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The New York City Council excoriated the city officials who oversee the taxi industry on Monday, blaming them for a financial crisis that has ruined drivers and releasing a document that lawmakers said showed the officials knew for years that a disaster was looming.

The document, a memo written by a city employee in late 2010 or early 2011, described how the price of the city permit that allows a driver to own their cab — called a medallion — had skyrocketed to unsustainable levels. It also warned that in order to buy the permit, some drivers were taking out loans they could not afford.

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.

The New York Times first revealed the existence of the memo last month in an investigation on the crisis in the industry, but the city had refused to release it, claiming it did not exist.