Thursday, May 18, 2017

Texas Senate Approves Ride Sharing Bill

The Texas Senate has just approved a new ride-sharing bill, which looks to replace the local ride-sharing laws that have been passed by various Texas cities and counties--and which eliminates the fingerprinting requirements in place in such cities as Austin. The new bill, HB100, would re-open the Austin market to Uber and Lyft, which have been pushing the passage of the bill in the Senate. The state effort is an attempt to bypass the strict fingerprinting requirements which have been pushed by Austin, where both Uber and Lyft withdrew from the market after local voters rejected Prop 1, a Uber- and Lyft-backed effort to overturn fingerprinting rules for new drivers in Austin. HB100 is part of an ongoing struggle and conflict between Austin and other big cities in Texas versus the State, on a wide range of political issues.