Law Firm Serving Denver and Colorado

Starting in 1935, Colorado has regulated taxicabs as a public utility. Since that time, Denver and other metro areas have operated under an antiquated system that actively prevents competition and provides a statutory monopoly to the existing cab companies.

There have been 23 attempts to open this system of oppressive regulation, including four in the last 7 years. Zakhem Atherton was approached last year by the individual cab drivers to be part of a bipartisan team pushing for reduction of market barriers. Considering the fate of the previous 22 attempts, the task is monumental. Behind the movement of this most recent attempt is the group ProTaxi, a non-profit association with membership that includes more than half of all Denver-area cab drivers. Upon meeting with the leadership of ProTaxi, we were impressed with their passion to simply compete as independent business owners in the cab market. Additionally, almost all the members of ProTaxi are recent immigrants to our country. Most come from war-torn countries in Africa, and it was clear that they wanted to make the American Dream a reality.

HB07-1114, sponsored by Representative Jerry Frangas and Senator Chris Romer, was introduced in the 2007 legislative session. The bill was assigned to the House Transportation and Energy Committee, where the majority of the previous bills were killed. During the March 1 hearing, an extremely diverse group testified in support of HB1114, including Penn Pfiffner of the Independence Institute, civil rights attorney Diane King, and former PUC chairman Ray Gifford. The bill also received support from the AFL-CIO and CWA union.

If you wonder what kind of bill garners support from free-market groups and unions, HB1114 achieved this unprecedented backing. This is a great credit to the bipartisan work of the team working to support the cab groups.

Passing legislation to open the taxicab market is a daunting task and a long-term battle that will be fought over this legislative session and into the next. There are several tasks that the bipartisan team has been successful in implementing. First, the individual cab drivers have had trouble organizing in the past. This prevented the drivers from having a collective voice. Zakhem Atherton has been able to use our extensive legal and political experience to engage ProTaxi’s 500 drivers in the political process. This new combined political power has helped balance the scales with the entrenched lobbyist money of the cab companies.

The second major task in the battle is to create an ideological shift on the issue. In the past, bills looking to open the taxicab market were mainly run as Republican deregulation bills, and found support and opposition strictly on party lines. Zakhem Atherton is part of a team that has brought traditionally adversarial interests behind a common bill. It is through this bipartisan effort that the current legislation has succeeded where the previous 22 did not.

The last major task of our team is to help provide detailed analysis and evaluation in support of opening the taxicab market. Zakhem Atherton has engaged extensive resources in researching existing regulatory schemes throughout the country and providing detailed analysis to the legislature. We will continue to present this material as we work through the necessary committees until bill passage.

As a result of heavy-handed lobbying by the existing cab companies, HB1114 was amended by the House Transportation and Energy Committee immediately opens the driver leases to PUC review, and moves the issue of opening of the market to a summer interim committee. Our bill is currently is one of only two bills scheduled to be considered by the Interim Transportation Committee this summer.

In addition, the current form of HB1114 contains a provision will be removed from the statutes that protects the cab companies from competition while at the same time preventing their lease rates from being regulated. For years, the drivers have gone to the PUC seeking help with their leases, only to be told that the PUC’s hands were tied. This amendment is a substantial step forward for the cab drivers and makes us optimistic that the taxicab market will soon be opened. More results have been obtained for the cab drivers through this bill than in decades of prior legislation. And this is only the beginning.

We will continue to work in the legislature to pass a bill that opens the market for competition, and allows the cab drivers to be able to compete in the marketplace. It is only a matter of time before we see real reform in the taxicab market.