- February 5, 2016

Sign Here: Government By Petition Is A Recipe For Chaos

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Earlier this week, City Clerk Jannette Goodall reported to City Council that she and her staff had certified the petitions submitted by the coalition Ridesharing Works for Austin in support of an ordinance regarding transportation network companies – i.e., app-based taxi services trendily re-branded as “ridesharing” by their corporate bosses (primarily Uber and Lyft). In response to Council’s December enactment of a TNC ordinance that would have incrementally encouraged virtually universal fingerprinting of TNC drivers (as is required of all traditional taxi drivers) along with other accountability provisions, the companies quickly organized a paid petitioner campaign that in short order accumulated an estimated 65,000 signatures; about a third of those were submitted to the city for confirmation.