Minnesota continues to face the bill for its hard lurch to the left.
Minnesota continues to face the bill for its hard lurch to the left. Last year, after the Democrat-Farmer-Labor Party took a one-seat majority in the state senate and went on a bonanza of progressive lunacy, one of the few bills that went too far even for Governor Tim Walz was a state mandate for higher pay for Uber and Lyft drivers. A similar proposal was vetoed by Minneapolis mayor Jacob Frey, who, like Walz, is a man rarely known to encounter proposals too far left for his taste. But unlike the state bill, the Minneapolis bill was enacted by the city council over Frey’s veto.
The result, as Ryan Mills has reported, has been as chaotic as it is predictable:
Both Lyft and its competitor, Uber, say they’re leaving the city on May 1. Councilmembers determined new driver-pay rates without requesting local data from the rideshare companies or inviting the companies’ leaders to engage in their process. Lyft leaders called the Minneapolis ordinance “deeply flawed.” The Star Tribune editorial board said the council “ill-advisedly voted to require an excessive minimum wage” for drivers. . . . The council almost immediately responded by overriding [Frey’s] veto with a 10-to-3 vote, though a majority of council members on Thursday expressed a willingness to revise the legislation in response to overwhelming public backlash.
Still, state lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are scrambling for a solution to keep Lyft and Uber in town and available to the thousands of Twin Cities residents who rely on them. Advocates for the elderly and disabled are raising concerns for their clients, who use rideshare services to get to critical appointments. Mothers Against Drunk Driving has expressed worries about having more intoxicated drivers on Twin Cities roads. Supporters of downtown businesses worry that without Lyft and Uber, fewer customers will travel into the city’s core.
Other businesses are already bailing out in anticipation of the May 1 date:
Hertz is ending a popular car-rental program that had given scores of Uber and Lyft drivers across the Twin Cities a lifeline to continue driving for a living when their own vehicles broke down. “Since we are ending ride share operations in the Twin Cities, Hertz is terminating their program and has reached out to drivers to ask them to start returning vehicles,” said Uber spokesman Josh Gold in an email Monday. . . .
Twin Cities drivers who rented their rideshare vehicles are now receiving emails from Hertz saying they need to return the cars to Hertz’s car rental lots in St. Paul and Brooklyn Center by a certain date. “Hertz has elected to close down the Lyft Express Drive operation in the Twin Cities as a result of the ordinance,” Lyft said in a statement. Lyft said drivers’ return date will depend upon the individual but would be no later than April 24.
Walz is in the unaccustomed position of having to talk some sense into his own side:
The new local law requires a minimum wage of $1.40 per mile and 51 cents per minute for drivers — a rate the companies argue is not sustainable. But drivers say their current pay is not enough to get by to support themselves and their families. A state study by the Minnesota Department of Labor and Industry determined drivers need $0.89 cents per mile and $0.49 cents per minute to make the equivalent of the $15.57 Minneapolis minimum wage requirement for businesses. . . .”The most efficient way to fix this is to ask the Minneapolis City Council to come back and use the state study,” Walz said. . . .
Walz was skeptical any alternative service would be able to plug a gap in service quickly if the companies do leave the city. . . .”We have what I can only describe as magical thinking that in the next 30 days, somebody’s going to create a new app that folks around the world and country are going to know to use when they come to Minneapolis, and they’re going to figure out how to make the economics work on that,” Walz said. “So I’ve been asking all the folks to get back to the table.”
Gee, who could have predicted that DFL economics would rely on “magical thinking”? Over at Axios, Kyle Stokes details the daunting list of challenges facing new entrants to the market in seeking to instantly scale up to handle the million rides per month currently taken in the Twin Cities and employ their 8,000 rideshare drivers.
Minnesota voters could have avoided this entirely self-inflicted mess. Now that they elected these people, all they can do is beg them to reconsider before they leave all those drivers and riders out in the cold.