Gov. Andrew Cuomo has reached a deal with the Bloomberg administration on a deal to provide livery service to the outerboroughs.
We are expecting an announcement featuring the governor–and the mayor, via conference call–shortly.
Even last week, Gov. Cuomo was saying that he expected to veto the bill, since he felt as if it did not provide adequate protections for disabled riders. Read More
As the deadline for the taxi bill enters the 11th hour, Mayor Mike Bloomberg’s office is pushing the support of it from an influential quarter: Rev. Al Sharpton.
According to the release:
Reverend Al Sharpton, President of National Action Network, and one of the country’s foremost leaders for civil rights, along with the National Action Network’s Board of Directors, are appealing to NY Gov. Andrew Cuomo to sign the historic five-borough taxi legislation saying it is about fairness and justice: fairness for all of the neighborhoods that the yellow taxi industry has refused to serve for decades, and justice for 40,000 livery drivers who would finally be able to earn a living without hiding in the shadows. Read More
Gov. Andrew Cuomo threw cold water on a central priority of Mayor Mike Bloomberg this afternoon when he raised the threat of a veto over a plan to allow livery cars to make street pickups in the outer boroughs.
According to the governor, the problem was insuring that both livery cabs and regular yellow cabs are handicapped accessible.
“The agreement has been harder to reach than people anticipated and has gone on a long time,” the governor said to David Paterson, his predecessor in the governor’s office, and now a WOR radio host, adding that he was concerned about “The right of the disabled and the accessibility of the system. And that is what we have been trying to grapple with over the last few days. I am not going to have anything to do with a bill that does not respect the rights of the disabled community.” Read More
Gov. Andrew Cuomo made a rare public appearance in Brooklyn today and afterwards was bombarded by reporters about the status of a Mayor Bloomberg backed bill that would permit livery cars to make outer borough curbside pick-ups.
“The taxi bill is a very complicated bill that we have been working on for months to try to negotiate,” Gov. Cuomo. “There are a number of parties that are involved–the yellow cabs, what they call the black cars, the livery cabs, the radio base operators and we’ve been trying for months to try to forge a consensus among these groups. The concept behind I think it is right and is bonafide. We want to get more taxi service to the outer boroughs.It would also generate revenue for the city which is very important. But we want to do it in a way that respects everybody’s rights.” Read More
The fight over whether to allow livery cabs to make pick-ups in the outer boroughs is quickly descending into a war of words.
Yesterday, Gov. Andrew Cuomo that he expected to veto the measure and added ”I don’t believe there was ever agreement on the taxi bill.”
But Mayor Mike Bloomberg and members of Read More
Along with the usual Albany hurry-and-wait over an all but certain to pass overhaul of the s, tate’s tax program, the Capitol was abuzz today with conflicting reports over the status of Mayor Mike Bloomberg’s street hail livery proposal.
In the morning, The Daily Politics reported that a deal was near; later The Politicker reported that it was all but done. Afterwards, State of Politics suggested that a deal was dead.
Now the Bloomberg administration itself has weighed in with a statement that can be parsed to determine a little bit what went on behind the scenes. Read More
