JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. – The House added the Uber bill to SB 640 as an amendment Thursday afternoon, including a fingerprint background amendment that wasn’t offered when the bill was originally passed by the House last month.
The bill regulating Transportation Network Companies (TNCs), like Uber and Lyft,has encountered some resistance in the Senate and the hope is that this amendment to the bill, offered by Rep. Elijah Haahr, R-Springfield, the bill will be more palatable for the senators. The amendment says that within three years, the Department of Revenue may ask TNCs to do fingerprint background checks.
“They are making a concession to our state that they have made to no other state in the country,” Haahr said. “Let’s use this concession to move this issue forward, to see if we can get the body on the other side of the building to agree, and let’s put this issue to rest.”
One previous opponent of the legislation, Rep. Jack Bondon, R-Belton, appreciated the the amendment, though he felt it did not go far enough.
“Never once have the TNC companies allowed any fingerprint amendment to be put on any of these bills,” he said. “The issue of fingerprints is one that is important for our state because it is one of safety. … I applaud the TNCs for beginning to concede that their safety standards, which were called the gold standard of the industry on this floor, have changed.”
However, other Kansas City area representatives weren’t ready to concede that the bill had been made better. Rep. Kevin Corlew, R-Kansas City, said he still opposed the measure because it did not do anything to improve the safety of his constituents. He cited a 90-year-old woman in his district who told him the bill she was watching most this session was the Uber bill because she thought the TNC technology could make a difference for seniors. But he said she was worried about the safety with the drivers’ background checks.
“I am not against innovation. I think it’s a wonderful service that they’ve got and I think it provides a great means of using technology,” he said. “However, just because something is innovative doesn’t mean we completely forget safety regulations and don’t try to provide as much safety as possible.
“I don’t think it’s accurate to say that if we require the technologies and the TNCs to do background checks that they wouldn’t come here or do business here,” Corlew added. “It is not onerous for us to say that we want to require the best safety process that we can. I simply ask why is that such a hard requirement to do? Why is it so bad for our cities to have the local control to do that?”
Rep. Jeremy LaFaver, D-Kansas City, said it would be hard to trust the TNCs to follow through on the parameters of this agreement when they already broke an agreement with Kansas City.
“The compromise that we have in front of us is a compromise in name only. It doesn’t do anything,” he said, saying the agreement should be a “shall” rather than a “may” for requiring fingerprint background checks. “I’m having a hard time seeing that they’re going to stick to a deal that’s three years in the future that’s a maybe, when they couldn’t stick to a deal that was 8 months in the future with a definitely.”
And Rep. Mike Colona, D-Kansas City, said a second part of the amendment would allow the drivers to sign agreements with the TNCs saying they were independent contractors and not employees, which would basically exempt them from any background check requirement.
“Because they’re employees you are responsible for the dumb stuff they do while on the clock,” he said, pointing out that companies have no such responsibility for their independent contractors. “The amendment actually means nothing except if you want to be an uber driver and you get a document put in front of you asking if you want to be an independent contractor, you have to sign it.”
But Haahr said that most of the Kansas City representatives were asking the TNCs to take on a background check burden that they currently don’t require their taxi cab companies, pointing out that the fingerprint background checks are not required in Kansas City.
“They are asking for this private enterprise to reach a standard that their own taxi cabs won’t even reach,” he said. “It’s the height of absurdity.”
His amendment to the Uber bill passed 90-46 and the Uber bill, amended to SB 640, passed in a voice vote.
