The taxi industry is taking the city for a ride — to the tune of $24.3 million.
That’s how much the cash-strapped city is missing in unpaid fines and penalties issued for everyone from crooked cabbies to scofflaw medallion owners, officials said yesterday.
Some of the penalties — for everything from illegal pickups to refusing to drive to the outer boroughs — have been back-due for a decade.
The figure is so high that City Councilman James Vacca, chair of the Transportation Committee, yesterday demanded the Taxi & Limousine Commission sic a collection agency on deadbeats.
“It says something about us if we are not able to collect the fines,” Vacca (D-Bronx) said at a committee hearing on the TLC budget.
“Where is the credibility we have when we issue them? Other people will think when they get a fine . . . that they don’t have to pay either, because other people got away with it.”
TLC Commissioner David Yassky said he would speak to the city’s Finance Department about getting the funds.
But he insisted what’s really needed is a change in state law, so the agency could go after the personal assets of scofflaws.
Thanks to a quirk in the current law, TLC fines in many cases aren’t considered judgments against the individual, and can’t be enforced by marshals.
And since the TLC can’t go after an individual’s personal assets, the debtor in many cases just blows off the penalty.
Not fare!
* The TLC is owed $24.3 million in unpaid fines.
* Some penalties are more than a decade old.
* The fines are for anything from refusing service to illegal pickups.