Barwood files for bankruptcy after MoCo Council charged you to subsidize it

"If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. If it stops moving, subsidize it."

- Ronald Reagan

SPECIAL REPORT: Abuse of the system

The Montgomery County Council proved yet again why term limits were supported by nearly 80% of their constituents this week, when the dinosaur taxicab company it tried to preserve for the last year using your tax dollars filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Barwood Cab announced the filing yesterday, about 18 months after the Council gave the company several regulatory breaks, and charged Uber users and taxpayers to subsidize changes that would help it compete with Uber and Lyft.

Fox 5 News

The private-sector entrepreneurs who created Uber and other ride-sharing services spent years and many thousands of dollars developing the mobile apps that brought them so much success. Barwood and other taxi monopolies around the country could have invested in and implemented such apps years ago, if they wished. They didn't.

What did the Montgomery County Council do? They charged their constituents and Uber new taxes and fees to fund the creation of what they claimed would be a hip, new Barwood app - a.k.a. "a centralized dispatch system" - at YOUR expense.

Montgomery County Council
generously using your money
to help Barwood Cab
"Compete With Companies
Like Uber," NBC4 reported

NBC4

The laws passed also gave numerous, money-saving breaks to Barwood that weren't in the public interest, such as allowing them to use older vehicles longer (not exactly a move to increase service reliability, as your mechanic might be able to tell you), relax meter standards and color requirements, and allow sublicensing and temporary identification cards for taxicab companies - which are not ride-sharing services like Uber, and therefore were supposed to be more regulated.

Fact is, the Council was once again caught "fighting the future," trying to drive the very ride-sharing services their constituents now choose over the Stone Age taxicab out of the county.

Who were the lead faces behind Barwood-subsidizing Uber taxes...er..."taxicab reform?" Councilmembers Roger Berliner (who once had the owner of Barwood serve as his County Council campaign treasurer) and - surprise! - Hans Riemer. Once again, Councilmember Riemer has proved every initiative he takes on will end in complete and utter failure.

Ending the County liquor monopoly? I'll give you a few minutes here, to roll around on the floor with laughter. After claiming with great media fanfare that government had no business running the liquor business, Riemer ended up ramming through a proposal that would preserve the dinosaur liquor monopoly at the expense of taxpayers, and restaurant and bar owners. It was such a great proposal that his own Democratic colleagues in Annapolis tore it up and threw it in the trash upon its arrival. Riemer has since endorsed numerous variations on the theme - solutions that preserve government control, while charging new taxes to subsidize that monopoly. Nice.

Food trucks? Riemer's own political operative, who was appointed to a $150,000 County position, was put in charge of "helping food trucks." The changes he and Riemer implemented resulted in 96% of food trucks going out of business, or retreating back into the District. A handful remain, which operate only on private property.

Cybersecurity? Riemer promised in 2010 to make MoCo a "cybersecurity hub" on the east coast. Four years later, it was exposed that the county government was running on Windows 2000, perhaps the most insecure platform in the world. Six years later, a State audit revealed critical cybersecurity weaknesses in Montgomery County Public Schools' computer network. These flaws put private student information a few clicks away for hackers, and gave access to the entire MCPS network, including log-in passwords for personnel. Yikes.

Jobs? Riemer was given a friendly platform by the faux-conservative Washington Examiner in 2012 to announce he was going to do something about the county's "sluggish job growth." Results? Four years later, Riemer's own former chief of staff criticized the county's "stagnant" private-sector economy, which remains moribund. The County continues to experience a net loss in private-sector jobs since 2000, including a loss of 2000 retail jobs, according to the Maryland Association of Retailers. Not one single major corporation has moved its headquarters to Montgomery County in two decades. Ouch.

Hans Riemer made himself the public face of a snow removal law that cost County taxpayers $6 million, for his own publicity purposes and political gain. Then winter hit, and snow remained unshoveled in front of properties owned by wealthy developers, and more embarrassingly, by Montgomery County itself! To cap off the humiliation, Riemer and his council colleagues rode past the snow piles multiple times on a tourist bus tour of the Westbard area, and after seeing the unshoveled sidewalks, still took no action. Best of all, in recent weeks, Riemer has put himself forward in the media again as the "snow guy." Oh, boy, is this winter going to be fun.

Changes ahead for Barwood? They will paint their cabs black (in fact, they've already started doing so), and will use iPads for payment. The former would eliminate the one branding element they've been known for. As for the latter - why would you want to deal with somebody's dirty public iPad, when Uber lets you use your own phone for the entire transaction, including receipt? Talk about the stone age.

After the "success" of using their constituents' money to boost Barwood Cab, what's the next venture for Riemer and the Council? They're going into the banking business!

That's right. The seemingly endless number of banks all around us are no longer enough. Berliner is going to start his own bank - with your money. How generous! Local businesspeople will go to the Bank of The Montgomery County Council and get a loan. They represent a risk that real, private banks won't take on. But that's not a problem at the Council's bank - because it's your money they'll be doling out, not theirs.

You won't even get a lollipop.

Montgomery County Council still fighting the future, Uber and Lyft

The Montgomery County Council crackdown on ride-sharing services like Uber and Lyft, which not only raised your fares but dings you 25 cents on every Uber trip you take, isn't over yet. New WMATA chief Paul Wiedefeld and the members of the WMATA board of directors will meet with the Council today at 12:45 PM. But last week, seven councilmembers sent a letter to Wiedefeld demanding he not partner with Uber or Lyft on paratransit services.

Instead, the council wants to not only extract that 25-cent Uber tax you're paying on each ride now, but also want you, the taxpayer, to subsidize - guess who - Barwood cab, the Council's idea of cutting-edge transportation. Like in D.C., cab companies would handle paratransit services beyond what MetroAccess provides.

Term limits are gaining steam thanks to the Council's disregard for residents' concerns about development from Lyttonsville to Chevy Chase to Westbard. Unlike paratransit, there will be an app for that.

PAST FIGHTS FUTURE AT MONTGOMERY COUNTY COUNCIL HEARING ON UBER, LYFT, TAXIS

One day after Montgomery County Executive Ike Leggett and County Council President George Leventhal exhorted the Council to disprove the widespread perception that the county is hostile to business... the Council held a public hearing on a bill hostile to business.

Council Expedited Bill 54-14 would, plain and simple, make it more costly for ridesharing services like Uber and Lyft to operate in Montgomery County. If passed, it would absolutely, positively raise fares for users of Uber and Lyft. And the bill sends a terrible message to the region and the nation that Montgomery County is closed for business.

Beyond punishing ridesharing services, subsidies were on the table for Uber and Lyft's competition, the local cab companies. Specifically, Expedited Bill 55-14 would require the county's Department of Transportation to create a "centralized, electronic taxicab dispatch system" - at taxpayer expense. Likewise, Expedited Bill 53-14 would reduce the cost of operations for Barwood and other cab companies, while 54-14 raises the cost for Uber and Lyft. Sound fair to you?

Considering that's there is no mass public outcry to put more regulations on Uber and Lyft, where is the urgency for ham-handed government intervention coming from? If you haven't already figured it out, Barwood is well-connected politically in the county. Uber and Lyft entered a stagnant transportation market, did well, and now its taxi competitors are crying foul. Using political connections and hiring at least one PR firm, they have attempted to create a fake Astroturf campaign against ridesharing companies. Which Bill 54-14 incorrectly lumps in with taxicabs.

Uber and Lyft are not taxicabs. While they operate legally in the transportation market, and indeed have some advantages over taxicabs, they cannot - for example - troll the streets, hotels and shopping centers of Montgomery County, in hopes of being hailed by a prospective passenger. That's an advantage taxis have over ridesharing.

While some on the Council are hoping to preserve the status quo of the old taxi monopolies their constituents have been complaining about for decades, the rest of the world has shifted beneath them. I attend a fair number of grand openings and events around Bethesda and the county, and I can't recall anyone arriving by taxi for the red carpet. 

Young people, in particular, are arriving by Uber. One topic receiving a lot of press in the last year has been the question of how to attract more millennials to live and work in Montgomery County. The County Council has been one of the prime talkers on this issue. Their record doesn't back up their talk. Affordable housing is being torn down, no major corporation with high-wage jobs has been attracted to the county in over a decade, and the county even managed to run 90% of food trucks out of downtown Bethesda. 

Now Bill 54-14, which would raise Uber fares, and some councilmembers' threats to crack down on increasingly popular e-cigarettes, are raising the volume on a clear message to millennials - Montgomery County is not for you. Imagine millennials' reaction to the County Council making their Uber rides more expensive.

But back to business - If I'm the CEO of a tech start-up, and I know that, once my product disrupts the established powers in the market, the Council will step in and crack down on me - why would I incorporate my business in Montgomery County? And why would I offer my product or service to county residents, if the elected officials will make that product or service more expensive (and therefore less competitive) to please established companies that have a direct line - and checkbook - to the County Council?

This isn't just about Uber and Lyft. Ideally, wouldn't you like to have additional ridesharing services competing for your travel dollar in the county? Upstart competitors won't just be hurt by Bill 54-14, but may be shut out entirely from our market. Uber and Lyft are big enough to simply pass the added costs 54-14 would impose on them onto their customers; start-ups won't have the customer base and financing to do that.

More evidence of the ground shifting beneath the County Council? Major corporations like Citigroup and Gannett have made Uber the official ground transportation option for their employees, instead of taxicabs. If you're the CEO of a Fortune 500 company, and you know Montgomery County will raise the travel costs for your firm, why would you be encouraged to relocate your headquarters there, or do business there?

Not to mention that the crackdown on Uber will suggest to those corporations that Montgomery County's leaders are stuck in the past and fighting the future, hardly the message you want to send to the tech, aerospace, defense and biotech industries.

Uber and Lyft are at least as safe as taxicabs, and offer more accountability and convenience than traditional taxis do. We need more of these services, not less, and certainly not higher fares. If Barwood and other taxi services would like to switch to becoming a ridesharing service, they can do that without public financing and subsidies.

Ridesharing services are also creating jobs and providing transportation to areas of the county underserved by transit.

In emotional testimony last night, Uber driver Elgasim Fadlalla said the company "saved my life." Laid off in a recent round of Pentagon defense cuts, Fadlalla has been able to attend school while driving for Uber. As a former taxi driver, he said that would not have been financially feasible if he were driving a traditional cab. With a taxi company, "I owe them $105 for rent when I wake up in the morning." Not so with Uber.

Another Uber driver, Dario Arana, said he owns 12 restaurants in the DC area, in addition to his driving job. He drives to help people more than just for the money, he said. "Public transportation here in the county is not reliable, and we definitely need ridesharing companies" to augment that system, he testified.

Reliability is also critical for Uber user Bridget Frances, who said, "I've found Uber quicker than Metro, and more reliable than the bus. It's the most convenient thing. I don't know what I did before Uber."

Isn't it time Montgomery County stops fighting the future?