taxis
instead of one; and
·
Relaxing disabled
access requirements.
The Transportation Committee hasn’t taken any action yet,
and may be deterred from limiting the growth of ride share services due to
advocacy from their drivers and lobbying
firms. For more information about
this developing area of debtor/creditor and bankruptcy law, please contact Jim
Shenwick.
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