Mayor Dwayne Warren said requiring fingerprinting, background checks and other regulations will enhance public safety and insure fair competition with cab companies
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ORANGE -- Rod Sanelus wants Uber to call a cab a cab.
Senelus, who is 42, lives in Elizabeth, and has a 7-year-old daughter to support, drives a taxi at Newark Liberty International Airport, where he said fares have become increasingly scarce since Uber and other ride sharing apps started competing -- unfairly, he insists -- for passengers.
What is unfair about the competition, said Sanelus, is that because Uber self-identifies as a "technology company," it avoids the fingerprinting, criminal background checks, commercial licenses and insurance, and other requirements imposed on him and other taxi drivers who still call themselves that, even though there's little real difference in the service they sell.
"If you're not a taxi, why are you doing the same thing that we do?" Sanelus asked rhetorically. "You might want to word things differently, but you're doing the same things we are."
Orange Mayor Dwayne Warren sees his point.
On Friday, Warren announced that he would introduce a municipal ordinance regulating ride sharing, which would subject drivers for Uber and other apps to fingerprinting and criminal background checks, require them to carry individual liability insurance, and govern their conduct with passengers, as a condition of doing business in Orange.
San Francisco-based Uber says it makes no sense for individual municipalities to try to regulate ride sharing services, which involve drivers, passengers and trips in multiple jurisdictions. (Associated Press photo) Dan Ivers | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com
"We have to have regulations for these companies," said Warren. "They don't have insurance regulations, they don't have background check regulations, and they aren't supervised by our police department."
With his announcement during a morning press conference in front of City Hall, Warren waded into a public policy debate over how to regulate a digital update of an age-old service that has spurred rallies by cabbies and Uber drivers alike, local and state proposals, and negotiations between fast-growing, deep-pocketed companies and public officials trying to catch up to the complexities of the sharing economy.
Warren, who is up for re-election on May 10, cited a recent mass shooting by an Uber driver in Kalamazoo, Mich., and allegations that an Uber driver raped a passenger in Roselle Park last August, in asserting that the requirements would enhance public safety.
Two weeks ago, Newark Mayor Ras Baraka recently announced a deal in which Uber will pay Newark $10 million to operate at Newark Liberty International Airport. Uber also agreed to provide $1.5 million in liability coverage for each of its drivers, and the Newark deal subjects drivers to background checks, though not fingerprinting, as the Orange ordinance would.
Asked whether Orange was willing to negotiate with Uber to loosen some restrictions, possibly in exchange for a cash payment, Warren said, "Our position is clear: our public safety is not negotiable."
Warren also said they would help level the playing field for drivers and for local cab company owners like Gus Staikos, who said his company, Black & White Taxi in Bloomfield, had lost 40 percent of its business in recent years to Uber and other ride sharing apps.
Staikos reiterated Sanelus' point about ride sharing apps obscuring their true function.
"They come along and claim they're a technology company, but they're a transportation company," said Staikos.
To underscore the dubiousness of the distinction between his traditional taxi company and Uber, Staikos took out his phone showed off his Black & White Taxi app that he paid $65,000 to develop four years ago, which allows users to book a cab in advance and then pay for the ride only after being dropped off at their destination, and in cash if they do not have a credit card.
"They didn't invent the wheel," said Staikos, whose assocation includes 37 cab companies from around the state and was formed two years ago in response to the rise of ride sharing.
Uber questioned the practicality of local regulations in an industry in which drivers operate in multiple municipalities. The company also noted that for every publicized incident involving an Uber driver, there were others that involved traditional cabbies, including a 2104 case involving a taxi driver in Newark who was drunk when he slammed into another car, sending his victim into a coma.
In response to the announcement in Orange on Friday, an Uber spokesman, Craig Ewer, released a statement criticizing local officials for doing the bidding of traditional cab companies.
"This is a taxi-sponsored proposal designed to make sure riders cannot choose options like Uber," Ewer stated. "Rather than allowing special interests to block Uber at the municipal level, we need fair, statewide regulation for ridesharing as soon as possible."
"Every single trip on the Uber platform includes $1.5 million of commercial insurance that covers riders, drivers and the general public. This coverage is 42 times higher than the state minimum for taxis," Ewer added.
Organized labor has also seized on ride sharing as a rallying point. Lionel Leach, an official of local 1035 of the Communications Workers of America, said 400 cabbies in northern New Jersey have joined his union in the past coupe of years as a way to make their voices heard.
Uber had little use for the union leader's involvement.
"If Lionel Leach were truly interested in public safety, he'd be trying to increase insurance for taxis, not spinning fabrications about Uber," Ewer stated.
State Sen. Richard Codey (D-Essex), who joined Warren and other officials at the City Hall press conference, said negotiations were continuing in Trenton on state legislation to regulate ride sharing statewide, though he could not say wen a bill might be ready.
In the meantime, Codey congratulated local leaders for arriving at their own deals and crafting their own ordinances to reign in nationwide technology companies that he said believe they can ignore state and local leaders' concerns.
"Uber came in with teh feeling that, 'We don't have to do anything. We're Uber,'" said Codey. But he added, with certainty, "There is going to be a statewide bill."
Steve Strunsky may be reached at sstrunsky@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @SteveStrunsky. Find NJ.com on Facebook.
Man was killed in Newark Tuesday morning, authorities said. (File photo)
