Bonus Episode: A break down about the ongoing Uber-Lyft controversy with Adam Platt

[00:00:00] Welcome to The Break Down with Brodkorb and Becky, a weekly podcast that breaks down politics, policy and current affairs. I'm Becky Scherr. And I'm Michael Brodkorb. Today we're here with a bonus episode to further break down the Uber-Lyft situation in Minneapolis. We

[00:00:26] are joined today by Adam Platt. Adam is the executive editor at Twin Cities Business Magazine and recently wrote a piece called Getting to the Big Picture on Rideshare. With Adam, we will dive into the history of the Twin Cities cab scene and how Uber entered the

[00:00:41] market in 2012. We'll break down the impact on the cab industry and the issues Uber and Lyft's exit now causes for thousands. And we'll also get into the rate debate of self-employed workers and the government's role or lack thereof. Thank you for joining us today

[00:00:57] and we hope you enjoy the show. We are very excited today to be joined by Adam Platt who is the executive editor at Twin Cities Business Magazine. He recently wrote just a fantastic piece called Getting to the Big Picture on Rideshare. And this is our

[00:01:14] first opportunity to speak with Adam. And thank you so much for joining us for a little bit of time today about the Uber-Lyft controversy. You did a wonderful commentary piece with an explainer of some of the issues. I've been very fascinated with this debate

[00:01:29] that's been going on for a variety of reasons. I really enjoyed your piece that you wrote and the detail that you went in. If you could, give our listeners a little bit of your background

[00:01:39] but then transition to the Uber-Lyft controversy and why we're talking to you here today. Sure. I've been a journalist in the Twin Cities for a long time. I guess it goes back to 1985 at the Twin Cities reader and I've been part of the current company

[00:01:57] I worked for MSP Communications since 1998, first at Minneapolis-Saint Paul Magazine as executive editor and then I moved over to our sister publication Twin Cities Business also as executive editor. And so I follow the transportation industries for TCB and so this

[00:02:14] was in my wheelhouse and I was just struck by in the debate by how little both historical context was understood by most of the people who had very strong opinions about it and

[00:02:27] also to some extent just some of the business nuances which the average person may not grasp that are somewhat unprecedented in this conversation I'm having to do with the fact that we're asking the city and the state to legislate wages for self-employed people which is somewhat

[00:02:46] unprecedented I would say. I'm trying to think of a category of self-employed workers who the legislature sets wages for or the council and I can't really come up with one.

[00:02:58] This issue what I find so interesting is that it is not I would say the normal for lack of a very political issue it seems to just cut across a variety of different ways and I could

[00:03:10] there's situations where I think Republicans, Democrats and others there can be some cross disagreement on this issue in a variety of ways and it really fits into some of the things that Becky and I are trying to do on this podcast which we've been doing for over a

[00:03:24] year now which is just having good thoughtful conversations breaking through some of the noise and just really getting this stuff but having respectful conversations and that's why I just really connected with your piece because it just laid it out in a way that I had not

[00:03:37] seen anywhere else not trying to be just not to disparage or criticize anybody else's work in the Twin Cities on it but it was just very informative. And so if you could for a

[00:03:46] little bit talk a little bit about your piece and the history of Uber entering the Twin Cities and the backstory and how we got here. Okay I guess that if we start before Uber actually Uber arrived in the Twin Cities in 2012

[00:04:01] Lyft is a big player as well but they always have been a follower in the industry and they arrived after Uber. But when I talk about Uber I'm talking about both of them.

[00:04:12] Prior to 2012 this was a taxi town and it was a pretty bad taxi town if I may just in that there it was not easy to get a cab in the Twin Cities you had to call or go to a hotel

[00:04:25] really a place where taxis waited there weren't that many of them actually cab stands as they call them. And if you needed a cab in a snowstorm if you needed a cab after midnight

[00:04:36] if you needed a cab just a highly peak period you could wait hours. And so Uber really picked the bones of an archaic industry. Cabs worked in cities like Chicago and New York where

[00:04:51] there were a lot of them and you could hail them on the street and there are a lot of people who don't own cars and so they had reached there are kind of an equilibrium where they had enough

[00:05:01] options but in cities like the Twin Cities where most people had cars and taxis were really heavily regulated by the municipalities it was just a messed up business and Uber came along they Uber is a software company really they're not a transportation company

[00:05:17] they developed an app which to anybody who downloaded it and got familiar with it could see right away that this was a huge improvement on what had been available there was lots of

[00:05:28] information for the anxious are among us where is the vehicle it's this far away when will it be here what route is it going to use to get me to where i'm going that old story about you get in a

[00:05:40] cab at LaGuardia in New York and if you don't specify which bridge or tunnel to take you're likely to get drivly around Manhattan. That doesn't happen with Uber the drivers basically

[00:05:50] are told the route to take and if they deviate from it they have to justify it in some way shape so anyway Uber came along and the people that drove ride share in the Twin Cities I observed

[00:06:03] were mostly people using it as a second job third job a sidelight to something they already did to make a little extra money and when i would talk to people who drove Uber that's what they would

[00:06:16] tell me and i feel like everything was at a certain equilibrium till the pandemic the one thing that i might not include in that is that Uber very quickly in most of the US pretty much

[00:06:28] destroyed the taxi business the taxi business was ripe for destruction but very quickly it collapsed in most cities including the Twin Cities right now there's only 39 active taxi licenses in the city of Minneapolis wow and there are alternatives but they're really

[00:06:45] quite limited and in a busy day or something there's no guarantee you could find a cab if you wanted one and so Uber had a Monop very quickly had a built a monopoly and the government was

[00:06:58] either oblivious to it or disinterested in it it's pretty textbook definition of antitrust when you create a monopoly by pricing below cost and what a lot of people said about Uber everybody could

[00:07:12] see it the prices were so low i'm i was accustomed to paying 55 dollars in a taxi from going to the airport to my house in south minneapolis and in an Uber it would be 28 32 and you didn't

[00:07:26] think a lot about it as a consumer the other thing is the drivers were paid reasonably well and the thing is the evidence of this problem was that uber was losing hundreds of millions of

[00:07:38] dollars they were blowing through venture capital and kept attracting more and more funding they attracted billions in venture capital funding and didn't turn a profit until last year so basically uber lost billions over the course of a decade and when a business takes that long to ramp up

[00:07:59] to profitability it's a red flag from an antitrust standpoint especially if they've destroyed their competition as part of it okay that is what it is we're at the pandemic people stop traveling they stop getting in cars with strangers that business collapses temporarily but eventually

[00:08:19] people need to get places again and things start returning to normal and what people start observing is that the prices of rideshare have gone up it's not as cheap as it was and the drivers tell you that they're being paid less so the model has shifted somehow and

[00:08:36] that kind of brings us up to the current era where you have drivers complaining that they can't make a living driving uber the other thing that i think has changed in the twin cities i can't

[00:08:47] speak to nationally is that seems like most of the people who were driving uber and lift now are trying to do it as a full-time job they're not doing it as a gig economy side light for

[00:08:58] two hours and an evening twice a week kind of thing pick up a couple hundred bucks of spending money and so it's a more precarious thing when you're trying to make a full-time living at it

[00:09:10] and the business model doesn't get you there the other thing that shifted in the twin cities is a lot of very large quotient of rideshare drivers are Somali immigrants and they have become

[00:09:22] a potent political force in the city and the state they come out they vote they demonstrate they're organized politically i'm not making a complaint at all it's admirable and it's absolutely exciting and so they have gone both to the legislature in the mini apple city council

[00:09:40] asking for legislation and relief against uber which technically is regulated they're regulated by cities they're licensed by cities they use the city streets they use a public resource

[00:09:56] and so it's not out of the norm to say that a city should regulate this entity which a has a monopoly and b uses taxpayer funded resources to do its basic function and so what they were asking for

[00:10:11] they are asking for they asked it of the legislature last year and governor walls vetoed the bill and they asked it and succeeded with the mini apple city council of raising the minimum

[00:10:22] prices it's not like a cab situation where the cab companies were regulated by saying you have to this is a minimum rate floor this is what you charge the consumer with taxis we were regulating

[00:10:35] what they charge the rider with uber were regulating what they pay the drivers which is kind of a different thing and so governor walls vetoed the bill last spring because he heard from especially in rural parts of the state and other places some feedback from

[00:10:54] municipalities and other elected officials that uber had become the de facto soul mode of transport in many parts of the state and it was needed to drive developmentally disabled people today programs it was the only source of ridership for people without cars in many communities

[00:11:15] and that uber would was threatening to leave if the rates were changed or raised by the state and so i think what walls wanted to do was put a pause on it and he commissioned a state study

[00:11:27] the results of which came out very recently right after the mini apple city council voted i'm going on and on here stop me if you need to like great the study basically said that

[00:11:38] factoring in costs of doing business maintenance insurance gas that uber drivers in the state were making slightly under the mini apple's minimum wage a little under $15 an hour most of the study was

[00:11:53] done in the seven county metro area i think a thousand of the 18 000 rides were in greater minnesota and mini apple was going to come up with a standard basically the minimum their

[00:12:03] minimum wage was i think an obvious floor or a benchmark to look at and so what the study showed is that drivers were making a little under minimum wage may or fry and a couple of his allies proposed

[00:12:17] a rate floor for uber and lyft that would bring drivers up above minimum wage factoring in their costs of doing business and the council instead picked a much higher level and passed a bill the day before the state study was released when the state study was released

[00:12:40] the council majority kind of poo pooed it and said it was less applicable than a study that was done in seattle which showed a much higher wage was needed a much higher rate was needed to

[00:12:52] compensate drivers i think the thing i would throw in about that is the median income in seattle is much higher than in mini appleis and so nearly double apparently and so the question you start to get into a question of what can people actually afford

[00:13:06] i think people tend to see ride share riders as 20-somethings who've overindulged on a saturday night and don't want to drive affluent people traveling to the airport business travelers traveling to the airport and that is part of their ridership base for sure but it's also

[00:13:24] people like my mom who are who is 86 and can't drive anymore and uses uber to go to doctors appointments and lives on a fixed income and it's people like the developmentally disabled population for whom the taxpayer provides transportation to essential programs and

[00:13:44] things that make their lives fulfilling or worth living and there's all sorts of uses that the public sector has for uber and lyft that we pay for as well and so it really very much just

[00:13:55] comes down to what if the state or the city is going to regulate the wage for these drivers and then who is going to decide what they deserve to earn and what i got to the end of my column

[00:14:08] was i started to talk theoretically about our economic system in the us and in in the us typically if you don't like your wage the way you overcome that is you get some training you better

[00:14:22] yourself and you change jobs or you find an employer who will pay you better or if you're entrepreneurial inclined you build a better mousetrap better ride share there's plenty of people in the twin cities who drive cars for a living who make a great living at it

[00:14:39] or a reasonable living far better than uber that are entrepreneurial and i asked the question of who decided that the city or the state should regulate the wage of one group of self-employed individuals but not others why do they deserve that why don't freelance writers get a minimum

[00:15:00] wage from the state electricians whoever it just seemed like an intro of a very dramatic policy step that was not really being it was being handled as if it was just an injustice that

[00:15:13] was being addressed rather than a very significant kind of shift in economic policy and it was being done to satisfy a loud political constituency who had the attention of the governor and the

[00:15:27] dfl majority and the mini eplos city council so to end this very long explanation those are the questions it raises uber is and lyft are threatening to leave as of may 1st leave the twin cities

[00:15:40] possibly the entire state and are they bluffing they may be bluffing i think there's at least a 50 50 shot it's a bluff but on the other hand they did pull out of austin texas for

[00:15:51] quite a while after austin did this same sort of thing there are other markets where they have regulated uber and lyft and they've stayed in the market it just depends on their sense of

[00:16:02] what sort of precedent they want to accept or what they don't so there you go thank you for walking us through that it will certainly push out the piece as well i reading it thought that you

[00:16:15] hit on things that i hadn't seen elsewhere in the conversation in the news from mainstream media what we've been getting is just what we're looking at the ordinance itself and the repercussions

[00:16:25] with your piece i want to start with that history i used to live in uptown i graduated college in 2008 moved there was living there like you mentioned uber didn't come around till 2012

[00:16:36] and i'm in my mid 20 early to mid 20s and very much in the scene of going downtown minneapolis and going to dinky town in different places and my mom listens to this so sorry mom but

[00:16:48] it wasn't the safest scenario especially for a young woman and me and my roommates and friends going out and having to make those calls stand on the side of the road for 20 minutes and there was

[00:16:58] a scenario one time where while we were out downtown a snowstorm turned to an ice storm cab shut down and we were stuck down there it's also not a situation i think there was some

[00:17:09] conference or tournament in town there were like no hotel rooms under $100 and here we are 23 what we don't have that disposable income we literally had there was random drivers just going around offering people for 50 bucks we'll take you home and so that you we did have some

[00:17:27] guys in our group but there were two three women two three guys that's how we had to get home because there was no other alternative and on then uber comes into the mix i lived in washington dc and

[00:17:40] i have to which is a huge cab company or town as well but the safety that uber it was able to bring along is there was the track record if anything happened folks would see that i called this

[00:17:53] uber this was the person i got in the car because they had so many safety metrics you had a code that you held up or a color that you had up held up you knew the car you were getting into

[00:18:02] and so it was a big change and and i wasn't familiar with how poor of a town other obviously living there didn't think that the cab situation was really great back in my day but seeing you

[00:18:13] break it down really shows that there was a void that uber then came in and filled and i see michael shaking his head i'm sure you're just actually distraught with what i described as yeah that's

[00:18:24] yes that's how true crime stories start that you can watch any netflix documentary it's about it begins with someone hailing randomly getting a car that they shouldn't get into yes we talking

[00:18:32] about this off air thank you but i think that's a really important thing that uber did come in and fill and then as you talked about is it you i think you head on kind of the vulnerabilities

[00:18:43] of that cab company for uber to come in and decimate it correct yeah the cab industry was one that had not modernized right it was not a business it was a very idiosyncratic business it wasn't

[00:18:55] you didn't have big national players with that were financed well backed and funded financially it was a bunch of small companies and spread out all over the country having nothing to do with the companies in other cities and so they really lacked the resources to innovate and they

[00:19:14] i just don't think the kind of people who ran taxi companies are very we're very technologically oriented and thinking about apps and this was the whole digital smartphone revolution that was it's not just the taxi business that was changed by it it was

[00:19:29] retailing and all sorts of other stuff i think in and businesses that don't keep up are vulnerable and the taxi business was vulnerable where in minnesota sometimes we get to a situation where there can be a great compromise there can be a resolution

[00:19:47] where do you think this debate is going what's there's been some updates since some news updates since your story since your commentary came out where do you think this debate we're getting to i think a may first deadline that's been discussed it's just leaving

[00:20:01] where do you think we are where do you think we're coming into that deadline and where do you what do you think eventually happens in this debate my sense of it is the governor does not

[00:20:10] want the miniapolis legislation to stay in force as it's written if it's going to have the kind of impact it's going to have on uber and lyft he doesn't want them to leave the state or

[00:20:21] leave the metro area um i think he would rather see the miniapolis city council amend its own bill and there's some indication that a couple of people in the majority that passed this bill and

[00:20:35] overrode the mayor's veto are willing to rethink it former council president andrea jankins for one has publicly said that she'd like to reconsider it but i don't know because the miniapolis city council is so ideological and that they're willing to enough of them are willing to

[00:20:53] reconsider it and the state then would i think the governor would encourage the dfl maturity to pass legislation that provides a raise for the drivers but not as much of a one as miniapolis did and that overrides it's up to this it's up to the whoever writes the

[00:21:08] legislation whether it applies in cities that already have legislation in effect or whether it doesn't apply and so they can override the city's law or they can coexist with it and my guess is

[00:21:23] that they would override the city's law i think the governor and most of the dfl majority in the state wants to do something for the uber drivers and so i think something is going to

[00:21:36] come of it there is some sort of regulatory apparatus that is going to remain in force and i think they're just trying to figure out what that happy medium is you do you think there is the possibility there's been some discussion of potentially a a state or an

[00:21:50] alternative app that would be used you think that's a realistic option there there is a local entrepreneur who is has an app and is enrolling drivers as we speak we've gotten on email i've

[00:22:02] gotten some press materials from him to me that is the best solution frankly better than the city or state regulating the wages in that what uber and lyft really need is competition as opposed to regulation if they had real competition over the past decade they wouldn't

[00:22:22] be able to exert the kind of control over the market that they can now and that was a failure of government oversight federal government oversight the feds have become very active in an antitrust

[00:22:33] sense in the last couple years under joe biden but they have not been active in technology where all this stuff took place over the last decade and so that to me that would be fantastic

[00:22:45] because i am sure there is a way to do this for drivers to earn a higher wage and the app company to make what it needs to make to operate and service its technology

[00:22:59] it's hard to imagine that on an ongoing basis it's that the costs are that significant unless they're just hit with huge legal bills on an ongoing basis because of incidents in the vehicles

[00:23:11] i don't know but to me that would be the best thing that could happen because then they'd have some competition one another piece that you hit on that i i hadn't seen elsewhere that i think is a

[00:23:23] really important part of this is the self-employed regulating the self-employed in your piece you wrote how many other self-employed professions have successfully go to the legislature and city council to regulate their income it's also fair to ask whether it's reasonable to guarantee

[00:23:38] ride share drivers a wage guaranteed to no other class of workers in the state or city do you think this is a slippery slope a little bit of getting into the government regulating

[00:23:47] these self-employed professions it's for me it gives me a little reason for cause there or yeah i think that i don't think the state really wants to do this on a broad basis it i don't feel like

[00:24:01] it's a philosophical shift that's happened but i think the the dfl has moved to the left in recent years and there is a significant component of the urban dfl i would say that is

[00:24:16] very well represented on the minneapolis and saint paul city councils who don't really have a lot of respect for kind of the precedent american economic precedents they very much see the world as a mix of the exploited and the exploiters and they're just interested in making sure that

[00:24:38] everybody gets a fair shake and in a baseline sense it's hard to fault that kind of good intention it is when you look at the federal minimum wage and some of these other things it just hasn't kept

[00:24:51] up and you can argue that the inequities in the american economic system are at a kind of extreme level right now relative from a historical standpoint the people that make a lot more and

[00:25:04] the people who don't make a lot haven't perhaps kept up and we're in an environment where we've got a lot of inflation and other things and so i don't know if it's a philosophical change but

[00:25:15] there does seem to be a very strong inclination to hear the voice of those who feel they are being the victims of economic inequity and trying to write that in kind of an ad hoc sense

[00:25:31] what does it take in this case and what can we do in this case their Minneapolis has proposed this labor standards board and the mayor is a supporter of this and what i think they most

[00:25:41] want to do or one of the things they really want to do is start tinkering with the business model in restaurants the way restaurants staff and compensate people and it's fair to ask when we're on this slippery slope as you mentioned the legislative do the elected officials

[00:25:58] really understand enough about business and the businesses they're trying to regulate them fairly and effectively or they really just throwing a wrench into the gears you have very few people in the Minneapolis city council st paul city council and the dfl component of the legislature

[00:26:18] who have owned a business been self-employed employed people you've got some attorneys you've got a lot of folks who have spent their entire life in politics and activism and i do think there is just a real knowledge and information gap between what they know

[00:26:39] and what they think they know adam i cannot thank you enough for joining us today we're going to encourage our listeners to go to your website go to the twin cities business magazine and read your article follow you on social media you're on social media at plat

[00:26:55] msp correct yeah on x twitter and they can read my article on our website also at tcbmag.com i can't thank you enough for joining us today this is incredibly informative and

[00:27:06] this is exactly why we do podcasts beggin i said probably didn't ask as many questions because we just wanted to sit back and let you listen and your piece was so informative and i just thank

[00:27:16] you so much for squeezing us in today we hope to have you back on other issues because i i'd love to just an absolutely fantastic piece and we really appreciate you taking the time today okay

[00:27:24] my pleasure thank you thank you we just interviewed adam plat executive editor at twin cities business magazine about his commentary about the uber lift controversy and the backstory on it i want to

[00:27:38] get your take but i first want to say i love podcasting that is exactly why i love podcasting to cast someone first of all i adore all the guests that come on and i've frequently said that

[00:27:48] every time someone accepts an invitation to come on our podcast it's a treat they there's a lot of places they can go but they'll come and talk to us boy oh boy did i enjoy talking with him he is so

[00:27:58] smart and it was just great to sit back and have a subject matter expert like he is on this topic and others offer his analysis and perspective was incredibly informative and interesting to listen

[00:28:11] to and it just invigorated me once again how much i enjoyed doing podcast completely agree i think when we chatted about doing two interviews on this topic i was like are we going to have enough to talk

[00:28:23] about talk about we didn't even hit on any of the stuff we hit with representative engan on earlier this week i think it's this the benefit of a magazine like he works for and is the executive

[00:28:33] editor for is we get to hear a little or see a little bit different of a side of some of these pieces and i think his piece um is really important for people to read because it like you

[00:28:44] he talked about it really does hit on things in a different way i think it's really we when i've been seeing this in the regular news on carol levin or in the start tribune we're looking at the ordinance

[00:28:55] what's going on in the city council and what's happening since then to be able to talk so many of these different angles that this piece brought up into the conversation for me that i wish

[00:29:05] would be having on a larger scale a history of how bad the cities were about the cab and how uber did come in and fill this void and the benefits like we talked a little bit with

[00:29:13] representative engan to our communities and to the most vulnerable and two folks that it's not just an airport run or a bar run but the antitrust stuff and governments kind of fault in this a little bit the self-employed and regulating that which like i expressed is a

[00:29:29] little bit of a slippery slope in my small-minded government viewpoint of things and it was fantastic he is so smart and so articulate and platitudes is always a great read people need to go follow him if you're not already seeing his stuff but i'm with you these are

[00:29:45] it's always fun to be able to speak with somebody who just brings such a different angle and experience and expertise to a topic that we're hitting on and hopefully it was for me reading

[00:29:56] this piece hopefully for people listening are seeing a little bit more to the conversation about this controversy than they did before correct i want to read a key paragraph from his commentary and it's the final paragraph it says it's great that a new immigrant community has acquired the

[00:30:12] political cloud as a voting block to get the attention of government we should applaud that but it's entirely it's another thing entirely to upend the economic system for one specific class of self-employed workers and we should think carefully about that indeed he's spot on the

[00:30:27] as he identified as this new immigrant community with the political cloud to get the attention of government they're doing exactly what they're supposed to he's correct we should applaud that they have organized they have mobilized they have made their voices be heard and that is something

[00:30:44] everyone should do and there is in no way shape we should yes especially in the speed of which they did it absolutely he's correct that we should applaud that and if anyone's not applauding

[00:30:53] that they should be because it's exactly there's can be nothing more American than what this new immigrant community is he articulated has done here because they've gotten the attention exactly what you're supposed to do they and they've done a very successful job of doing that

[00:31:07] but as he said it's another thing entirely to upend the American economic system for one specific class of self-employed workers and we should think very carefully about that need he's spot on there are some ramifications of this that I think are some long-term discussions I think

[00:31:23] his piece brought that out that good balance and also with the rich history that he was able to share it's just an incredibly informative piece that I think responsibly layers all of the

[00:31:33] dynamics of this when we're chatting about some of those ramifications and again I read the piece from Dakota County Commissioner Joe Atkins newsletter this week and what's your take on how we got here was that conversation just not welcome did we not have these counties and vulnerable groups

[00:31:50] speaking up because I maybe wasn't paying attention but I didn't see a lot of that as this was introduced and going through the council process do you think these folks these different communities around in different organizations and different folks who really

[00:32:06] utilize Uber in a different way was that not presented to the council members or did they just not care I don't I don't know I don't know it's a good question I do think what's been

[00:32:16] interesting again I live in the suburbs I've I think I've only used an uber once or twice not in any significant way and so this isn't something but I follow issues and other things

[00:32:28] I don't know the answer to that what I do think is that there's been I do think that what's been interesting for me to learn is the amount of other services that uber and live provide

[00:32:38] aside from just as as Adam articulated and you first articulated when we spoke about this earlier this week about the mindset of being people going to the airport and people bar hopping or getting to bars or using it as transportation just for a moment on that topic

[00:32:53] Becky you promised me you're not gonna do that again oh god I'm horrified that it ever happened it was it was truly like a time of desperation we didn't know what you could not even walk on the

[00:33:03] sidewalks I was black and blue and bruised from how much we fell because it was such a horrible ice storm and it was just there was really no options we got very lucky but horror story

[00:33:14] it really is the start of murder mysteries and for your daughters you know your kids when they go off to college or go travel that is something that uber has was always a good piece of mind

[00:33:27] because there are so many of those safeguards in place it really is a place where you can track everything the person is vetted that they're that we're also vetted as drivers I mean

[00:33:37] things pop up all the time but it's been a really great thing and it is sad to me University of Minnesota has students that travel and or go downtown or go to uptown or go shopping places

[00:33:49] not all college students it is expensive to pay for parking what are those kids do now that's sure they have cab step in or other companies step in but even if it's just for a couple of months

[00:34:00] think about the impact on some of these small businesses and restaurants and bars and shopping malls and different places that these kids aren't going to travel to and there's a ripple effect that I just feel like it seems so short-sighted and really unfortunate

[00:34:16] yes and when we spoke with Representative Ingan I expected and was hoping for more better news the interview was great with him and we will link to it in this episode he was talking Representative Ingan was talking about his legislative solution that he has working

[00:34:30] with others some other House Republicans on this uber lift controversy but it was his what he was forecasting as a possibility did was that there wasn't there wasn't a lot of rainbows

[00:34:41] there wasn't a lot of happy thoughts that were going to happen and there were a little bit of some news developments a little break in that forecast yesterday that came out that there's some movement regarding some of the city council members who voted to override

[00:34:55] Mayor Fry's veto of this issue so I do think that in the coming weeks before that May 1st deadline I think there may be some developments to where it's not as bleak of the reality that

[00:35:08] we're facing right now which is uber and lift leaving but I do think there's going to be some changes in this and I think this is going to be a great issue for us to continue to discuss

[00:35:17] I appreciate your willingness to do a bonus episode on this and being so flexible to get to work to get at them on it's a great episode and I think this is going to be great for our

[00:35:25] listeners it was awesome thank you for pushing to get a second conversation on this I think it was really important and we'll keep our eyes on it all right you have a great day you talk next

[00:35:35] week bye bye we want to thank you for listening to this bonus episode of the breakdown with broad Corbin Becky before you go show some love for your favorite podcast by leaving us a review

[00:35:47] an apple podcast spotify or on the platform where you listen you can also leave a review or give us a shout out on our website or across all social media platforms at bbbreakpot the breakdown with broad Corbin Becky will return next week thank you for listening