NYC Comptroller to State AG Seeking Taxi Money: We’ll See You in Court
This is an attempt to collect $810 million to help NYC taxi drivers and owners repay loans they had taken out from credit unions.
The New York Attorney General’s effort to force the New York City officials to provide money to help beleaguered taxi drivers appears headed for court.
“Comptroller [Scott] Stringer shares deep concerns about the crisis that’s hit the hard-working men and women of the taxi industry and we agree that it must be fully investigated because it never should have happened,” Tyrone Stevens, a spokesperson for the city, told CU Times.
However, Stringer is unwilling to simply pay a claim filed by the state attorney general, Stevens added.
New York Attorney General Letitia James has filed the claim with Stringer’s office in an attempt to collect $810 million to help taxi drivers and owners repay loans they had taken out from credit unions and other financial institutions.
She was required to file the claim before suing the city. Stringer has until March 21 to respond.
Hurt by ride-sharing companies, many of the taxi drivers have been unable to repay their loans. As a result, two credit unions, Melrose Credit Union and LOMTO Federal Credit Union, failed, leaving the NCUA holding thousands of loans.
The agency recently sold those loans to Marblegate Asset Management, a hedge fund.
Stevens said Stringer believes the claim must be fully investigated.
“But an investigation of this scale and importance involves a variety of complex issues that will have to be resolved in a courtroom in order to reach a resolution that’s fair, comprehensive and sustainable,” Stevens said.
He said that going through the entire legal process will “offer an opportunity to protect this critical industry in the right way.”
In a letter to Stringer and James earlier this week, Bhairavi Desai, executive director of the New York Taxi Workers Alliance said she hoped the city and state could work together to help the drivers.
While the NCUA has not been willing to disclose the details of the loan sale, Desai said in her letter that Marblegate now holds about 3,500 taxi loans.
Desai recently met with Marblegate and said in the letter that the hedge fund appeared willing to refinance the loans and reduce loan payments to a level that the taxi drivers can afford.