So you move to the US from a foreign country, go to work, save your money, and then decide to strike out on your own to start your own business.\u00a0 Pretty much the American dream, huh?<\/p>\n
Not if you’re the Colorado Public Utilities Commission<\/a>:<\/p>\n All Colorado cabdriver Edem “Archie” Archibong wants is to fulfill the next stage in his immigrant success story \u2014 to start his own business.But Colorado’s heavily regulated taxi industry isn’t cooperating, causing some local politicians to ask why government is getting in the way of the free-market system.<\/p>\n Mr. Archibong, a Nigerian native and married father of two, came to the U.S. legally in 1977. He joined the Army, where he worked as an optical technician and later started driving a cab to support his family. In 2008, he helped lead a group of 150 Denver-area cabdrivers, many of them legal African immigrants, with plans to start a taxi company called Mile High Cab to serve five Denver-area counties.<\/p>\n In July, the Colorado Public Utilities Commission (PUC), which oversees the local taxi industry, ruled that Mr. Archibong’s startup had its financial house in order. The entrepreneurs pooled their collective savings to start the company, eschewing cumbersome bank loans.<\/p>\n But the PUC said Mile High Cab<\/a> would hurt the public interest.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n That’s right.\u00a0 More cabs and more competition would hurt the public, according to the PUC.\u00a0 Why it wouldn’t be a simple matter to let the public decide this is apparently beyond the reasoning capacity of the PUC.<\/p>\n In fact, it’s a perfect example of how regulatory bodies often become captive to the industries they’re supposed to be regulating.\u00a0 Since they establish barriers to entry, they then become overly concerned with the health of the existing entities.<\/p>\n It’s also an example of how regulatory bodies will almost always seek to expand regulation, rather than contract it, in order to solve a problem.\u00a0 A 2008 report by the PUC to the legislature<\/a> shows that when the legislature had the opportunity to prevent this situation from arising, it took the opposite fork.<\/p>\n During the discussion and debate at the Legislature, multiple amendments to the original bill were proposed. Each of these amendments sought to balance the nature and scope of taxi regulation in Colorado in various ways. For example, in its early form, the bill stated a legislative declaration that “competition in the motor vehicle carrier industry will benefit Colorado consumers, making for greater choice and convenience.<\/strong><\/em>” The introduced version of the bill included a criminal history background check; the requirement that the operator meet certain safety, insurance and service quality standards; and the requirement that the Commission not limit the number of companies authorized to provide taxi service<\/strong><\/em>. Amendments were drafted, but not adopted, that required the Commission to conduct a study regarding expanding taxi service in rural areas; mandated the Commission to prescribe taxi rules regarding wheelchair access, refusals of service, taxi hailing without dispatch, reasonable lease rates, and the use of alternative fuels; prohibited unreasonable lease rates and fees to process credit transactions; and required companies to have at least 25 vehicles in populous base areas; required the companies to operate vehicles that are less than eight model years old, and to have a central dispatch open at all times.<\/p>\n