By Donald Wittkowski
Sea Isle City will wait “a little bit longer” to see if New Jersey lawmakers enact comprehensive, statewide legislation to regulate ride-sharing companies such as Uber and Lyft before possibly taking action on its own.
The beach town ticketed dozens of Uber drivers over the summer for operating illegally and has been eager to implement local ride-sharing regulations that would be ready for the 2017 summer tourism season.
However, City Council will back off for the time being to see if state regulations proposed by the New Jersey Senate and Assembly become law.
“I would suggest that Sea Isle – I know it’s been like this for a couple of years – hang in there a little bit longer,” City Solicitor Paul Baldini recommended to Council members during their meeting Tuesday.
Baldini noted that the Senate and Assembly are reconciling differences in their two bills before sending regulations to Gov. Chris Christie to sign into law. Comprehensive ride-sharing legislation, including requirements for Uber and Lyft drivers to have proper insurance and undergo criminal background checks, is “the statute we’ve all been waiting for,” he said.
“It does almost everything that Sea Isle was looking to do anyway,” Baldini said of the proposed legislation. “It requires insurance, it requires fingerprinting and background checks. It requires virtually everything we’ve been talking about.”
Baldini, though, explained that if the state legislation stalls, or it appears it will not pass by February or March, then Sea Isle will be ready to move ahead with its own set of ride-sharing regulations for next summer.
Uber drivers were ticketed by Sea Isle police over the summer for illegally picking up and dropping off passengers. The town’s crackdown on illegal drivers would continue if the state legislation becomes law.
“The same things the officers were writing last year, for example, would still be written next year under this statute,” Baldini said. “The violations that we’re focusing on are not designed to harass Uber.”
Councilwoman Mary Tighe said police were forced to issue tickets when Uber drivers would illegally solicit passengers or stop in the middle of the road to pick them up, creating a traffic hazard.
At an October Council meeting, Tighe stressed that Sea Isle’s residents and tourists have been urging city officials to “figure out a way” to allow Uber and Lyft to legally operate in town.
