Former City Councilman David Yassky has been nominated by Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg to head the city’s Taxi and Limousine Commission, the mayor announced Friday morning on his weekly radio program.
Mr. Yassky, an ally of the Bloomberg administration who paid a price at the polls in a failed run for city comptroller last year for voting to extend term limits, would replace Matthew W. Daus, a lawyer and longtime official at the commission who is leaving to work in private business. The nomination of Mr. Yassky is subject to the approval of the City Council.
Mr. Yassky, 46, represented a swath of brownstone Brooklyn and the waterfront from 2002 to 2009 before running for comptroller. He also ran for Congress in 2006. His move to the taxi agency had been widely rumored for weeks.
“David is the right guy for the job,” Mayor Bloomberg said in a statement. “He led the way in the Council in introducing fuel-efficient taxis to the City, part of our PlaNYC agenda, and as former Chairman of the Small Business Committee, he’s familiar with the issues and concerns of running a small business and many taxi drivers are in fact small business owners.
Mr. Yassky at 46 years old is TOO YOUNG to head the TLC. He is too young to have the mature outlook, experience, strength and compassion necessary for regulating 56,000 cabbies and 13,400 cabs with the mix of strength and compassion and understanding that an older, more experience, more qualified commissioner should have. He is not strong enough to say no to Mayor Bloomberg in the interest of the cab business.
At his young age, he is far more likely to be tricked around by the tricksters and implement even more stringent edicts for the poor cabbie who does the work of the cab business in NYC. He will be taking more pay out of cabbies’ hands and making their already hard, back-breaking job moreso.
Here’s an example. At what probably is a .0025, quarter of a percent CHEAT/ERROR rate the TLC right now has allowed cable TV news to bleat over the TV how NYC cabbies cheated 1.8 million riders, and one NYC cabbie cheated to $40,000 overcharges. NOT ONE OF THESE TLC stood up and did the math, if they COULD do the math (probably not from a cooking school), not one stood up and said this is a cheat/error rate of .0025 percent in a year. So NYC riders, whether guests or New Yorkers, can be more reassured.
We, hope Mr. Yassky will look around at fleet garages in a regular basis! How many times the current commissioner did that?
It is intolerable that Mayor Bloomerg hasn’t gotten on the horn and said only 1/4 of 1 percent of riders were overcharged, a very small amount compared to total number of trips. “1.8 million riders cheated” has been blasted across cable tv news and New York Post front page. Mayor Bloomberg should be on the horn and say while zero overcharging is the standard, tourists and business visitors to NYC should feel they will be safely and honestly treated in a NYC yellow cab.
While it is always fun for the regulators and media to blast at and stamp on cabbies as the lowest thing in the world, remember they are the source of funding for the NYC cab business. As I said, it is intolerable for Mayor Bloomberg not to get on the horn and advise how many trips the 13400 cabs do every day, and that 1.8 million represents only 2 days of trips out of 365. 1/4 of one percent of a year’s trips.
Someone must make a news release to the media. Who is going to stick up for the 99.75 percent of cabbies who honestly and safely carried their riders to the desired destination?????
More to read!
http://www.brooklyneagle.com/categories/category.php?category_id=18&id=34115
Daus did bad job let crooked cabbies exist. Maybe he was fired by Bloomberg.
Yaasky should go undercover as a driver like on the CBS show Undercover boss and see how garage dispatchers rip us off.! No Tip No Work!!!!!!
Is it Jose who’s sick of his name, now used name Charles for 2 short comments, both involving Daus criticism? Sounds like a Charles defamation attempt, probably from one of the TLC groupies.
Brooklyn Eagle info: Yassky an attorney, worked on House Subcommittee on Crime under Charles Schumer, law professor at Brookly Law College. A message for Mr. Yassky, before going after taxi crime, you need to know WHO is at the root of it. Who changed the simple trip from A to B on meter, to circus performance with a circus meter? It is not the cabbies who are the root of crime in the cab business. Look at who the millionaires and now billionaires are in the cab business. Who in bad faith found a loophole to cross the spirit of federal law which says law enforcement cannot surveil people, hide and watch, to see if they commit a crime. If someone found a bad faith loophole to do things like that, surveilling 100,000 self-employed businessmen’s cash registers. Who changed the meters? Advertising cootie and dootie card enterprises?
Was it Jose who used the name Charles, and made two short critical comments on ex-Commissioner Daus? I guess I have to go back to using the T.
It worries me that an attorney would be Commissioner of the TLC. Unfortunately, I have the opinion: “it may be legal but it’s not moral.”
I do not believe lawyers have the same opinion. It’s scary. I think they have the opinion: if it is legal, it is right. If they can find a loop-hold, don’t examine the morality, the spirit of America’s freedom. If it was legal to crack someone’s head open, they’d be looking for a machete.
No. Charles. I use my real name in all my writings contrary to a lot of U that use cowardly other fake names.
We must make a strike. U must fight the TLC regulater. We are there slave.
The best man for TLC Commissioner is Peter Schenkman. Too bad he left the TLC. Someone finally came along who really understands this business and the TLC let him get away. Maybe Mr. Yassky will be a great Commissioner, maybe not? I wish Mr.Yassky good luck.
David Yassky, Esq., 46, too young to be responsible for 56,000 cabbie lives. What age requirement is there to “bark out orders and edicts?” 7 years old?
Park Ave riders demanding their 50 cents back. I know a cabstand where at certain times during the day and night regular clientele show up with their antics, their Nazi-like directions, and demands for their 50 cents. Well, I notice at those times there doesn’t seem to be any cabs in sight, cabbies are avoiding them. Don’t they wonder why no cabs are there when they show up? Will they get the message?
David Yassky nominated, but has he been confirmed? He is too young.
Yassky was confirmed on the 25th of this month according to what I read in the web page or NYTWA
Dear Mr. Yassky:
I am most unhappy at your conclusion that the accessible taxi pilot plan did not work, based upon 2,000+ taxicab rides by mobility-impaired persons in three years. I would say that the so-called “failure” of the pilot program was not because there was no demand for accessible taxis, but more because the phone number was not widely publicized. I didn’t see any ads on TV or on radio. I didn’t even know there was a pilot program and I’m pretty up on Disabled rights and services for people with disabilties. I believe firmly that ALL taxis should be accessible so that it makes it equal rights for a person with a disability to be able to hail a cab the way a non-disabled person can. If we had the WILL to do it, it would be done. And you, Sir, I don’t think, have the will. And THAT is why I am unhappy.
Ms. Cippola, it would be wonderful if NYC yellow cabs could pick up street wheel-chair riders. If the door could automatically open, a ramp come down, and the wheel-chair rider wheel into the cab and snap in. However, if the driver must get out to open door, lay down ramp, and then push the wheel-chair rider into the cab, snap down the chair, and then pull up the ramp, close the door, and get back in the cab, it makes the driver a big target for being hit in the rear or side by another vehicle. It is dangerous for the wheel-chair rider also. However, if there were OFF LANE spots created where the driver and rider are not in jeopardy of being hit, all well and good. Another consideration, a cab driver makes his pay by time and distance. If there is no pay for the time that the driver is helping load and unload the wheel-chair rider, then that time, multiplied by the number of times a day, say it equaled 30 times, 30 x 5 minutes, is 150 minutes = 2-1/2 hours lost by the driver, time not earning money, but paying for the lease time. It is a bad idea to say, oh well the driver will get a big tip, etcetera — that idea that never proves out to save the cabbie’s pay.