Drivers Question Fenty's Reach

Lawsuit Challenges Order to Switch to Time-Distance Meters

The battle over taxi meters in the District moved to a D.C. courtroom yesterday, as lawyers argued the question: Who's the boss?

Jeffrey O'Toole, representing the D.C. Coalition of Cabdrivers, Companies and Associations, said Mayor Adrian M. Fenty (D) did not have the authority in October to order a switch to time-and-distance meters for calculating fares. That power, he said, lies with the eight-member D.C. Taxicab Commission.

But Robert Utiger, the city's senior assistant attorney general, said Fenty had every authority to make the decision to replace the often-confusing, decades-old zone system.

"The Taxicab Commission is subordinate to the mayor, not the other way around," Utiger said during the two-hour hearing in D.C. Superior Court. "The executive power of the District is lodged in the mayor."

The coalition, a group of cabdrivers opposed to time-and-distance meters, filed suit March 7, saying that Fenty had overstepped his power. Fenty was prompted to act Oct. 17 after U.S. Sen. Carl M. Levin (D.-Mich.) attached a provision to an appropriations bill requiring the District to switch to meters unless the mayor issued an executive order leaving the zone system intact. The type of meter was not specified.

The cabdriver group won a small victory at an earlier hearing when a judge extended the start date for meters from April 6 to May 1 because of confusion over a required period of public comment.

The hearing yesterday was on the merits of the lawsuit. Superior Court Judge Brook Hedge, who did not make a decision, could agree that Fenty had the authority or disagree -- and send the whole meter issue back to the drawing board.

"I don't know how I'm going to rule. That's why we have oral arguments," Hedge told the lawyers. "The issue is complex only because the provisions aren't the clearest."

But she said she would hurry. "I know everyone needs to know," she said.

O'Toole said the Taxicab Commission is an independent agency that should have played more than an advisory role in the decision. He said the D.C. government lawyers working on Fenty's behalf were "not saying much more than, 'We can do it, because that's who we are.' "

Utiger said the board of elections is a better example of an independent agency. "There's a reason for the independence, and the Taxicab Commission isn't that," he said.

Although there were a few empty seats in the courtroom, most seats were filled with cabdrivers who vowed not to give up, whatever the judge decides. The coalition favors a fare-calculating device based on zones that would use Global Positioning System technology and give riders a printed receipt. Time-and-distance meters will result in higher fares, they say, because of traffic jams and other obstacles.

"I think the judge was informed, and she asked good questions," said Solomon Tafesse, 49, who has been a driver for 12 years. "I don't predict the outcome, but we will continue to fight."