Thursday, June 09, 2005
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

Measure bans bounties doled out to cabdrivers

Cabdrivers make their way along Las Vegas Boulevard South while blaring their horns Wednesday night to protest the Legislature's decision to ban strip clubs from paying cabbies to bring customers to their business. Photo by Craig L. Moran.

The bounties that strip clubs pay cabdrivers who deliver tourists to their doors soon might go the way of mobbed-up casinos and slot machines that pay out real coins.

Legislators banned cab bounties in an amendment tacked onto another measure and approved Monday, just before the end of the legislative session.

Critics say bounties, typically about $20, lead cabbies to divert unsuspecting passengers to the clubs that pay the most.

"Kickbacks don't seem like a good thing to do," said Assemblyman John Oceguera, D-Las Vegas, head of the conference committee that added the ban.

"It gives the wrong impression to our guests. They shouldn't get in a cab and wonder if they're going to be taken to where they actually want to go," Oceguera said.

Southern Nevada taxicab drivers defend the practice, saying it's no different from tipping a concierge for a good referral.

"It's picking on the cabdrivers of Las Vegas, who are poor working stiffs," said Greg Bambic, president of the Professional Drivers Association.

"Why shouldn't it be legal?" asked Bambic, himself a cabdriver. "Why would you stop cabdrivers from getting tips when you don't stop bartenders, waitresses and maids?"

A spokesman for Gov. Kenny Guinn said the governor's office has received more than 330 calls from drivers opposed to the measure.

The bill had not been delivered to the governor as of Wednesday afternoon, and spokesman Greg Bortolin said he did not know whether Guinn would sign it.

"In Nevada, we're very much in the service industry. There's a lot of people who depend on tips and gratuities," Bortolin said.

How the amendment came to be was of concern to the governor, Bortolin said.

"We are terribly concerned when an amendment that is so hurtful to our hard-working cabdrivers is slipped into an 80-page piece of legislation at the last minute without an open discussion or the opportunity for the public to give its position on this issue," Bortolin said.

Oceguera said the amendment was based on ideas from other legislators and discussion with his conference committee, which included Assemblyman Mark Manendo, D-Las Vegas, and Sens. Dennis Nolan, R-Las Vegas, and Maggie Carlton, D-Las Vegas.

Those members could not be reached for comment Wednesday.

The valley's two largest cabdriver unions, the Industrial Technical Professional Employees Union Local 4873 and the United Steelworkers Local 711A, are urging its members to petition Guinn to reject the bill.

On Wednesday night, cabbies rallied against the measure at the Las Vegas Outlet Center at Las Vegas Boulevard South and Warm Springs Road. Cabbies planned to drive down the Strip with horns blaring. One participant estimated that as many as 200 cabdrivers took part.

Bounties can run from $10 to $30 a trip.

"The drivers don't get that many strip club tips. We work so hard, so long, it's another source of income they're cutting off," Bambic said. "It's at least $100 a month to the night drivers, maybe $150 or $200."

Bambic said that's a sizable bonus for drivers, some of whom make as little as $25,000 a year in salary and conventional tips. "When you're not making much of a check, every little bit helps," he said.

A taxi industry newsletter, Trip Sheet Magazine, often has several pages of ads listing bounties and other inducements.

In its June issue, massage parlors offers drivers $15 to $20 for "gratuities," "referral fees" or a "commission." A strip club advertises that trips there qualify drivers to enter a $10,000 "taxi raffle."

It's already illegal for drivers to talk passengers out of going to one strip club in favor of another, an act called a "diversion" by authorities. The new bill would make it illegal for cabbies to accept money from a club even when a passenger asks a driver for a referral to any club.

Specifically, the bill says drivers may "not accept a tip, gift, gratuity, money, fee or any other valuable consideration of any kind from a person who has been issued a license by a board of county commissioners, a county liquor board, a county licensing board or the city council or other governing body of an incorporated city for the conveyance of a passenger to the location of that person who holds the license."

Oceguera, who noted that cabdrivers still are free to accept tips from passengers, said adult clubs are not specifically targeted. "It covers restaurants, hotels, clubs," he said.

Said Bambic: "If somebody wanted to come out and give us a bottle of water, they couldn't do it."

That's OK with Oceguera. "It doesn't prohibit a new nightclub from having Taxi Drivers Night next Tuesday, and showing drivers the club," he said. "It prohibits them from giving fifty bucks every time they're there."

Hal Rothman, history department chairman at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, said he wasn't sure the bill would make bounties go away; rather, the practice simply could go underground.

"If it becomes law, they'll make standard operating procedure illegal," he said. "What you may see over the long haul is they find a way around it, or they break the rules."

The amendment was tacked onto a bill abolishing the Transportation Services Authority, which regulates limousines statewide and cabs outside of Clark County, and giving its duties to the Public Utilities Commission.

That bill was passed by a 42-0 Assembly vote on April 20 and a 14-7 Senate margin on June 2. Oceguera's committee was formed to work out differences between the Assembly and Senate versions.

Rothman said he didn't believe the late amendment was any sneakier than the way politics are practiced nationwide.

"This is how American politics works. You have a bill that's a winner, everybody puts on their pet projects," he said. "It's what the U.S. Congress does. It's what every state legislature does."