Isaac Laquedem

Who has taken Roger Ebert's place as the most powerful film critic in America?

A scathing review from Roger Ebert could persuade millions of Americans not to buy tickets to a new film.  This man has done him one better: a film that he doesn't like won't even make it to the big screen.

Tom Moyer (1919-2014), the Portland Development Commission, and the American Dream

In 1933 Tom Moyer dropped out of the ninth grade to pursue his dream of becoming a boxer.  Boxing was one of the family businesses; his father, Harry Moyer, had been a boxer, his older brother (also named Harry) boxed, his younger brother Larry would box for a while, and two nephews then unborn, Denny Moyer and Phil Moyer, would become nationally famous as boxers.  Boxing had an element of theater to it; Tom's father Harry acquired the nickname "Silk Hat Harry" by showing up for matches wearing a silk hat and daring his opponent to knock it off.  When his opponent punched at his silk hat, Harry Moyer would slide under and aim for the chin.

By 1940 "Tommy" Moyer was the second-best amateur welterweight boxer in the United States, ranking behind only Sugar Ray Robinson.  He became the top-ranked amateur when Robinson turned pro.  Later turning professional himself, he won 22 professional bouts, losing none.

He left boxing behind to work in the other Moyer family business, operating movie houses.  Years before, his father had become a projectionist, and then rented a theatre to operate with the help of his wife and children.  In 1964 a dispute about whether to build more theatres split the family, and Tom Moyer (no longer called "Tommy") started in business for himself.  He quickly took advantage of two trends: the suburbs were growing, and people in other cities were building multiplex theatres.  He built the Eastgate Theatre (the first multiscreen theatre in the area), then the Southgate and the Westgate.  And he kept on building; by the time he sold the business twenty-five years later, his chain had become the 10th-largest theatre chain in the United States and the largest held privately by one family.

When he sold in 1989 at the age of 70, he started a third career as a real estate developer.  He had built a lot of theatres, but no other large projects.  He started with a bang, participating in developing the 1000 Broadway Building in downtown Portland.  (People who don't know its name call it the "Ban Roll-On Building" after the shape of the silvery mechanical shelter on the roof.  It's the city's 14th-tallest tower.)  When his partner couldn't make the building pay, he took it over and turned it around.  Then in 1999 he built the Fox Tower, the fifth-tallest tower in Portland, and in 2009 broke ground on the Park Avenue West Tower, soon to be Portland's 4th-tallest building.

An unassuming man, he would casually say that he "lived above the shop," in the manner of a storekeeper.  "Above the shop" meant an apartment on the top floor of the Fox Tower, from where he could see most of the city in which he'd made his fortune, and where he died on November 28 at the age of 95, having lived long enough to see the first of the glass and wall panels being attached to his latest tower.

Mr. Moyer died two weeks too soon to read about the Portland Development Commission's decision to grant a $27 million subsidy to the Zidell family to redevelop the Zidells' industrial land near the Ross Island Bridge with 1.5 million square feet of new buildings.  That's a lot of space -- it's about 35 acres of floor area, to be laid out and financed with advice from the wisest and best-educated of our local consultants -- and the PDC members may be forgiven for believing that they've committed $27 million of tax money wisely.  In the midst of their self-congratulations the commissioners might reflect that Tom Moyer built 1.5 million square feet of office, retail, and residential space in downtown Portland, and achieved his brand of the American dream, with a government subsidy that was $27 million less than the Zidell project, that is to say, zero.

Portland's mayor hales Uber into court, calling it a taxi -- maybe

Uber started operating in Portland Friday evening at 5:00.  Welcomed by riders, Uber faced frowns from the City, which filed suit against Uber on Monday in state court.  Today Uber removed the suit to federal court (a routine step) and the battle lines are being drawn.

A few days ago I advanced the idea that Uber could comply with part of the City's car-for-hire code by recruiting its drivers from among the hundreds of persons whom the City's licensed to drive taxicabs, and then to bypass the strict limit on taxicabs by prohibiting the passengers from specifying which route the drivers will take to the passengers' destinations. (This would make the Uber vehicles not be taxicabs, thanks to a quirk of the City's code.)

A well-connected member of the Laquedemimonde passes along the tantalizing tidbit that despite this loophole being wide open for Uber to transit (so to speak), Uber won't do business with licensed cabdrivers.  Why this should be, I do not know. 

One unlikely possibility is that Uber hasn't figured out this loophole.  I call this unlikely because Uber's lawyers have undoubtedly already parsed the City's code with attention usually reserved for the Talmud or the utterances of the chair of the Federal Reserve.  Another more likely reason is that Uber believes  that licensed cabdrivers must then charge riders the rates that the City has fixed for taxicabs, without the discounts that Uber usually offers or the surge pricing that it commands in peak times -- or, even worse for Uber and its passengers, that Uber must charge the 35% premium over taxi rates if it is a limousine or executive sedan service

When I read the City's complaint (the filed suit is here), I noticed that the City asserts that Uber's cars violate either the taxicab or the limited passenger transportation (LPT) vehicle rules, meaning that the City doesn't know whether Uber's cars are taxis or not.  (The LPT rules are a catchall for anything that doesn't meet the definition of a taxicab.)  Whether they are taxicabs depends on whether the drivers let the passengers pick the routes, something the City doesn't know.  It should be a jolly bit of litigation.

An even simpler way for Uber to operate in Portland legally

Uber has an even simpler answer to getting into Portland legally than I'd thought of this morning, which is to get the roster of licensed vehicle operators from the City (the City must sell the roster to Uber if Uber asks; it's a public record) and then to solicit those operators to use their own cars to provide Uber service.  Because Uber doesn't need to be licensed if it doesn't operate taxicabs, and because the cars aren't required to be licensed as taxicabs if the passengers can choose the destination but not the route, and because the drivers will be licensed as operators (thus properly tested and insured), Uber's Portland operation will comply with the city code.  Presto!  Legal Uber!

Why Uber doesn't need a City of Portland license to operate here

Yesterday evening Uber, the ride service that is to cars what AirBnB is to houses, announced that it was starting to operate in Portland without waiting for official permission that it would likely never get.  Uber started accepting ride requests at 5:00 p.m.  At 5:10 City Hall started to try to find and cite Uber drivers, but couldn't -- the demand for Uber's cars was so high that the City's enforcer couldn't get a ride. 

Portland has a complicated set of licensing rules for transportation for hire.  Buried within the rules is a loophole that Uber can exploit to remain unlicensed.  But first some background.

Portland issues three general types of licenses.  It licenses transport vehicles, it licenses transport companies, and it licenses the vehicle operators.  Within these three licensing categories are some subtypes.  For example, "transport vehicles" is a term that includes taxicabs, shuttle buses, pedicabs, and horse-drawn carriages.  When you summon a taxi in Portland, the City has issued three licenses to make your trip possible.  It has licensed the driver, the vehicle, and the taxi company.  Anyone who qualifies can get a taxi driver's license, but the City strictly limits the number of vehicle licenses (a New Yorker would call them medallions), the plates that let a vehicle be used as a taxicab.  Anyone who drives a vehicle for hire must have an operator's license, any vehicle that is used as a taxicab must have a vehicle license, and any company that operates taxicabs (including cabs owned by their drivers but dispatched through the company) must have a taxi company license.  It's illegal for a company to operate taxicabs without a taxi company license.

But are Uber's vehicles taxicabs?  This is where the City Code has a delightful loophole ready-made for Uber.  City code section 16.40.030.PP defines "taxicab" as a for-hire vehicle where the destination AND route traveled can be controlled by the passenger.  "And" means "and" and not "and/or."  So a for-hire vehicle in which the passenger can select the destination but not the route is not a "taxicab."  If Uber says that passengers originating in Portland may select their destination but may not choose the route traveled, then the Uber vehicles are not "taxicabs" and the City Code does not prohibit those vehicles from carrying passengers for hire without a medallion.

Similarly and deliciously, the code defines "taxicab company" to be a company that operates taxicabs.  Because Uber's vehicles would not be taxicabs, Uber would not be a taxicab company and would not need a Portland taxicab company license. 

The loophole doesn't extend down to the individual drivers, because section 16.40.090 requires a driver who carries passengers in a vehicle for hire, which includes not just taxicabs but any vehicle, to hold a Portland operator's license to pick up passengers in the city.  As Portland will license any number of drivers, Uber's Portland solution can be simply to require its Portland drivers to obtain a Portland operator's permit and to tell their passengers that the passengers can't select the route: if a passenger asks an Uber driver to take him from downtown to Memorial Coliseum, the driver will use the Broadway Bridge whether the passenger likes it or not.