Editorial: Limo regulation needs updating

As it works now, the state Transportation Services Authority regulates the industry, determining who gets a certificate to operate a limousine. The primary purpose of the agency is to protect the traveling public from rip-off artists and unsafe operators.

But a group of independent limousine operators is upset because it believes state law and regulations make it nearly impossible for them to break into the business. One of their biggest complaints is that when they go to apply for a certificate, companies that already have certificates flood them with information requests.

The result is that some are so daunted by the process they don't even bother to apply. Those applicants that go forward get buried in a sea of paperwork, sometimes forcing them to withdraw because they can't afford to match the firepower of the attorneys enlisted by the limousine companies.

The hands of the Transportation Services Authority basically are tied. As Chairman John Mendoza points out, Nevada court rulings have given existing service providers the right to participate as intervenors in the application process that resembles court hearings. This has created for some abuses. For example, John West has applied to get a certificate, but one of the limousine companies intervening in the case sent an absurd request to West asking that he provide -- for the past three years -- the time, date, route and name of each client he has had.

The Legislature needs to step in and limit the role that current limousine companies can play when an applicant seeks a certificate. Applying for a certificate to run a limousine shouldn't require a battery of lawyers. Who gets to operate a limousine should be determined by the Transportation Services Authority, not some attorneys working on behalf of limousine companies.

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