Thoughts on Proposition 1

I'm referring to the proposition that was on the ballot in Austin on May 7th.

Personally, I was (and still am) against it.  In that sense, I suppose I should be happy that it failed.  Instead, I am mostly curious as to how this will play out in the long run.

I expect that either Uber and Lyft will return, or some other similar service will become popular here in town.  I'm looking to what has happened in other cities as a model.  For instance, in San Antonio it appears that Uber was able to successfully extract concessions from the city.  Although Lyft left Houston over it's regulations, Uber did not... yet.

I'm also curious as to why they are fighting the regulations so hard.  In Austin they were wanting to reverse a couple of points.  Among others:

• The city wanted background checks to involve fingerprinting.
• The city didn't want them stopping in the middle of the road to pick up passengers.
• The city wanted the cars marked, and identifiable as Uber or Lyft or whatever.

It's not clear why they wanted to avoid those so badly.  I have a hard time believing that it was because of the money.   They could have easily purchased all of the background checks with the money spend on political advertising.  

I'm inclined to believe that it has to do with each companies relationship with their drivers.  They want their drivers to remain "independent contractors" and not employees.  However, I don't see how any of the regulations required by the city really push them towards the 'employee' category.

Maybe some more research on my part will illuminate this for me.

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As an aside... I don't think that the proposition did actually failed on its merits.  It seems more like it failed due to a botched advertising campaign.  Personally, I received two pieces of mail per day in the week or so before the vote.  That, in addition to the online advertisements, made me wonder why they were pushing so hard.  I could see why it would swing anyone who was undecided into the 'against' category.