Is El Paso willing to follow Dallas’ lead to keep Uber?
As El Paso continues to debate recommendations to its vehicle for hire ordinance amid Uber’s threats to leave the city, ABC-7 wanted to know what other cities were doing in order to keep the company an option.
On Monday Uber pulled out of Austin after a vote to require fingerprinting of its drivers. But in Dallas, where Uber continues to operate under new rules, no fingerprinting is required.
“For a city of our size, having additional transportation options is really important,” said Dionne Mack, chair of the City of El Paso’s Transportation For Hire Committee, tasked with making recommendations to city council that would allow Uber to continue to operate in the Sun City. “We actually modeled our plan after Dallas.”
ABC-7 asked Mack where the committee is at currently when it comes to fingerprinting.
“Our process does not include a requirement for fingerprints,” Mack said, which is in line with what Dallas did.
Owners of El Paso cab companies think fingerprinting need to be part of the process.
“It’s not the end of the world to have somebody go do a fingerprint background check if you want a job,” said Joe Olivar is owner of Border Taxi, and he thinks fingerprinting all drivers is a good idea. “All these regulations are common sense approach regulations.”
City representative Cortney Niland doesn’t think fingerprinting, which appears to be Uber’s biggest concern, is necessary.
“At the end of the day, if you don’t think it’s safe, then don’t use it, no one is forcing you to,” Niland said.
“Some people collect fingerprints and they are for identification in the future, they’re not necessarily being utilized for any type of identification purpose in that background check in the moment,” Mack explained. “And so from our perspective, if it isn’t strengthening the process of doing the background checks and providing us that information, why at this point would be collect something that is not going to be integrated into that verifications process?”
Mack’s committee will report back to council on Tuesday, where a sixth public discussion is planned. Uber did not respond by deadline to ABC-7’s request for comment on why they’ve drawn a line in the sand on the fingerprinting issue.
