City lawmakers file for legal protection against night shift taxi fare hikes

Three Proyecto Sur city lawmakers, along with the DEUCO consumer protection agency, filed for legal protection before a city court and requested the nullifying of the 20 percent hike applied to taxi fares between 10 pm and 6 am.

“We’re filing for legal protection because this hike was passed after a public hearing on taxi fares,” lawmaker María América González said.

González argues that hike was applied with no previous public hearing, which would have been important in the decision-making process. Therefore, “the approval must be nullified.”

“The public hearing we held on September 20th, 2010 dealt with applying a fixed price to the fare, which wouldn’t change, no matter what time of day it was,” she said. “This is what we debated and decided.”

González explained that they never held discussions on a night shift fare. “The bill that was used to pass it was created after the debate. Which means we could have never debated something that didn’t exist back then,” she concluded.