Cabbie Residency Law Hauled Into D.C. Court

By Theresa Vargas
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, March 6, 2006

A recently revived law that requires D.C. cabdrivers to live in the District has created a swell of opposition, one that flooded the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library yesterday and will spill into D.C. Superior Court today.

The library's basement had already filled with about 500 cabdrivers yesterday afternoon when the sidewalk began to crowd. Double-parked taxis lined the roads for blocks.

"We are full of faith. We are unified. We are an army of individual business men and women," Eric Weaver, president of the Taxi Cab Drivers Association, told those gathered. "It's time to march."

The association, a nonprofit group whose members are licensed taxicab operators, filed a motion for a temporary restraining order after D.C. officials decided Wednesday to put into practice a 2001 law that prohibits Virginia and Maryland residents from registering taxicabs in the city. The matter will go to court today at 2:30 p.m.

The association estimates that of the 8,000 taxi drivers in the District, about 7,000 do not live in the city.

"If you think it's hard to get a cab now, there will only be a thousand drivers out there," said Sandra Seegars, a former D.C. Taxicab Commission member. Many of the drivers can't afford to move to the District, she said. "They are firing these people. They are putting them out of business instantly."

City officials have discussed grandfathering cabs that have already been registered so a driver from outside the District could still operate the cab -- but only until the vehicle ceases to operate.

Although the law was passed in 2001, it has not been enforced, and Department of Motor Vehicles officials only recently noticed it during a legal review. Department of Motor Vehicles Director Anne Witt and D.C. Taxicab Commission Chairman Causton A. Toney brought it to the attention of council member Carol Schwartz (R-At Large) on Feb. 23, and she asked them to brief the public on it during budget hearings that day.

"I was unaware, as I'm sure all of us were, that all these cabs are driving around [are not] owned by D.C. companies who are paying taxes here," Schwartz said.

Schwartz noted that D.C. residents are not allowed to register their cars in Virginia and Maryland to earn an income there. "Fair is fair," she said.

Toney said that although nonresidents can no longer register their cabs with the District, the commission has no plans to stop issuing the certificate authorizing them from operating in the city. The three options for nonresident drivers will be to affiliate with a D.C.-based company, become a D.C. resident or operate using the license plate of their home state, he said.

"I suspect, in the end, drivers are really going to recognize that they are making a lot more of something than they should," Toney said. "We have no interest in putting them out of business."

Schwartz said she has asked Witt and Toney to investigate the issue further, looking to see what other metropolitan areas, including New Jersey and New York, do.

But as Haile Alemseged, a cabdriver who lives in Silver Spring, stood in the crowd yesterday, he said the District is not like New York and New Jersey -- nor should it be.

"This is a federal city. It belongs to all of us," said Alemseged, 45. "Why do they have to pick on us?"

Many others who work in the District don't live there, he said, mentioning police officers, firefighters, lawyers and government officials.

Alemseged, who has been a taxi driver for 17 years, said he doesn't like the option of affiliating with a D.C.-based company. There is a psychological freedom that comes from not working for a company, the Ethiopian emigrant said. "They are trying to make us slaves."

Alonzo Broadus, 80, is a D.C. native who lived in city 75 years before moving. During that time, he put four sons through Catholic school on his cabdriver's salary. He left only because he believed that crime was swallowing his neighborhood. He now lives in Centreville.

"And I'll never come to Washington again. They can take my damn cab," he said, obviously shaken. "Instead of me getting to see two-legged animals where they shoot and kill me, I get to see four-legged animals that run away from me."

Most cabbies yesterday spoke with similar emotion, telling of wives and children and mortgages. Whenever the question of a strike arose, they raised their arms in support.

Weaver promised those gathered: "They will not take your business. They will not take your freedom. Your dignity will not be taken. You will not be forced to work for someone else.

"The more they come at us, the more they attack us," he said, "the more unified we will become."