Catherwood LibraryILR School

Ride hailing companies Uber and Lyft are supporting a bill in the California legislature that would prevent their drivers from having to pay for more than one business license, which would ease the financial costs for many drivers who drive from city to city, but which aggrieves local governments who are tracking the impact of increasing numbers of drivers. Few cities have fully enforced the extra licensing requirement, but if the bill passes, it would prevent them from ever doing so. The bill would allow for one business license for a ride-hailing driver to operate within the state, regardless of how many cities the driver passes through. It would also prevent public access to driver addresses listed in online databases for independent contractors, protecting driver privacy. San Francisco, which uses its comprehensive licensing requirements to track numbers of drivers, is opposed to the legislation, citing their findings that “thousands” of drivers were in the city daily, and that more than 70% of Uber/Lyft drivers in San Francisco don’t live there. The city would lose all but $500,000 of the current $1.7 million that it currently achieves in driver business license fees.