The newest head of the town’s Taxi and Limousine Fee is taking a brand new job with a ride-hailing tech firm — simply weeks after TLC branded it as “unlawful.”
David Do is leaping to Empower as senior vp of presidency and regulatory affairs shortly after exiting the company that oversees the town’s sprawling taxi and for-hire car business — the place he had served as commissioner since 2022.
“Empower is an unlicensed, unlawful base that places each drivers and passengers in danger, and we’re dedicated to holding it accountable,” Jason Kersten, a TLC spokesperson, mentioned in an announcement. “Upon confirming that the previous commissioner, who was employed beneath the Eric Adams administration, simply took a job with Empower, we instantly reported it to the Conflicts of Curiosity Board for investigation.”
The tech firm has been making inroads within the metropolis just lately whereas attempting to chop into Uber and Lyft’s grip on the for-hire car enterprise with cheaper rides. It payments itself as a pro-worker app with a month-to-month membership price and claims that staff can set their very own fares and take residence 100% of every fare.
The bombshell dropped Wednesday towards the top of a Metropolis Council affirmation listening to for Midori Valdivia, who Mayor Zohran Mamdani named in January as Do’s successor on the TLC.
In the course of the Metropolis Council listening to, Valdivia was vital of Empower, which the TLC has mentioned does meet TLC security requirements for drivers or passengers and doesn’t guarantee that passengers are “adequately insured within the occasion of a crash.”
“I’ll use each energy within the TLC’s authority, and as a lot energy as I can within the metropolis’s authority, to cease Empower and cease this unlawful operation,” Valdivia mentioned.
Then the assembly was upended by the digital testimony of Joshua Sear, the chief government officer of Empower.
“Whereas I’m admittedly upset that she commented on Empower with out having ever spoken to anybody from the corporate, primarily based on every thing else that I heard from her right this moment, I’m hopeful she can be a powerful champion for drivers,” Sear mentioned.
Calling drivers “among the hardest working people in our neighborhood,” Sear then slipped in that Do is transferring on to his firm, which has rapidly come into the sights of the town for its push to chop into Uber and Lyft’s enterprise.
The corporate payments itself as providing a unique mannequin from its opponents’, one that permits drivers to “actually run their very own companies,” it says. However TLC has focused the corporate on an “unlawful apps” web site warning that companies “corresponding to Empower and WhatsApp Messenger are unlicensed software program platforms that serve bases” by connecting drivers with journeys.
For-hire autos from Uber and Lyft account for greater than 82,000 of the greater than 115,000 TLC-licensed autos within the metropolis, in response to company knowledge.
“Working for themselves utilizing our software program, TLC-licensed drivers are making hundreds of {dollars} extra per thirty days than they had been working for Uber or Lyft,” Sear mentioned in his testimony Thursday.
TLC officers countered that drivers aligned with Empower are liable to dropping their licenses and are topic to enforcement actions by TLC police.
THE CITY reported that Do earned his TLC driver’s license quickly after taking the wheel on the company in 2022, sometimes taking unsuspecting passengers for rides as a part of his efforts to study extra about what drivers encounter on the job. TLC would sometimes spotlight his stints behind the wheel in social media movies.
Bhairavi Desai, the pinnacle of the New York Taxi Staff Alliance, instructed THE CITY that Do’s shock bounce to Empower is “equally disappointing and infuriating.”
“Empower was seeking to take the highlight away from the drivers and switch a severe listening to right into a circus with their breaking information,” Desai wrote in memo to alliance members. “Empower is just not a lifeline for drivers, it’s a entice.”
A spokesperson for Empower mentioned in an announcement that each driver utilizing the corporate’s software program “is a TLC-licensed driver utilizing a TLC-licensed car.”
“We sit up for working with the Mamdani administration to make sure TLC-licensed drivers have the identical civil rights as all different licensed professionals in New York and that New Yorkers have entry to inexpensive and protected transportation,” the assertion learn.
In his digital testimony, the corporate’s CEO praised Do as a match for its enterprise mannequin.
“He, like myself, understands that drivers in New York Metropolis are uninterested in feeling unheard and disempowered,” Sear mentioned. “They need the flexibility work for themselves.”
