Originally appeared on NY Daily News
New York City Council members hope a new office within the Taxi and Limousine Commission will keep taxi medallion owners from being taken for a ride.
The Council on Thursday will vote on a bill to establish a new “Office of Financial Stability” within the TLC designed to keep tabs on the health of the city’s crumbling yellow cab industry.
Bronx Councilman Ritchie Torres, the bill’s sponsor, said he wanted to prevent a repeat of history when the city sold medallions or approved medallion sales at prices of $1 million and more.
The new office would give the TLC a “statutory obligation to oversee and regulate the financial stability of the medallion market,” Torres said.
Medallions give yellow cabs the exclusive right to street hails in most of the city — but their value began to plummet in 2012 when Uber and other e-hail companies arrived in New York.
Many medallion owners took out home loans or refinanced against their medallions — and are now drowning in insurmountable debt. The COVID-19 pandemic made things even worse, causing yellow cab ridership to fall by 92% in June from the same month of 2019.
The Office of Financial Stability — which would open in November 2021 — won’t necessarily help cabbies who are now underwater, but it should prevent others from a similar fate, Torres said.
“We cannot afford to have the TLC auction off medallions at speculative prices,” said Torres. “We cannot allow the TLC to approve medallion transfers with speculative loans.”
With the majority of ride hails in New York being taken by Uber and Lyft, it’s unclear if the medallion values will ever rebound to sky-high levels.
But Torres — the Democratic nominee for New York’s 15th Congressional district in the Bronx — said he was concerned by the “growing presence of private equity" in the medallion market, including MarbleGate, a Connecticut-based firm with roughly 4,000 New York taxi medallion loans in its portfolio.
“I do not take for granted that there could never be a medallion bubble again,” said Torres. “I hope for the best but I prepare for the worst.”
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