Agency working on rules for Uber

State taking over regulation in July

The Public Service Commission is working to compose rules that ride-sharing technology companies such as Uber must follow ahead of a state law that goes into effect next month. The commission will soon accept public input on the matter.

When the Arkansas General Assembly passed Act 1050 earlier this year, it set some core requirements for transportation network companies and then delegated further rule-setting authority to the Public Service Commission. The law goes into effect July 22.

Commission Executive Director John Bethel said his staff is still working on a first draft to present to the three-member commission in coming weeks. An exact date for when that will be hasn't been set, but a copy of the proposed rules will be posted online at apscservices.info under the website's "Daily Filings" tab when it's complete.

At that point, the commission will set a date for a hearing where the public will be allowed to comment on the rules. People also can comment through the website.

Right now, Uber is the only transportation network company running in Arkansas, with operations in Little Rock and Fayetteville.

Act 1050 requires such companies to pay a yearly fee of $15,000 and sets up requirements for drivers, but it doesn't include a mechanism to verify that each driver meets those requirements. That verification is up to the company with the caveat that the Public Service Commission can investigate complaints and do a yearly audit of a company's records.

That's somewhat less stringent than the process currently in effect in Little Rock. The city's ordinance applying to transportation network companies will be void once the state law takes effect.

Right now, the public can access information about how many drivers have Little Rock permits, as well those drivers' names and other information. Such information can then be used to check a driver's criminal history using public online court databases. However, under the state law, information about drivers will be secret.

Records that the companies share with the state are protected from public disclosure and exempt from the state open-records law, according to Act 1050. Drivers also won't be required to get individual permits.

Little Rock has issued permits to 195 Uber drivers, and officials check that required background investigations have been completed.

Bethel said it's unlikely that the Public Service Commission's rules will require the state to verify that each driver meets the requirements under the law.

"The company is responsible under the act to verify the driver has passed a criminal background check and that there is an absence of certain criminal violations, so at a minimum, they will have to demonstrate to the commission that they have procedures in place to do that," Bethel said.

The commission may review a company's records to ensure compliance no more than once annually, and the review would be more "on an audit rather than a comprehensive basis," according to Act 1050.

Billy Guernier, Uber's general manager for the East Coast region that includes Arkansas, said it's important that company records aren't public because Uber considers its list of verified drivers a "trade secret." If competitors were to start operating in Arkansas, they could undermine all of the work Uber put in and money it spent to verify those drivers by soliciting them to work for the competition, Guernier said.

Act 1050 requires that state and national criminal-background checks be conducted on potential drivers, as well as a driving history report. A company cannot accept a driver if the driver has been convicted in the past seven years of driving under the influence of drugs or alcohol; fraud; a sexual offense; using a motor vehicle to commit a felony; a crime involving property damage; theft; acts of violence; or acts of terror.

Drivers also can't be listed on the national sex offender registry or have had more than three moving traffic violations or more than one major traffic violation within the past three years.

Uber says its background checks are extensive, but still the company has been scrutinized by municipal and state governments nationwide.

In Houston, reporters there found that an Uber driver accused of raping a passenger was released from federal prison and sent to a halfway house in 2012, yet still passed Uber's background check.

Guernier said he couldn't speak to that case and was unaware of any instance in which someone slipped through the cracks of Uber's checks.

An Arkansas Democrat-Gazette review of drivers approved in Little Rock found that all of them met the city's restrictions in regard to criminal history. Some had been convicted of felonies -- such as forgery or writing hot checks -- but the city code allows that as long as the convictions weren't in the past five years.

At least two current drivers have had past DWI convictions, but both were more than 10 years ago. One of those drivers also had been arrested multiple times for public intoxication in the 1990s.

In addition to statewide checks, Uber also runs a national criminal check, a Social Security number trace and checks against the sex offender registry.

"We spend millions of dollars to do as robust a background check as possible," Guernier said.

He added that Uber can be trusted to follow Arkansas law and Public Service Commission guidelines when they take effect.

"The reality is, it's just not efficient for the state to verify millions of records when we are keeping them. We are held honest and accountable by [the commission] being able to check. ... They can revoke our certificate," he said.

Metro on 06/14/2015

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