Columnist Jeff German: On the cowardly inaction of the Taxicab Authority

Sunday, Jan. 29, 2006 | 7:57 a.m.

Jeff German's column appears Sunday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday in the Sun. Reach him at german@lasvegassun.com or (702) 259-4067.

When the cab companies come away smiling from a Nevada Taxicab Authority board meeting, you know something's wrong.

Last week the five-member board of political appointees found another reason not to do its job of regulating the taxicab industry.

As unbelievable as it sounds -- after two years of struggling to come up with a regulation requiring cameras in cabs -- the board took a disturbing giant step backward.

It was bullied by the influential companies into considering a regulation that doesn't require cameras, but instead allows the companies to employ whatever measures they want to protect their drivers.

The part-time board voted to schedule yet another public workshop next month to revamp the current camera proposal, and this time, as Chairwoman Kathryn Werner said afterward, "everything is on the table."

That would include safes, bullet-proof shields and global positioning systems -- "everything" that has proven not to work in Las Vegas.

Clearly, there are flaws in the latest proposed regulation.

It allows the use of video cameras with audio, which some companies already have installed, for a lot more than just preventing crime or pursuing evidence of a crime, raising a host of privacy issues.

The Taxicab Authority, for example, could use the information gleaned from the recordings to discipline drivers. So could the companies.

But to think about tossing aside a requirement for cameras at this time is absurd. Fix the darned flaws.

The board's vote delighted the companies on the extreme ends of this debate -- those that want unfettered use of cameras with sound as a management tool and those that don't want to install cameras at all.

The only company executive who left last week's meeting unhappy was Bill Shranko, operations manager for the conglomerate Yellow Checker Star. His company has followed the spirit of the original proposal two years ago that mandated less-intrusive still digital cameras, which are popular in cities around the world.

When it became clear that the board once more was caving in to his competitors, Shranko, whose company has invested $800,000 in still cameras, stood up and voiced his frustration.

"It gets to the point where this is like an ongoing filibuster," he said. "I'm getting ground down."

Two years into this debate, the companies were advancing the same old stale arguments. And the board was buying into them.

Lucky Cab owner Jason Awad, a lawyer adept at doublespeak, had the gall to tell the board, "Don't rush into this."

Awad blamed the media (primarily me) for stirring things up, and he suggested that the board should spend more time studying the issue before forcing cameras down the throats of the companies.

He forgot to mention, however, that he paid $16,000 for a UNLV study 18 months ago that concluded cameras are the way to go.

Attorney Mark James, a former state senator who represents the five companies owned by camera opponent Charlie Frias, tried to hoodwink the board into believing that there is no evidence that cameras have deterred crime in Las Vegas.

James offered his opinion in the face of statistics just reported by the Taxicab Authority that show robberies against drivers have declined 67 percent since half the industry voluntarily installed cameras last year.

In the end, after one owner suggested litigation was likely if the board didn't march to the tune of the companies, board member Carolyn Sparks made a candid observation.

"I don't want us to get to the point where we're afraid to do anything," she said.

Then she joined her colleagues in voting not to do anything -- again.