Uber has more problems with California.
An administrative law judge for the California Public Utilities Commission is ordering the popular ride service company to pay a $7.3 million dollar fine for not turning over information the regulators have requested. The judge says Uber needs to provide:
-
Accessibility information: the number and percentage of customers who requested accessible vehicles, and how often the company was able to comply with requests for accessible vehicles
-
Service information: the number of rides requested and accepted by drivers within each zip code where the company operates, and the number of rides that were requested but not accepted; as well as the amounts paid/donated
-
Driver safety information: the cause of each driving incident involving a driver
The decision gives Uber 30 days to respond or it will be suspended from operating in the state. The company says that the data regulators want could violate the privacy of riders and drivers and will appeal.
Yahoo Finance Senior Columnist Michael Santoli sees this as a head-on collision between the new economy and the old way of doing things.
“It really does seem like a bureaucratic tussle-- a regulatory agency demanding information from a class of companies that hasn’t existed for very long,” he says. “It’s kind of an aggressive, arguably belligerent, company going against kind of an immovable regulatory structure in California.”
Santoli feels this is also an example of the hurdles Uber faces all the time.
“I don’t think the basics of this actual dispute are that serious,” he argues. “But it does show Uber’s general challenge which is to try to penetrate these very entrenched interests -- regulators or the regulated taxi services.”
Get the Latest Market Data and News with the Yahoo Finance App
You may recall last month the California Labor Commissioner ruled in favor of an Uber driver who claimed he was an employee, not an independent contractor, as the company argues. And the topic of Uber and its drivers is making its way into the 2016 presidential campaign, with Democrat Hillary Clinton blasting the company’s policies toward workers, while Republican Jeb Bush plans to take an Uber ride while he's in San Francisco on Friday. Santoli is hardly surprised.
“It touches on all these longstanding issues out there, whether it’s innovation, the Silicon Valley economy able to upend markets… but also the anxiety of workers and what labor deserves out of all this innovation,” he notes. “So there’s something for almost every politician to seize on when it comes to this company.”