Cabbie website controversy diffused with password addition

Wednesday, April 16, 2003 | 11:41 a.m.

A controversial Internet site that was a potential battleground for a First Amendment fight pitting taxi drivers against cab company owners has been removed from public display, satisfying members of the Taxicab Authority of Nevada who were worried that the site's coarse language would put Las Vegas in a bad light.

VegasCabbie.com editor John Shannon told the Taxicab Authority Tuesday that he has installed password-protected access to his website's forum section, a message board at which Las Vegas taxicab drivers expressed their opinions on issues affecting the industry.

That means only registered contributors to the message board can post opinions and gain access to see what other contributors have written.

Controversy had erupted over the site when contributors posted comments that many people considered sexist, racist, lewd and offensive. Many of the posted messages attacked cab company owners and managers, while others used crude language to ridicule office workers.

When a female office worker at Yellow-Checker-Star, the city's largest taxi company, was belittled in postings on the VegasCabbie.com site last month, the company's operations manager, Bill Shranko, decided to take the matter to the Taxicab Authority.

In last month's meeting, Shranko explained the problem to the board, which asked its legal counsel, the state attorney general's office, to investigate.

Shranko became emotional when describing the language used to discuss the female employee, but in his response Shannon mocked Shranko, saying his comments were an act to elicit an emotional response.

At the March meeting, board members expressed shock, anger and disbelief that comments they considered obscene could be aired publicly and that there didn't appear to be a way to shut the website down. They said they were concerned that the insensitive comments would be offensive to tourists and damage the local taxi industry.

The matter was placed on Tuesday's Taxicab Authority agenda, but the controversy was quickly defused when Shannon explained the measures he had taken to take the site out of public view.

Shannon said he met with Shranko and one of Yellow-Checker-Star's owners, Pete Eliades, who offered to finance the equipment necessary to remove the site from public view and set up a password-protected system.

Shannon said he was not pressured by Eliades, who advertised his topless club on the VegasCabbie.com site, to make the changes.

The VegasCabbie.com editor, who is identified on the site as "Hound Dawg," explained that the site was developed in July 2001 as a means of exchanging information between cab drivers after spate of cabbie robberies. When Shannon turned the message board portion of the site over to a company that specializes in hosting forums, he said he lost control of his ability to monitor and edit the board's content.

"I couldn't go in and mess with their software," Shannon said. "I had no control whatsoever."

After meeting with Eliades and Shranko, Shannon said he concurred that his disclaimer warning people not to enter the site if they could be easily offended was not enough to keep the curious away. But he added that it was doubtful that a tourist would accidentally stumble upon the website because it was not listed on any search engines.

He acknowledged that the recent notoriety about the site attracted additional attention.

While Shannon's modifications will keep criticisms of Shranko and his staff out of the public eye, it won't prevent cab drivers participating in the forum from airing their remarks in the closed forum. That doesn't bother Shranko.

"It's really something that I can't control, so as long as they don't air it in public, they can have it," Shranko said.

Shranko said he developed a thick skin for criticism when he served on a city council and was chief of staff for the mayor of Youngstown, Ohio, when the city was battling organized crime.

"My main concern was that the general public and kids would be able to see this stuff, so I think it's going to work out," Shranko said.

Members of the Taxicab Authority commended Shannon for the changes he made and said they were relieved that a fight apparently was averted.

"Why to we have to wash our dirty linen in public?" asked Chairwoman Lia Roberts. "I'd really like to see your website work on things that are constructive to the industry."

Roberts said an investigation being conducted jointly by Metro and Taxicab Authority investigator Natalie Infurno would continue, but she doesn't expect the matter to go much further.

Shannon also seemed relieved.

"I realized that everything rolls downhill," he said, "and I was the one who was catching it."