NEW YORK — For months, tensions have mounted between Mayor Bill de Blasio and the City Council over how to respond to a crisis in the taxi industry that has bankrupted hundreds of drivers and led thousands more to the brink of ruin.
NEW YORK — For decades, Alan S. Kaufman and Tony Georgiton held immense power in New York City’s taxi industry. Kaufman led a major credit union that lent money to thousands of drivers. Georgiton co-owned a fleet that operated 550 cabs. Together, they controlled the fortunes of more cabbies than almost anybody else in the business.
The tension is expected to increase Monday, when Mayor Bill de Blasio is set to release the results of a 45-day review of the taxi industry he ordered after The New York Times reported on the exploitative loans.
A few years after the memo was written, the reckless loans helped cause medallion prices to crash, leaving thousands of immigrant drivers deeply in debt.
“It’s clear that we need to take legislative action to protect medallion owners and drivers from predatory actors, including lenders, medallion brokers and fleet managers,” said Johnson, a Democrat.
The investigation also found that regulators at every level of government ignored warning signs, and the city fed the frenzy by selling medallions and promoting them in ads as being “better than the stock market.”
NEW YORK — The phone call that ruined Mohammed Hoque’s life came in April 2014 as he began another long day driving a New York City taxi, a job he had held since emigrating from Bangladesh nine years earlier.
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