Uber mounted 11th-hour lobbying blitz at City Hall

Uber accelerated its lobbying push the same day Tallahassee city commissioners voted on new rules for the ride-sharing giant — and the company ended up getting much of what it wanted.

An email obtained by the Tallahassee Democrat shows Uber sent marching orders to its local local lobbying and consulting team on July 8, 2015, along with proposed revisions to an ordinance regulating vehicles for hire.

At the time, the company had influential players on its payroll, including Paige Carter-Smith, a governmental affairs consultant and close friend of City Commissioner Scott Maddox, and Brad Burleson, a lobbyist with Ballard Partners.

Cesar Fernandez, a senior public policy associate for Uber, sent the email to Carter-Smith and Burleson at 12:40 p.m., hours before the final public hearing on the ordinance. Burleson forwarded it to Maddox at 6:04 p.m., a few minutes into public hearings but before a long debate on Uber began in commission chambers.

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Fernandez, in an email with a subject line “Down to the wire,” asked for a number of changes to the ordinance, including deletion of a requirement that Uber and similar companies regularly provide a list of its drivers to the city.

“No. 1 problem: drivers’ list,” Fernandez wrote. “We are proposing a very good compromise that requires us to have trade dress on every vehicle and turn over names of drivers if law enforcement asks. Everything else is very important, but we MUST kill the above language.”

Fernandez said in the email that Uber spends “considerable resources” recruiting and retaining driver-partners and that disclosing its ranks to the city “would make it susceptible to disclosure to a competitor.” He also openly opposed the measure during the public hearing.

Commissioners ultimately approved the ordinance — minus the drivers’ list. Under the ordinance, Uber and other transportation network companies have to keep their own drivers’ lists, but they don’t have to regularly provide them to the city, as the earlier draft ordinance required.

Maddox’s aide, Allie Merzer Fleming, who checks and answers his email, said Maddox didn’t see the email the night of the meeting.

“Commissioner Maddox does not review any emails from the dais nor was even aware that this email was sent to him,” she said. “Since it was a late meeting, I didn’t see the email until the next morning and dismissed it because the vote had already been taken.”

Both Maddox and Carter-Smith appear to be central figures in the FBI's investigation into possible public corruption in Tallahassee. Maddox was photographed with undercover FBI agents and others in a Las Vegas hotel room and was named in a federal subpoena served on City Hall in September.

Carter-Smith, who bought Maddox's consulting firm Governance, Inc., in 2010 and owns her own firm Governance Services, LLC, was named in the September subpoena and two June subpoenas served on City Hall and the Community Redevelopment Agency. The Governance firms also were named in the June subpoenas.

Fleming also noted that Commissioner Gil Ziffer, not Maddox, moved to take the driver’s list requirement out of the ordinance. Maddox seconded the motion. It passed 4-1, with Mayor Andrew Gillum opposed. The whole ordinance, with a number of revisions, passed unanimously.

An Uber official previously told the Tallahassee Democrat the company hired Carter-Smith as a governmental consultant, part of a team that included Burleson, a lobbyist with Ballard Partners, and Justin Day, a lobbyist with The Advocacy Group at Cardenas Partners.

Burleson registered with the city to lobby for Uber. But neither Day nor Carter-Smith ever registered. Day told the Democrat it was an oversight. Adam Corey, a lobbyist with close ties to Gillum, was working for Uber competitor Yellow Cab at the time and also didn't register to lobby. He, too, was named in the June subpoenas.

Carter-Smith, who appointed executive director of the Downtown Improvement Authority in 2016, has not responded to repeated requests for comment.

The San Francisco-based Uber Technologies got other concessions as articulated in Fernandez’s email. A provision was removed requiring the company to provide to the city a log with vehicle information including make, model and tag number on a quarterly basis. A requirement for an inspection sticker on the outside of vehicles was relaxed to allow proof of inspection inside the vehicle.

Language also was removed that would have required Uber drivers to sport “proper dress,” defined as “shoes, pants to ankle length or skirt or dress and shirt or blouse with sleeves and collars.” The version of the ordinance that passed simply requires “a neat appearance” and non-defined “proper dress.”

The Fernandez email didn’t mention a provision to set minimum fares for Uber, something the company strongly opposed. However, Maddox argued against setting prices during the public hearing and joined in a 3-2 vote to keep them out. Fare regulations remained in the ordinance for taxi cabs and limos.

“I’m looking out for the citizens of Tallahassee that are using the cars,” Maddox said. “So I’m not picking one company over another company.”

Senior writer Jeffrey Schweers contributed to this report.

Contact Jeff Burlew at jburlew@tallahassee.com or follow @JeffBurlew on Twitter.



