Hail, No! Judge kayoes Mayor Bloomberg?s plan to let livery cabs make street pickups

Mayor Bloomberg's plan to allow 18,000 livery cabs to take street hails in the outer boroughs and upper Manhattan got a red light Friday from judge ? blowing a big hole in the city?s budget.

The ruling, which will likely be appealed, blocks the city from selling 2,000 new medallions for handicapped accessible yellow cabs or authorizing the livery street pickups.

The decision by Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron means the city loses out on $1 billion in one-shot revenue it had hoped to generate from medallion sales.

Earlier this summer, Engoron temporarily blocked the Bloomberg administration from selling the yellow medallions and taking applications for livery hail licenses after lawyers with the medallion industry argued that the law authorizing the plan was illegal.

They said Bloomberg violated the state's home rule law by sidestepping the City Council ? which opposes the plan ? and going straight to the state Legislature to get it approved. Gov. Cuomo signed the measure after lawmakers added more yellow cabs for the disabled.

Opponents also said the mayor had violated the City Charter because the law lets him decide how to spend the $1 billion that the medallion sale will yield ? sidestepping the council, which must approve the city's budget.

"End runs are legal in football and in politics," Engoron wrote in June. He said the "most basic question" raised by opponents is whether the mayor violated the home rule provision of the state constitution by not going to the Council.

"This court has trouble seeing how the provision of taxi service in New York City is a matter than can be wrenched from the hands of city government, where it has resided for some 75 years, and handed over to the state," he said.

Engoron signed a temporary restraining order blocking the city from implementing the plan.

The judge said the opponents, who now have the exclusive right to pick up street hails, were ?likely to succeed? on this issue and they proved they would suffer 'irreparable harm' if the plan were put into effect before the litigation was resolved.

Engoron's decision triggered an angry response from Bloomberg who said the judge had blown a $1 billion hole in the mayor's proposed budget and would result in layoffs. Ultimately, the city budget adopted did not have the layoffs he threatened.

City lawyers could have taken Engoron's decision to the Appellate Division, but decided against it after the judge agreed to rule quickly on the overall case.

The plaintiffs in the case include individual medallion owners, businessmen who own fleets of yellow cabs, City Councilman Lew Fidler, Public Advocate Bill deBlasio and a group that finances the purchases of yellow medallions.

The city currently has 13,237 yellow medallion cabs. The cost of individual medallions hit a record high this past week when two were sold for $1,050,000 each.

The owners predicted that the livery plan would sharply cut the value of their medallions because despite the rules forbidding it, livery cabs would start to take street hails in Manhattan as well as the outer boroughs and that would cut into the revenue of medallion cabbies.

Source: http://feeds.nydailynews.com/~r/nydnrss/latino/~3/HscAhDgJ_9w/hail-judge-kayoes-mayor-bloomberg-plan-livery-cabs-street-pickups-article-1.1138841

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