The California Public Utilities Commission did not even consistently collect the most basic industry information, such as ride requests and miles driven, the report from the San Francisco County Transportation Authority shows.

The state’s spotty information about company operations makes it more difficult for policy makers, especially at the local level, to address top priorities like road safety, air quality and access to transportation for people with disabilities, the study says.

Cities bear the brunt of congestion and other industry side effects — particularly San Francisco, which had by far the greatest ride concentration of any municipality in the state, with more than 820,000 trips per square mile in the year ending Aug. 30, 2020. But they have little jurisdiction over the ride-hailing giants, which are regulated by the state.

“The lack of accurate, timely and transparent data has left localities without necessary information to support a basic understanding” of ride-hailing company operations within their borders, the study said. 

According to the report, the commission let Uber and Lyft submit inconsistent and incomplete data in their mandatory annual reports to the agency.  

The problems are exacerbated “if not directly caused by” the commission’s unclear reporting requirements and “lack of quality assurance or enforcement of quality standards,” it said.

On Tuesday, Joe Castiglione, deputy director for technology, data and analysis at the Transportation Authority, presented the study to its board.

“TNC 2020: A Profile of Ride-Hailing in California,” is the first broad analysis of annual reports from Uber and Lyft, which are the dominant players in a sector known as transportation network companies. It covers September 2019 to August 2020, the interval for which the most complete data is available.

Although the transportation agency’s initial goal was to examine ride-hailing’s effects on the state’s people and environment, it also found “pervasive” problems with the commission’s data collection practices.

Among the study’s findings:

• Lyft filed only 36% of the required data with the commission, while Uber reported more than 99%, suggesting that the commission enforced the reporting rules inconsistently. 
• Even basic data on company activity was self-contradictory, with Lyft stating two different figures for its total completed trips that varied by 49.7 million trips, or 81%. Uber’s totals varied by 9.3 million trips, or 6%.
• If San Francisco had accurate figures, Castiglione told the board, it could better assess whether Uber and Lyft are paying the city a per-trip surcharge that funds public transportation.
• Uber produced an estimated 494,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide, an amount comparable to that released by the 2020 Caldwell Fire in Northern California, which burned 81,000 acres. Almost a third of those vehicle emissions occurred with no passengers aboard. Because Lyft’s mileage data was incomplete, its emissions could not be estimated.
• While ride-hailing companies promised to reduce congestion through shared travel, the data shows that just 14% of calls are for “pooled” rides, and only 7% are filled.
• Only about half of all requests for wheelchair-accessible vehicles were served. Uber completed 47%, and Lyft 53%.
• Lyft reported three times as many public safety incidents on a per-trip basis as Uber did. These include collisions, assaults, harassments, drunk driving complaints and traffic citations. Lyft reported 30 times as many assaults and harassments as Uber did on a per-trip basis.

However, the study noted that the firms may be reporting differently, “pointing to the need for increased review by regulators.”

The ride-hailing firms have said that more than 99% of their trips end without safety issues, and that they have added security features to their apps. Uber, for example, offers “share my trip,” which lets riders send their location to friends or family. Lyft has a similar option.

The state commission has also released the firms’ 2021 data filings, but the local study said they appeared to be even less complete, and so heavily redacted they could not be fully evaluated.

The Transportation Authority emphasized that the commission, which also regulates driverless vehicles across California, has been heavily redacting its reports on them as well, even though cities need quality data on how the nascent services may affect them.

In 2013 the commission became the first agency in the nation to legalize ride-hailing, and is the only state agency that collects comprehensive data on the industry.

Terrie Prosper, the commission’s spokeswoman, said in an email that the agency was aware of the city’s concerns. “CPUC staff have been working with the TNCs to rectify many of the concerns for the 2020 data and for subsequent reporting years,” she said. 

Uber and Lyft spokespeople said in emails Monday that they had complied with the commission’s requests for information, but questioned the study’s overall conclusions. They did not respond to questions about specific findings.

The commission’s faulty data collection came to light in October 2021, after the Public Press obtained data on assaults and harassments from the 2020 annual safety filings for Uber and Lyft under the California Public Records Act. It was the first public disclosure of any annual ride-hailing safety reports, revealing that numbers the firms submitted to the commission varied widely.

The commission confirmed in a ruling in January 2022 that it had let the ride-hailing giants use varying definitions of sexual assault since at least 2017, and this “could impact the total number and types of incidents reported in their annual reports.”

The commission in June 2022 voted to require uniform definitions in reporting assault complaints. It did not address other categories of data.

San Francisco Supervisor Dean Preston, one of several Transportation Authority board members, at the hearing Tuesday expressed frustration with the state commission.  

“We basically privatized and deregulated transportation, and this is what we get: clogged street, no accountability, no data,” he said. “This is a joke. I mean, a cruel joke in terms of data integrity.” 

Read more about the ride-hailing industry and the record of state regulators in our ongoing series, “Ride Hailing’s Dark Data.”

The post Local Planners Say State Failed to Track Safety Incidents on Uber and Lyft appeared first on San Francisco Public Press.

In a previously unreported vote last month, the commission issued a decision requiring that all ride-hailing firms train drivers to avoid sexual assault and harassment, adopt procedures for investigating complaints and use uniform terminology in their annual reports to the agency so it can accurately monitor them.

But the commission softened its initial proposal by dropping a requirement that the companies inform victims they could “opt in” to speak with its investigators. Although the agency had said the measure would help it ensure firms properly respond to assault claims, it instead decided the cases would be better handled by company investigators once they receive appropriate training.

The commission hailed the new rules as “a necessary milestone” in its “ongoing commitment to ensuring the safety” of transportation network companies, as the firms are known, and a signal to assault victims that their claims will receive “the necessary consideration and sensitivity that respects their rights.”

In comments before the vote on June 23, 2022, commissioners said they sought to balance holding the industry accountable and protecting victim privacy.

“It’s important that we have sufficient information to understand what’s happening and how best to explore ways to prevent these incidents, protect victims, and also ensure their confidentiality,” Commissioner Darcie Houck said.

Commissioner Clifford Rechtschaffen said the decision addressed “an extraordinarily serious and sensitive set of issues involving assault. We really need to tread very, very carefully, and I think this decision does that.” 

Local officials said the move was a welcome improvement in how the agency addresses a longstanding risk on rides.

“The CPUC’s action to standardize how Uber and Lyft are supposed to protect passengers from sexual assault and harassment is way overdue,” Rafael Mandelman, a San Francisco supervisor and chair of the San Francisco County Transportation Authority, said in an email. “I hope this is a sign that the state is prepared to take these issues more seriously, sooner rather than later.”

Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón, who sued Uber over what he alleged were its false safety claims in 2014 when he was San Francisco’s district attorney, said in an email: “This is a positive step. I hope that both the Commission and rideshare companies work collaboratively to improve public safety.”

Terrie Prosper, the commission’s director of news and outreach, did not respond to questions about the decision. 

The commission is California’s primary regulator of ride-hailing firms and the state’s only agency that collects comprehensive safety data on the industry. Uber and Lyft represent 99.9 percent of the state’s ride-hailing business.

The agency legalized ride-hailing in California in 2013 and other states followed suit. Within months, there were media reports of alleged assaults around the country.

But the commission did not specifically require that firms include sexual assaults and harassment complaints in their mandatory annual reports to the agency before 2017, according to documents released to the San Francisco Public Press under the state public records act.

Moreover, it failed to require that they use consistent definitions of assaults and harassment, which resulted in unreliable data. The problem was revealed only in October 2021, after the Public Press obtained a partially redacted 2020 annual report. The agency has not released other annual reports.

Company representatives have said they submitted all required information and that safety is a top priority. They say less than 1% of their rides have any safety issues.

Numerous passengers have sued Uber and Lyft alleging the companies failed to prevent and investigate assaults. The firms routinely deny the claims, and settlements are usually confidential. Last week, eight women and two men sued Uber in San Francisco Superior Court, alleging they were attacked by Uber drivers within the last three years. Navideh Forghani, an Uber spokesperson, declined by email to comment on the two lawsuits.  

Meanwhile, the companies have released their own studies using definitions they developed with experts. Uber’s 2019 “U.S. Safety Report” listed 5,981 alleged incidents of sexual assault in 2017 and 2018 nationally. It did not break out incidents by state, but Uber later said 1,243 occurred in California.

Last month, Uber published a second study, reporting 3,824 alleged incidents in 2019 and 2020 nationally.

In its “Community Safety Report,” published in 2021, Lyft acknowledged 4,158 alleged sexual assaults nationally, in 2017, 2018 and 2019. It also did not include state tallies.

Both companies said in emails that they supported the commission’s requirement that they use a uniform system of definitions, or “taxonomy,” in reporting assaults to the agency.

Under the new rules, sexual assault is defined as the touching, or attempted touching, of sexual body parts of a driver or passenger against their will. This includes victims who are unconscious at the time. Several passengers have claimed in lawsuits that they were assaulted after passing out in the back seat.

Sexual harassment is defined as the “unwelcome visual, verbal, nonverbal, or physical conduct” based on sex, directed at a passenger or driver, such as inappropriate personal questions, remarks about appearance and “flirting.”

The agency said it based the definitions on state criminal and civil law and the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

The commission rejected definitions that Uber and Lyft developed after consulting with experts. The agency also rejected Uber’s suggestion that it only report incidents in which it had deactivated the driver, saying this would obscure a true tally of assault claims.

Uber and Lyft told the commission that as of at least 2019 they had begun training drivers on avoiding sexual assault with assistance from the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network (RAINN), which describes itself as “the nation’s largest anti-sexual violence organization.”

But now the commission is mandating that all ride-hailing firms develop a program in consultation with a recognized expert to annually train drivers using examples of proscribed acts. It must cover harassment based on gender identity and expression, as required under California law.

Firms are required to provide a copy of their policies for preventing sexual assaults and harassment to drivers and passengers. They must develop an investigation manual that requires a timely response to assault claims and documentation. And they must consult experts to establish investigator qualifications, training and procedures for “trauma informed” investigations.

The companies said they had added many safety features over the years, as well as sexual misconduct education for drivers. But neither responded to emailed questions about whether they should have acted earlier in requiring more rigorous training for drivers and investigators.

The agency emphasized that the new rules are “interim” and that firms must update their programs “as necessary” after an industry-wide evaluation by experts.

Genevieve Shiroma, the commissioner who wrote the decision, said before the vote, “This is crucial work and we will continue our work in this area.”

This article was produced in partnership with the McGraw Center for Business Journalism at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at the City University of New York. Support was also provided by the Fund for Investigative Journalism. See previous stories at sfpublicpress.org/series/ride-hailings-dark-data. Contact Seth Rosenfeld at srosenfeld@sfpublicpress.org.

The post Uber, Lyft Must Adopt Measures to Prevent Sexual Assaults, California Regulator Rules appeared first on San Francisco Public Press.

In a unanimous decision issued Friday, a three-judge panel of the 1st District Court of Appeal in San Francisco said the commission’s lengthy and open-ended administrative procedures violate the strict timelines of the California Public Records Act.

The ruling could bring more accountability to the commission, which has faced criticism of excessive secrecy and ineffectiveness, advocates said. It regulates corporations ranging from utilities to ride-hailing services.

The commission had claimed that a century-old law — intended to prevent abusive litigation by railroad barons fighting regulations — required people requesting records to undergo a convoluted administrative process before they could sue the agency to compel the release of public records.

Citing that section of the Public Utilities Code, the agency over the years has blocked requests for records on its handling of disasters such as Pacific Gas & Electric Co.’s Camp fire, the failed San Onofre nuclear power plant and thousands of collisions and assaults on Uber and Lyft rides.

But the court roundly rejected the agency’s argument, holding that the procedures set forth in the utilities code “do not apply to the PRA,” or Public Records Act.

“[T]he procedural scheme, and specifically the rehearing process, set forth in the Public Utilities Code is not only entirely different than, it is at odds with, the procedural provisions of the PRA and the Legislature’s intent in enacting them,” the court said.

More widely, the court said “any” administrative process that state and local agencies adopt to handle records requests “must comply with the language and purpose of the PRA.” If agencies fail to complete their internal reviews within the deadlines of the records act, it said, requesters may seek court review without further delay.

But the court also held that the specific records requested in this case — correspondence between the commission and the governor’s office concerning the devastating 2018 Camp fire — were confidential and need not be released.

Citing prior holdings on similar records, the court said releasing the governor’s correspondence with the commission would interfere with the ability of government officials to speak frankly.

How the Public Utilities Commission circumvents the California Public Records Act

David Snyder, executive director of the First Amendment Coalition, a nonpartisan organization that advocates for government transparency, said that although the court found the governor’s correspondence to be confidential, the ruling was an important advance.

“The decision is a real win for transparency,” said Snyder, whose organization joined with the Associated Press and the Center for Investigative Reporting in supporting the lawsuit. They had filed a brief in the case that said the commission has a history of “unlawful delays” in responding to requests.

“The court has made clear that an agency’s administrative procedures can’t trump the Public Records Act, and that an agency like the PUC cannot indefinitely delay processing a public records request,” Snyder said.

Terrie Prosper, the commission’s director of news and outreach, and Christofer Nolan, a lawyer representing the agency in the case, did not respond to emails seeking comment.

Steve Zansberg, the Denver attorney who filed the lawsuit on behalf of television station ABC-10 in Sacramento and its reporter Brandon Rittiman, said his clients were gratified that the decision will make it easier for people to seek judicial review in cases where the agency delays or denies their requests.

“No one should have to wait, as did my clients, for months and months to be able to ask a court to review that agency’s decision to deny records access,” he said in a statement.

As the court put it, “The delay that occurred here was egregious by any measure.”

On Nov. 19, 2020, Rittiman requested copies of communications between Marybel Batjer, president of the commission at the time, and Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office concerning the Camp fire. The Butte County blaze destroyed 18,000 structures and killed at least 85 people. PG&E pleaded guilty to 84 counts of involuntary manslaughter and one of causing the fire.

Rittiman was investigating why the agency waived a $200-million fine against PG&E and whether the governor’s office influenced that decision.

The agency said the records were confidential; Rittiman filed an administrative appeal. When seven months had passed and the agency had made no decision, Rittiman sued, the court noted.

The agency then sought to get his case dismissed because he had not completed its administrative process, but the state Supreme Court ordered a review.

The commission has long maintained that those requesting records could not sue it for failing to comply with the Public Records Act until they underwent two internal administrative appeals of their claim. As its legal basis, the agency cited the 100-year-old law intended to prevent abusive litigation by railroad interests.

But as the lawsuit noted, the agency’s appeals system provided no deadline, allowing it to indefinitely delay its decisions on whether to release records, despite the Act’s requirement that agencies decide within 24 days. In this way, the agency prevented people from having a court independently review their cases, even as their requests languished at the agency.

Enacted in 1968, the California Public Records Act is modeled on the federal Freedom of Information Act. The state law declares that “access to information concerning the conduct of the people’s business is a fundamental and necessary right.”

It says all state agencies “shall” determine whether the requested records are releasable within 24 days, immediately notify the requester and “promptly” release them. If an agency withholds records, it says, the requester may seek court review “at the earliest possible time.”

Voters reinforced the law in 2004 when they overwhelmingly passed Proposition 59, which embedded similar words in the state Constitution.

The commission, too, has roots in a voter-backed constitutional amendment. The agency was created in 1879 as the Railroad Commission but was corrupted by the Southern Pacific Railroad, says a history written by commission staff. In 1911, voters following Gov. Hiram Johnson’s reform platform granted the agency greater autonomy with the intent of insulating it from undue influences. Its authority was extended to other utilities, and in 1946 it was renamed.

The agency is led by five commissioners appointed by the governor to six-year terms. They oversee 1,402 employees and a $1.1-billion budget.

The commission’s policy on records requests — known as General Order 66-D — says requesters must complete the internal administrative reviews before they can seek judicial review of the agency’s withholding of records.

But the court concluded that just as the Legislature had used its “plenary” power to pass the public utilities code of the early 20th century, it used the same sweeping authority in 1968 to pass the records act, which it clearly intended to apply to the commission.

The court declared that “the PRA fixes the bounds” of the commission’s authority to adopt internal procedures for records requests. The agency’s open-ended process, it said, “cannot be squared” with the records act’s much tighter timeframe.

“In short, the PRA calls for the handling of record requests and the resolution of disputes over such requests with alacrity,” the panel said, and permits requesters to sue to enforce the act.

“The PUC has for so many years operated in a black box,” said the First Amendment Coalition’s Snyder. “The public has not had as much access to its inner workings. Hopefully this will open the door, at least a bit, to greater transparency and, thus, greater accountability for the Public Utilities Commission.”

For more coverage on this topic, see Ride Hailing’s Dark Data. This story was produced in partnership with the McGraw Center for Business Journalism at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at the City University of New York. Support also came from the Fund for Investigative Journalism.

The post Court Says California Utilities Commission Must Obey State Public Records Act appeared first on San Francisco Public Press.

Despite vows to become more transparent, the California Public Utilities Commission has systematically violated the public’s right to know about its handling of deadly disasters and corporate scandals, according to court records and First Amendment attorneys.

Applying century-old laws meant to fight corruption, the commission has effectively limited court enforcement of the state’s public records act. But a state appeals court on May 3 is hearing a lawsuit challenging that practice and could bring more transparency to the commission. 

David Snyder, executive director of the First Amendment Coalition, a nonpartisan organization dedicated to advancing government transparency that is supporting the lawsuit, said it’s “absolutely crucial” that people have timely court review of agency denials of their requests for information.

“Administrative agencies should not and cannot have the final say on whether the Public Records Act has been followed,” said Snyder, a lawyer and former journalist. “That’s the proverbial fox guarding the henhouse.”

Citing special powers granted no other state agency, the commission has obstructed requests for records on its handling of catastrophes such as Pacific Gas & Electric Co.’s Camp Fire, the failed San Onofre nuclear power plant and thousands of collisions and assaults on Uber and Lyft rides, a San Francisco Public Press review of court cases and state documents found.

Those powers were intended to fight the corrupting influence of the railroad barons, but the commission has deployed them to undercut the California Public Records Act, meant to promote government transparency and accountability, court records show.

The Legislature and the governor’s office have not resolved the conflict between these historic reforms, legislative records show, despite incidents revealing that secrecy at the agency has contributed to inefficiency and corruption.

Terrie Prosper, the commission’s director of news and outreach, did not respond to several requests for comment for this story. 

The agency has denied that its procedures violate the public records act’s requirements that it release records promptly. In adopting its current policy in 2018, it called such allegations “simply speculative” and cited “our longstanding practices supporting disclosure and our progressive development of rules that will promote public access to records in our possession.”

But over the objections of the agency’s lawyers, the state Supreme Court in November reinstated a lawsuit challenging its refusal to release records concerning communications between Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office and the commission about the 2018 Camp Fire — the deadliest wildfire in state history — and the agency’s decision to waive a $200 million penalty against PG&E.

That case, to be heard in the state’s First District Court of Appeal, highlights the hurdles facing anyone seeking records from the powerful agency, which regulates power, water, telephone, transportation and other utilities that affect the lives of all Californians. It is responsible for ensuring that utility services are fair and safe.

The lawsuit was brought by television station ABC-10 in Sacramento and its reporter Brandon Rittiman, whose award-winning coverage of the Camp Fire has garnered national attention.

Steve Zansberg, the station’s Denver-based attorney, said in court records that the commission has a “practice of imposing unreasonable and unlawful roadblocks” to public records.

According to Zansberg, the case poses a fundamental question: Is the commission above the state law that requires all agencies to promptly release records about how they conduct public business?

“We’re trying to hold the PUC accountable,” he said in an interview. “You can’t do that if you don’t have access to the records that show what’s going on behind the scenes.”

Christofer Nolan, one of the lawyers representing the agency in the case, did not respond to an email seeking comment. 

The lawsuit has drawn support from the First Amendment Coalition, based in San Rafael; the Associated Press; and the Center for Investigative Reporting, the nation’s oldest nonprofit investigative newsroom.

Matthew Cate, the Washington, D.C., attorney who filed a brief on behalf of the organizations, wrote that the commission has a history of “unlawful delays” in responding to requests and that its practices could encourage other agencies to erect similar obstacles to public information.

“The PUC has created a set of procedures completely contrary to the letter and spirit of the CPRA and the constitutional right of access to public records,” Cate wrote, referring to the state public records act.

A gauntlet of obstacles

A review of court cases, commission filings, legislative history and interviews with attorneys, in addition to this reporter’s experience as a requester, found a gauntlet of obstacles that disadvantage requesters and favor agency denials:

• The agency can take months or years to release records. Between Jan. 1, 2017 and April 4, 2022, the agency received 3,115 requests and took an average of 58 days to close them, statistics it released under the public records act show. Five requests submitted by the Public Press for records concerning thousands of ride-hailing safety incidents have taken between six and 27 months.
• The commission tends to interpret the scope of requested records narrowly, while applying exemptions from disclosure broadly, effectively reducing public access to information.
• With other state agencies, a person may directly seek independent court review of a denied request. But under commission rules, they must first file an administrative appeal and then apply for a rehearing, a far more cumbersome and lengthy process.
• The commission requires requesters to appeal within 10 days or lose their right to challenge its denial, compared with 90 days allowed under the federal Freedom of Information Act.
• Agency rules provide no deadline for the commission to resolve appeals or rehearings, and the agency asserts that requesters may not seek court review until it has, effectively holding their requests in limbo. Federal law, by contrast, allows requesters to sue as early as 20 working days after appealing.
• With all other California agencies, requesters may seek review in local superior court. But for the commission they may seek review only in state appeals courts or the California Supreme Court, forums that are more complicated and costly, effectively deterring independent review of denials.

And though the public records act requires agencies to adopt written guidelines that “reflect the intention of the Legislature to make the records accessible” and post them in “a conspicuous public place,” the commission’s rules are spread piecemeal across four parts of its website and are so labyrinthine that they even confound experienced attorneys.

Clicking on the FAQ link at the bottom of the agency’s request form returns a page that says “Nothing here yet! Check back soon.” A separate search of the website does return a functional FAQ page, but neither it nor the “Requester Resources” page mentions appeals or rehearings.

A unique agency

The commission has said in official filings that it is dedicated to transparency but must balance that goal with its legal duty to maintain confidentiality of trade secrets and personal data contained in filings it receives from companies.

The commission has noted that no other agency in the state is required to follow both the public records act and the Public Utilities Code, which says any employee who releases confidential information submitted by a utility, unless ordered to by the commission, is subject to a misdemeanor charge. This legal requirement “is unique to the Commission and thus analogy to other state agencies or local governments’ processes,” it said, are “inapplicable.”

The agency says it adopted its system of administrative appeal and rehearing to give requesters a chance to show records should be released while allowing utilities a chance to show the information is truly confidential before the commissioners make a final decision.

However, attorneys for requesters noted that employees of other agencies also face criminal penalties for improperly releasing information, such as criminal histories or medical records.

And whatever internal process an agency creates, they say, it may not violate the public records act’s clear deadlines. 

Enacted in 1968, the California Public Records Act is modeled on the federal Freedom of Information Act. The state law declares that “access to information concerning the conduct of the people’s business is a fundamental and necessary right of every person in this state.”

It says all state agencies “shall” determine whether a request seeks copies of releasable records within 24 days of receipt, immediately notify the requester of that determination and “promptly” release public records. If an agency withholds records, requesters may seek court review “at the earliest possible time.”

Voters bolstered the law in 2004 when they overwhelmingly passed Proposition 59, which embedded these words in the state Constitution: “The people have the right of access to information concerning the conduct of the people’s business, and, therefore, the meetings of public bodies and the writings of public officials and agencies shall be open to public scrutiny.”

Like the public records act, the commission has roots in a voter-backed constitutional amendment. The agency was created as the Railroad Commission in 1879 but was corrupted by the Southern Pacific Railroad, which dominated state politics, according to a history written by commission staff.

In 1911, voters propelled by Gov. Hiram Johnson’s reform platform granted the agency greater autonomy with the intent of preventing corruption. Its authority was extended to other utilities and in 1946 it received its current name. It is led by five commissioners appointed by the governor for six-year terms. They oversee 1,402 employees and a $1.1 billion budget.

San Bruno fights secrecy

The 2010 explosion of a PG&E gas pipeline in San Bruno killed eight residents, injured dozens more and destroyed or damaged scores of homes. It also revealed what San Bruno City Attorney Marc Zafferano described in an interview as a “roadblock at every turn” as he sought information from the commission.

San Bruno officials had grown concerned that PG&E and agency staff were holding secret meetings that would result in an unfairly light penalty against the utility. To find out, the city requested communications with PG&E executives, but the agency largely failed to respond, Zafferano said.

So the city filed an administrative appeal — only to discover agency rules specified no deadline for its decision.

After more delays, the city sued in San Francisco Superior Court only to hit another hurdle: the public utilities code barred lawsuits against the commission in superior court.

Originally intended to stop industrial titans from using diverse courts to undermine commission rulings, the utilities code allowed lawsuits against agency regulatory decisions only in state Supreme Court.

Efforts to expand judicial review of the commission’s decisions over the years have variously met with opposition from its leadership and several governors, who saw those efforts as an impediment to both regulation and business.

In 1991 Gov. Pete Wilson vetoed a bill that would have allowed such lawsuits in the state Court of Appeal.

“At this critical state in its economic and social evolution, California can ill afford the delay, expense and uncertainty invited by enlarged predicates for judicial review contained in this bill,” he said.

Only in 1996 was the law changed to allow lawsuits challenging limited kinds of commission decisions in the appeals court — a measure the commission opposed until it was narrowed.

In 2015, the Legislature passed a bill to let superior courts hear public records lawsuits against the agency, but Gov. Jerry Brown vetoed it, saying he supported more transparency but was concerned such a change “will only result in increased litigation and likely delay commission decision-making.”

In 2017, an early version of a reform bill would have allowed public records lawsuits against the agency to proceed in Superior Court. The provision had backing from the California Newspaper Publishers Association, but it was dropped from the final bill.

The commission thus moved to dismiss San Bruno’s lawsuit from superior court for lack of jurisdiction. But the city negotiated a settlement in which the agency released records, spurring PG&E to release many more.

The records confirmed there were improper private communications between the agency and utility, for which PG&E agreed to pay $97.5 million in penalties. It also was fined $1.6 billion for violating safety standards.

As part of the settlement, the commission reviewed its public records procedures. San Bruno urged the agency to adopt deadlines to end the “potentially endless appeals process that it completely controls.” The city also recommended letting requesters challenge agency delays and denials of requests in superior courts.

These obstacles, Zafferano told the commission, “will likely continue to deter all but the most determined and well-funded participants from obtaining the prompt access to public records that all public agencies are required to provide.”

But in a 2018 order the agency dismissed such concerns as “speculative” and adopted its current policy, known as General Order 66-D.

Blocked records on reactor leak

Michael Aguirre, a former federal prosecutor in San Diego, ran into similar barriers when he sought records on the 2012 shutdown of the San Onofre nuclear station, at which engineers had discovered a radioactive leak.

Aguirre represented utility customers challenging the commission’s decision that customers should pay $3.3 billion of the $4.7 billion cost of the failed reactor.

In January 2015, he requested written communications between the commission and Gov. Brown’s office regarding the reactor. The agency released about 900 pages but withheld more than 100 records.

Aguirre sued the commission in San Francisco Superior Court for violating the records act. The agency asked the court to dismiss the case on the ground that it lacked jurisdiction — but Superior Court Judge Ernest Goldsmith disagreed. 

Goldsmith found “there is a violation of the Public Records Act by withholding public records.” And since the agency had made clear it would not release the records, he ruled in 2016, requiring Aguirre to exhaust his administrative remedies by appealing would be “futile.”

But the state appeals court overruled Goldsmith, saying the lower court lacked jurisdiction.

This forced Aguirre to start over. Later that year, he requested copies of communications between the commission and Brown’s office about San Onofre.

The agency denied his request 11 days later, claiming the records were exempt because they concerned the governor’s communications or the commission’s deliberative process.

Seven days later, Aguirre filed an administrative appeal. Four months after that, the commissioners affirmed the denial. 

This time, Aguirre sued the agency in state appeals court. He contended that the governor’s office might have secretly influenced the agency’s decision to let the utility pass costs to customers, and the public had a right to know.

The agency, he said, had “engaged in extreme delay tactics in violation of the prompt determination requirements of the Public Records Act.”

The commission denied Aguirre’s claims and asked the court to dismiss his lawsuit because he had not applied for a rehearing until after he sued. Since that application was pending, it said, the court had no jurisdiction.

The appeals court did not address whether the commission’s appeals procedures violated the public records act. But in June 2018, it ruled that the agency had improperly withheld records and ordered their release.

In a separate federal lawsuit, Aguirre and his law partner, Maria Severson, won commission approval later that year of a revised decision that saved ratepayers $775 million on the plant closure.

“While the PUC has feigned interest in greater transparency, it actually has historically worked to thwart disclosure of public records,” Severson said in an interview. “You are on the slowest possible track if you are trying to get information to the public in a timely way.”

Fighting release of fire records

In recent years, the commission has revised some policies to make more information public. It has posted more documents online. And it no longer lets companies simply stamp their filings “confidential,” now requiring specific justifications for secrecy claims.

But as Sacramento TV reporter Rittiman found, the agency still poses obstacles to records requests.

The Camp Fire in Butte County burned 153,336 acres, destroyed 18,000 structures and killed at least 85 people. PG&E eventually pleaded guilty to 84 counts of involuntary manslaughter and one of illegally setting the fire, caused by its faulty power line.

Rittiman believed there was a public interest in knowing why the agency waived a $200 million fine against PG&E and whether the governor’s office influenced that decision.

On Nov. 19, 2020, the ABC-10 special projects reporter filed four requests seeking records of communications between then-commission president Marybel Batjer and Gov. Newsom’s office.

Eleven days later, the agency told Rittiman that governor’s communications are confidential and closed his requests.

Rittiman appealed. Under agency rules, its legal division is supposed to prepare a draft resolution deciding the appeal, then send it to the commissioners for public review and comment. The resolution is scheduled for a hearing and vote. If requesters disagree with that decision, they may apply for a rehearing.

Requesters may not seek court review of the agency’s decision, it claims, until the commission decides the rehearing and requesters have “exhausted their administrative remedies.”

In Rittiman’s case, the agency did not schedule a hearing on his appeal, leaving his request hanging.

Four months later, on April 14, 2021, Zansberg wrote the commission saying that unless it held a hearing at its next meeting, Rittiman would consider its inaction to be a “constructive denial” of his appeal and seek court review.

Zansberg also challenged the agency’s claim that the records were exempt from release because they were governor’s communications. He noted that the state appeals court had said in two other rulings that the exemption applied only to communications sent by correspondents outside of government, not intra-governmental ones like those Rittiman sought.

Still, no hearing was set. On June 14, Zansberg filed Rittiman’s lawsuit against the commission in state appeals court. He posed two key questions: Is the agency subject to the time limits in the public records act? Or can it simply ignore requests, indefinitely, and thereby permanently avoid judicial review?

But the agency tried repeatedly to get the case thrown out of court before any judge could answer those questions.

It argued that the court had no jurisdiction because Rittiman’s administrative appeal was pending. The appeals court agreed, citing the public utilities code that says requesters must exhaust administrative remedies before suing.

Zansberg asked the state Supreme Court to review the case. The court ordered the commission to submit an update on his appeal.

On Sept. 27, the agency said it expected to vote on his administrative appeal in November.

Moreover, the agency’s lawyers declared, the high court itself had no jurisdiction in the case because Rittiman had “not waited for the Commission to prepare a resolution of the matter.”

Nevertheless, the court on Oct. 20 granted Rittiman’s motion for review and directed the appeals court to order the agency to show why it should not promptly release the Camp Fire records.

The commission once again told the appeals justices they had no jurisdiction. Only now it said that was because Rittiman had failed to apply for a rehearing. (On Nov. 19, 2021, exactly a year after the original records request was filed, the commission had finally denied his initial appeal.)

Zansberg replied that the Supreme Court already rejected the jurisdiction claim by ordering the appeals court to review the case. And besides, he had applied for a rehearing, emailing it to three agency attorneys a month earlier.

Commission attorney Nolan admitted to the court that Zansberg had emailed the application— but now asserted it was invalid because he had not followed agency rules for electronically filing documents.

As a result, Nolan said, the court still had no jurisdiction to hear the case.

To Zansberg, it seemed that the commission was turning the legal machinery voters had given it to fight corruption against a reporter who was trying to expose it.

“If this type of games-playing and procedural rigamarole was what the legislature contemplated as fulfilling an agency’s duties,” he said in an email, “then the public records act might as well be stricken from California’s Government Code.”

The post How California Utilities Commission Undermines the Public Records Act appeared first on San Francisco Public Press.

The California Public Utilities Commission confirmed in an unpublicized ruling that it had let the ride-hailing giants use varying definitions of sexual assault and harassment in their mandatory reports to the agency since at least 2017.

According to the ruling, the varying definitions “could impact the total number and types of incidents reported in their annual reports.”

That means the agency — the industry’s primary regulator in California — may not know how many assaults are alleged to have happened and whether the companies investigated each one and suspended culpable drivers.  

Terrie Prosper, the commission’s spokeswoman, did not reply to questions sent by email about the data reporting problem, saying only that it “will be addressed by the Commission.”

The breakdown in regulatory oversight was hidden for years because of extraordinary secrecy the commission conferred on the companies’ annual safety reports, withholding them not only from the public and the media but also from other state and local officials. 

The agency is only now beginning a process to develop uniform “taxonomies,” or classifications, to ensure ride-hailing firms consistently report assault complaints. 

“The need for uniform sexual assault and sexual harassment taxonomies has been a growing concern for the commission,” said the Dec. 9, 2021, ruling by commissioner Genevieve Shiroma, who is overseeing the proceeding for the agency.

Unlike taxis, which are regulated locally, ride-hailing is governed by the commission. It is the only agency that collects comprehensive safety data about their operations across the state, requiring each firm to file annual reports that consist of spreadsheets with entries on each complaint.   

The commission’s faulty collection of assault data came to light last October, after the Public Press obtained data from the 2020 annual safety filings for Uber and Lyft under the California Public Records Act. 

It was the first public disclosure of any annual ride-hailing safety reports, and it revealed that the firms’ spreadsheets had widely varying numbers. Lyft included nearly 12 times the number of assault records that the much larger Uber did for the same one-year period ending Sept. 1, 2020.

As the Public Press reported at the time, a Lyft spokeswoman commented that “It’s impossible to use these reports to draw accurate comparisons between Uber and Lyft.” She added, “Instead, what this data reveals is two companies making very different choices about definitions and how they categorize and share data about incidents.” 

Two days after releasing the reports, the commission sent letters to Uber and Lyft ordering them to provide all definitions of assaults used in their reports for the last five years.

The company responses confirmed the problem, according to the commission ruling. Neither the commission nor the firms would release copies of those replies.

But according to the ruling, the agency found that for its 2017, 2018 and 2019 annual reports to the commission, “Uber did not provide a definition of assault or harassments.” And when Uber published its own “U.S. Safety Report” in 2019 the firm “adopted a more expansive approach to identifying sexual assault and sexual harassment claims,” it said. 

That report listed 5,981 alleged incidents of sexual assault and harassment in 2017 and 2018 nationally. It did not show the number by state, but Uber later told the commission that 1,243 — or 21 percent — were in California.

Uber based the definitions for its “U.S. Safety Report” on information from “Helping Industries to Classify Reports of Sexual Harassment, Sexual Misconduct, and Sexual Assault,” a study by the National Sexual Violence Resource Center and the Urban Institute, the ruling said.

Lyft, by contrast, used its own “internally defined incidents of assault and harassment” for its reports to the agency for 2017 to 2019, the ruling said. But sometime prior to June 2019 Lyft used another definition from the U.S. Department of Justice. Then, in June 2019, Lyft began using definitions developed by RALIANCE, a national sexual violence prevention organization, the ruling said.  

Lyft also used the RALIANCE taxonomy for the “Community Safety Report” it published in 2021, which acknowledged 4,158 alleged sexual assaults nationally, including 360 alleged rapes, related to rides in 2017, 2018 and 2019. It did not state the number in California.

Despite these shifting definitions, the companies say they gave the commission all required data. 

Andrew Hasbun, Uber’s head of safety communications, said in an email, “In regards to the annual reports, we provided the CPUC with the information they requested.”

Ashley Adams, senior communications manager at Lyft, said, “We believe we’ve accurately reported the information we were asked to provide.”

The inconsistent reporting apparently stems from the agency’s unclear instructions to the firms, what Adams previously called “incredibly broad and imprecise” terms open to broad interpretation.  

Susan B. Sorenson, a professor of social policy at the University of Pennsylvania who has studied the epidemiology and prevention of sexual assault, commenting on the Public Press’ findings last fall, said the commission had not followed standard practice of using clear definitions necessary for gathering reliable data. She also questioned whether the agency possessed flawed data for years and “apparently didn’t notice.”

Lorena Gonzalez, then-chair of the state Assembly’s Appropriations Committee, said at the time, “I could get my 10-year-old to create a Google doc to better track this than what’s happening.” (Gonzalez left the Assembly earlier this month to become leader of the California Labor Federation.)

Prosper, the commission spokeswoman, did not reply to an email asking if the agency ever had consulted experts on the collection of assault data. 

In the ruling, Shiroma agreed that “it will be beneficial to adopt standardized taxonomies for sexual assault and sexual harassment.” She said the commission would review the issue and directed interested parties to file opening comments on the matter by Jan. 21.

The agency is also considering releasing all annual ride-hailing safety reports for 2014 to 2019, although it would still let the firms keep trade secret and personal information confidential. Opening comments are due Feb. 11.

The commission’s Consumer Protection and Enforcement Division and Uber have jointly filed a motion calling for the agency to order the release of these records. The motion is part of a settlement of the agency’s regulatory action against Uber for refusing to turn over information concerning sexual assaults noted in its “U.S. Safety Report.” 

Under the settlement, Uber also agreed to pay a $150,000 fine, along with $9 million to support safety measures. As much as $4 million will go toward hiring “industry experts” to address physical and sexual violence in the passenger carrier industry like ride-hailing cars, limousines and chartered buses, including the development of best practices for handling complaints.

Lyft, however, is opposing the motion to release the annual reports, which was hammered out by Uber and the consumer unit in private negotiations. In a Jan. 18 filing, the firm contended that the motion had a “suspect legal standing,” “murky origins” and “collusive underpinnings.” Lyft said the matter should instead be addressed through the commission’s regular rule-making process, which Adams called “broader and more inclusive.”

 Prosper did not respond to a request for comment on Lyft’s filing, which was first reported by Bloomberg Law. Uber’s Hasbun declined to comment.

The ride-hailing rivals say that more than 99 percent of their rides end without safety issues, and that they have added many security features to their apps. Uber, for example, has a feature called “share status,” which lets riders send their location to friends or family. Lyft has a similar option.

An earlier investigation by the Public Press found that the commission made the annual reports confidential by adding a one-sentence footnote to the 2013 regulations that legalized ride-hailing in California, without prior public discussion, amid what the state Fair Political Practices Commission later found to be illegal industry lobbying. 

For more coverage on this topic, see the whole series, Ride Hailing’s Dark Data.

This story was produced in partnership with the McGraw Center for Business Journalism at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at the City University of New York. Support was also provided by the Fund for Investigative Journalism.

UPDATE 2/1/2022:

Due to an editing error, a previous version of this article omitted a paragraph describing the methodology used in Uber’s “U.S. Safety Report.”

Uber declined to comment prior to publication of this story, but afterward provided additional information about its taxonomy, or system for classifying and reporting sexual assaults. Hasbun emailed material stating that Uber funded the 2018 study it undertook with National Sexual Violence Resource Center and the Urban Institute to develop the taxonomy used for its 2019 published safety report. Afterward Uber and NSVRC, which is part of RALIANCE, made the taxonomy available as a public resource, hailing it as a benchmark in corporate accountability.  

Lyft’s Adams said in an email that Lyft used the same taxonomy for its 2021 published report.

One question that may arise before the commission is whether it will adopt this taxonomy for the mandatory reports that each ride-hailing firm must submit to it annually, or consider other methods of categorizing and reporting assaults.

The post Utilities Agency Admits More Problems in Tracking Ride-Hailing Assaults appeared first on San Francisco Public Press.

On a chilly and still dark spring morning, just before 5 a.m., Recology recycling driver Gareth Willey was working up a sweat. He is a recycling driver for Recology Sunset Scavenger and was coming to the end of his Tuesday route in a residential neighborhood. “Civic” was hitching a ride to get a sense for the job and how it has changed during the pandemic. 

“It’s the cardboard that’s killing us,” Willey said. “It just makes this job so much more difficult.” 

Some customers had their boxes broken down and neatly bundled, which helps, he said. But on some of his runs, he would open a door to a basement and find boxes piled high and would have to figure out a way to get all the material out to the street and into the truck. 

On the flip side, so many people working from home meant traffic had reduced significantly. And crowded streets are a problem for the driver of a massive garbage truck. 

“That’s one of the quieter streets, the one I met you up on. There is some traffic, especially on the side streets, but it’s not unbearable. But pretty much the rest of my route is — it’s like a war zone,” Willey said, on the way to the freeway. His route complete, he now needed to get to the recycling facility where he would empty the truck. The predawn streets were already clogged with commuters. 

At the facility, truck after truck dumped collected material onto a tipping floor, where it was scooped into a machine that fed items into a system of conveyor belts three stories high. Human and machine sorters carefully picked through the material.   

In recent years, the mills and foundries that receive recyclables from Recology have stopped accepting bales of material with more than 1% impurities. The sorting facility must work to a very high standard to prevent contaminants from being compressed into bales with recyclables.  

Plastic bags are a contaminant. And despite their short useful lifetimes, they are stubbornly persistent in the environment and in the sorting facility — bags and films can wrap themselves around sorting equipment. Currently, as workers pull them from the recycling stream, plastic bags are sent to landfill. Often, they are soiled with food or other liquids, or used to hold other kinds of recyclables. 

Nonetheless, the city asks that consumers place clean, dry and bundled plastic bags in blue bins. That’s because for a brief time, there was a buyer for them, and there could be a market for them again in the near future. If a buyer is found, residents should already be accustomed to placing their bags in the recycling, rather than in the trash where they have no chance of being diverted from landfill. 

Generally, the best approach is to avoid plastic bags and low-quality, single-use plastics altogether, said Robert Reed, public relations manager for Recology’s recycling and composting programs in San Francisco. Manufacturers are watching what choices consumers make. 

“The real answer is to decline them whenever possible to reduce our consumption of plastic bags,” he said. “Some people don’t think voting with your consumer dollars is powerful, but they’re wrong. Voting with your consumer dollars is extremely powerful.”

A segment from our radio show and podcast, “Civic.” Listen at 8 a.m. and 6 p.m. Tuesdays and Thursdays at 102.5 FM in San Francisco, or online at ksfp.fm, and subscribe on Apple, Google, Spotify or Stitcher. 

The post After You Unbox, Bin Your Recyclables the Right Way appeared first on San Francisco Public Press.

The Bay Area can house millions more people without increasing its water use, according to a new report from the urbanist and water-use think tanks SPUR and the Pacific Institute. This could be done by continuing to improve water conservation efforts while concentrating on developing infill housing to prevent urban sprawl.  

“Assuming that the region will add 2 million new jobs by 2070, that means that that will attract about 4 million new people to the region,” said Laura Feinstein, sustainability and resilience policy director at SPUR and, with Anne Thebo, co-author of the report.  

Feinstein said the region needs to build 2.2 million homes to accommodate current housing needs as well as anticipated growth and to prevent a continued decline in housing affordability. 

Not only can adding people without increasing water use be done in theory — the report notes that it has been done before. Since the 1980s, the Bay Area population has grown by about a quarter while the region has decreased its total water use by about the same fraction.  

 “People are using water more efficiently indoors,” Feinstein said. “They’re using less water outdoors to irrigate their yards, and businesses are using less water to produce their goods.” 

The report stresses infill housing as a water conservation strategy in part because half of residents’ water use comes from outdoor applications like watering large yards and gardens — particularly those with plants poorly adapted to the region’s Mediterranean climate. Indoors, updating appliances to more water efficient models when old ones are replaced can help, as can detecting and addressing leaks.  

“People lose about 10% of their water use just to leaks in their homes,” Feinstein said. “So, finding those leaks and fixing them is huge.” 

Statewide, the agriculture sector is the largest water user, accounting for 80% of consumption. In the Bay Area, however, 90% of water use goes to supplying homes and businesses, the report says. Indoor residential use consumes the largest share, followed closely by businesses and institutions. Feinstein said businesses have been decreasing water use by about one percent every year, even though no new statutes require them to improve water efficiency. 

Another strategy the region should implement, the report suggests, is improving the way it allocates water to municipalities. 

“Historically, California has not distributed water according to need. Water is distributed according to the water rights that people got many decades ago,” Feinstein said.  

East Palo Alto, which is surrounded by extremely wealthy Silicon Valley communities, consumes very little water per person compared with adjacent cities. All of these municipalities buy their water from the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, which draws it from Hetch Hetchy Reservoir. In 1984, when the agreements were put in place, East Palo Alto received the lowest per-person water allocation in the area. 

“East Palo Alto, when they were handing out those allocations decades ago, got a sort of — I could say ‘inexplicably small’ allocation. But it’s not that inexplicable. As always, the town that was primarily people of color, and that was lower-income, got the least amount when the negotiations were happening,” Feinstein said.  

That remained the case until 2017 and 2018, when nearby cities Mountain View and Palo Alto agreed to sell some of the water they weren’t using to East Palo Alto.  

The previous decades of chronic shortage affected East Palo Alto in ways that go beyond everyday water use. While the region can add more homes without using more water in aggregate, local water shortages have halted construction in some cities, East Palo Alto among them. From 2016 to 2018, the city enacted a building moratorium because it did not have enough water to service new construction as well as existing uses. 

Beyond redistributing resources from one community to another, the region might also consider giving water rights to the environment, Feinstein said.  

Because human uses divert so much water from the state’s rivers, the delta is too salty for certain wildlife to flourish during drought years. That diversion happens even if local consumers use less water, so the SPUR report recommends that the region find ways to ensure that unused water is returned to the environment. 

“There’s no way to ensure that if the city of San Francisco decreases its total water use by 10%, then that amount of water stays in the rivers of the Sierra, rather than being diverted,” Feinstein said. “It just means that another person who’s in line for water is likely going to take the water.” 

The state’s water regulation agencies have told the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission it should reduce the amount of water it diverts from rivers, which the utility claimed it could not do. The local agency also filed suit to fight the proposed restrictions.   

“It would be a dramatic hit to our entire service area, both in San Francisco and outside of San Francisco,” San Francisco Public Utilities Commission Assistant General Manager of the Water Enterprise Steven Ritchie told “Civic” earlier this year. “Trying to identify additional water supply would really be harmful to the communities and the Bay Area as a whole.” 

Feinstein said the report’s findings show that readily available technology to reduce water use, and best practices that residents and businesses have already been putting in place, can help the region reduce its water use even more.  

“If we just continue those trends for the next five decades, that per-capita water use and total water use would drop off quite a bit,” she said. “We could actually decrease water use for the whole Bay Area by about a quarter. And we could therefore leave a portion of that water for the ecosystems.” 

That will, however, take many years and careful planning. 

“It takes decades to really decrease water use on a per capita basis really substantially,” she said. “So, we can’t just do it overnight. We have to be looking decades out to see those big gains in efficiency.” 

A segment from our radio show and podcast, “Civic.” Listen at 8 a.m. and 6 p.m. Tuesdays and Thursdays at 102.5 FM in San Francisco, or online at ksfp.fm, and subscribe on Apple, Google, Spotify or Stitcher. 

The post Growing Bay Area Need Not Use More Water, Report Says appeared first on San Francisco Public Press.

A leading researcher on sexual assault added that the commission’s methodology was out of line with accepted practice and that it suggested a “lack of concern” about monitoring the incidents.

The agency, meanwhile, issued a proposal under which it would hire “industry experts” to review its practices for the mandatory company reports on sexual assaults and other violent incidents.  

The San Francisco Public Press reported Oct. 20 that the commission had failed to collect consistent data from the ride-hailing giants on complaints about drivers. Instead, the agency permitted the firms to interpret the reporting requirements differently, resulting in widely varying numbers and raising questions about the data’s reliability.

Each ride-hailing firm must report to the agency on drivers suspended or deactivated for allegations of assaults, threats and harassment on its rides. The most recent reports show that Lyft entered 18,178 records — nearly 12 times the number that its much larger rival Uber did — during the same one-year period ending Sept. 1, 2020.

Uber reported that it suspended or deactivated 1,573 drivers for those allegations during that time.

“It is the CPUC’s responsibility to ask for data in a way that’s clear and consistent so that they’re not being given these kind of wild inconsistencies,” said Lorena Gonzalez, chair of the state Assembly’s Appropriations Committee, in an interview with the Public Press about its findings. “This is a clear example of the CPUC really punting their responsibility.”

Rafael Mandelman, a San Francisco city supervisor and chairman of the County Transportation Authority, said in an email in response to the findings, “The CPUC has failed to carry out its mandate to monitor the public safety impacts of Uber and Lyft’s hostile takeover of the taxi industry. These companies have operated effectively unregulated for over a decade with no clear data on assault, harassment or collisions.”

He added, “Our state leaders need to step up and make significant structural changes to the CPUC’s relationship with these companies or allow local governments to implement regulatory plans that meet the needs of our communities.”

Unlike taxis, which are regulated locally, ride-hailing is regulated by the commission. It is the only agency that collects comprehensive safety data about the companies’ operations across the state.

California in 2013 became the first state in the nation to legalize ride-hailing, and since then has required each firm to submit annual reports on safety complaints. But under an extraordinary grant of secrecy to the industry — contained in a one-sentence footnote to the regulations — the commission withheld the data. The agency repealed the footnote last year, but only for upcoming reports.

The 2020 assault data was released to the Public Press under the California Public Records Act, the first time any of the annual reports have been open to outside scrutiny.

‘Definition issue’

Two days after releasing the reports, the commission sent letters to Uber and Lyft ordering them to provide all definitions of assaults and other misconduct used in their reports for the last five years.

Terrie Prosper, the commission’s spokeswoman, acknowledged the problem with the reports from the firms, formally known as transportation network companies and referred to as TNCs. “In the annual report information provided to you, each TNC defines that data they have provided to the CPUC,” she said in an email. “The CPUC is aware of this definition issue and may consider it as the CPUC addresses the reports.”

Prosper did not comment directly on the criticism of the commission’s collection of data.

The Public Press cited interviews and previously confidential reports in revealing the commission’s inconsistent data. Ashley Adams, a Lyft spokeswoman, said in one email, “It’s impossible to use these reports to draw accurate comparisons between Uber and Lyft.” She added, “Instead, what this data reveals is two companies making very different choices about definitions and how they categorize and share data about incidents.” 

Adams said that the commission’s instructions to the firms included “incredibly broad and imprecise” terms that were open to wide interpretation.

Lyft included all records concerning each complaint, meaning there were redundant entries, as well as complaints for which drivers were not suspended or deactivated, she said in an interview.

As a result, she said, the firm had fewer alleged incidents than it might seem based on the number of entries in its report to the commission. She declined to say how many individual incidents, suspensions and deactivations there actually were.

Andrew Hasbun, head of safety communications at Uber, declined to comment on Lyft’s report, but said in an email that Uber by contrast submitted the actual number of drivers suspended or deactivated. He later emailed that “any characterization that Uber under-reported is simply not accurate.”

Expert faults methodology

The agency requires each firm to report the complaints on a spreadsheet template titled, “Assaults & Harassments — TNC drivers suspended or deactivated for assaulting, threatening, or harassing a passenger or any member of the public while providing TNC services.”

For the 2020 reports, the commission defined those terms by providing a list of no fewer than 48 examples of conduct that the firms must report within a single field on the spreadsheet. They vary widely from physical and sexual assault, to homophobic, racist and sexist comments, to generally making a passenger “uncomfortable.”

Susan B. Sorenson, a professor of social policy at the University of Pennsylvania who has studied the epidemiology and prevention of sexual assault, said in an interview that the research community established a generation ago the need for clear definitions to gather reliable data. Commenting on the Public Press’ findings, she expressed surprise that the agency had not followed standard practice for monitoring the incidence of assaults.

“It speaks to an apparent lack of concern,” said Sorenson, who has served in many advisory roles and was a member of the National Academy of Sciences’ Panel on Research on Violence Against Women. “Particularly that they had these reports for five years and apparently didn’t notice. It’s very clear that the CPUC needs to implement clear definitions.”

Assemblywoman Gonzalez said bluntly, “I could get my 10-year-old to create a Google doc to better track this than what’s happening. It’s not that complicated.” 

She added, “It makes no sense to me that they kind of threw out these parameters, and of course they got these wildly different reports. And we still don’t have all the information that we would need as legislators, as the general public, to determine whether or not this is even a safe option for riders or drivers.

The commission redacted the 2020 reports released to the Public Press to protect what it said was personal privacy and sensitive business information.

Gonzalez said that the agency’s secrecy about the safety reports over the years may have contributed to its collection of inconsistent data. It even refused to share them with other government agencies looking for patterns that could help improve safety.

“First of all, what good is the data if it’s not public?” she said. “And of course, without sharing it, then we don’t know that the two main companies are providing data in a completely different way. So, it has to be more clear. I think that’s something that we have to go back and insist.”

Sorenson questioned whether the agency, in having kept the reports confidential, was more concerned with protecting itself from public review than protecting passengers. 

Assaults on Uber and Lyft rides — even if they happen on a tiny fraction of overall trips — have been a national concern since the industry began. Hundreds of civil lawsuits accusing the firms and their drivers of sexual assault and negligence have been filed across the country. Some drivers have been criminally prosecuted.

Under public pressure, the companies have separately published their own safety reports. Lyft on Oct. 21 released its long-awaited “Community Safety Report,” saying that in 2017, 2018 and 2019 it had received accounts of 4,158 sexual assaults, 10 fatal physical assaults and 105 fatal accidents in relation to its service throughout the United States.

In 2019 Uber released a “US Safety Report” saying that in 2017 and 2018 it received 5,981 accounts of sexual assault, 19 fatal physical assaults and 107 people killed in vehicular accidents nationally.

Those corporate publications do not disclose the number of incidents by state or city. They do not cover as many kinds of incidents as the mandatory state reports do. And they are not submitted under penalty of perjury, as those reports are.

According to the proposal announced Oct. 29, the commission would address how the industry should best report to it on violent incidents during rides. It would also consider releasing redacted versions of all ride-hailing safety reports filed with the agency from 2014 to 2020.

The proposal is part of a settlement that would require Uber to pay a $150,000 fine and $9 million to support various safety measures. The settlement would resolve a 2020 recommendation from an agency judge that Uber pay a $59 million fine for refusing to provide information concerning the sexual assaults noted in its “US Safety Report.” The commission is scheduled to vote on it on Dec. 2.

The firms say that well more than 99 percent of rides ended without any safety issues, and that they have added many security features to their apps. Uber, for example, provides a feature called “share status,” which lets riders send their location to friends or family. Lyft has a similar option.

“We shouldn’t leave it up to the PR machines of Uber and Lyft to be releasing public data,” said Gonzalez. “And so, as terrible as Lyft’s report was just recently, the public report, we have no way of evaluating whether that’s the full story.”

This story was produced in partnership with the McGraw Center for Business Journalism at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at the City University of New York. Support was also provided by the Fund for Investigative Journalism.

The post Officials Demand Reform on Uber, Lyft Assault Reports appeared first on San Francisco Public Press.

The California Public Utilities Commission is required to collect the information from the firms annually to fulfill its mission of ensuring that their rides are safe. But previously confidential filings and recent interviews show that the agency has permitted the companies to use very different interpretations of the reporting requirements, raising questions about the data’s reliability.

The commission received the 2020 safety reports more than a year ago. But it was not until Sept. 22 — two days after the agency released them to the Public Press and the first time it has made them public — that it sent letters to Uber and Lyft ordering the firms to provide “all definitions” of assaults and other misconduct used in their submissions for the last five years.

Terrie Prosper, the commission’s director of news and outreach, did not respond to specific questions about the data discrepancies or the letters, but in an email she acknowledged the issue.

“In the annual report information provided to you, each TNC defines that data they have provided to the CPUC,” she said, referring to ride-hailing firms, known also as transportation network companies. “The CPUC is aware of this definition issue and may consider it as the CPUC addresses the reports.”

Rebecca Ruff, an attorney with the agency’s legal department, said in an Oct. 19 letter that it was withholding records on the queries to Lyft and Uber because they were confidential “investigation records.”

The commission is California’s primary regulator of ride-hailing firms and the state’s only agency that collects comprehensive safety data on the industry.

In its report on drivers suspended or deactivated for allegations of assaults, threats and harassment on its rides, Lyft entered 18,178 records — nearly 12 times the number that its much larger rival Uber did — during the same one-year period, their reports to the commission show.

When asked about the disparity between its report and Uber’s, a Lyft representative insisted that the company’s report to the agency was accurate, but said it was not a tally of the actual number of drivers it suspended or deactivated for those offenses.

“It’s impossible to use these reports to draw accurate comparisons between Uber and Lyft,” Ashley Adams, a senior communications manager with Lyft, said in an email. “Instead, what this data reveals is two companies making very different choices about definitions and how they categorize and share data about incidents.”

In an interview, Adams called the commission’s definitions of assault “incredibly broad and imprecise” and open to widely varying interpretations by the companies.

Andrew Hasbun, head of safety communications at Uber, responded, “We aren’t able to speak to Lyft’s process or safety standard so there isn’t much we can say on some of the differences.” 

Uber, he said in the email, reported the actual number of drivers suspended or deactivated as a result of the alleged incidents.

In a subsequent email he added that “any characterization that Uber under-reported is simply not accurate.”

[Update 10/22/2021: The companies’ required reports to the commission are separate from the safety publications each has issued. Lyft on Oct. 21 released its long-awaited “Community Safety Report,” saying it had received reports of 4,158 sexual assaults on its platform in 2017, 2018 and 2019. Like the one Uber released in 2019, Lyft’s does not disclose the number of assaults by state. Neither report contains as much detail about the assaults or requires an attestation to their accuracy by a corporate official under penalty of perjury, as the mandatory California reports do.]

Firms say rides are safe

Both firms told the commission they investigated all the allegations in their mandatory 2020 reports, determined most were unfounded and permanently deactivated a much smaller number of drivers.

The firms told the Public Press that 99.9% of their rides ended without any safety issue, and that the well-being of riders and drivers was a top priority. They said they had added many safety features to their apps. Uber, for example, has “share status” that lets riders share their location with friends or family. Lyft has a similar option.

But the discrepancies between the reports that Uber and Lyft submitted to the commission raise troubling questions not only about the actual number of alleged assaults, threats and harassment incidents on their rides, but also about whether the agency’s collection of inconsistently reported safety data has undermined its job of protecting public safety.

Assaults on Uber and Lyft rides — even if they happen on a tiny fraction of overall trips — have been a national concern since the industry began. Hundreds of civil lawsuits accusing the firms and their drivers of sexual assault and negligence have been filed across the country. In some cases, drivers have been criminally prosecuted.

Loretta Lynch, who was president of the commission from 2000 to 2002, said in an interview that the agency needs uniformly reported company information to fulfill its safety mission, but it appeared from the timing of the letters to the firms that agency staff had been unaware of the data discrepancies until a reporter obtained the annual reports. “Reports get filed,” she said, “but who is reading them?”

Richard Clark, who served as the commission’s director of consumer protection and safety from 2000 to 2012, and then as one of its administrative law judges until 2014, said in an interview, “In terms of importance to the public safety, you can’t really know what’s going on out there on the street until you have consistent and accurate data across the industry.”

Prosper, the commission’s spokesperson, did not respond to an email asking whether the inconsistently reported information hindered the agency’s ability to ensure ride safety. 

A question of interpretation

The data discrepancy appears to stem from stark differences in the firms’ definitions of those offenses and in their methods for reporting to the agency, according to records and interviews.

It also appears to result from the commission’s sweeping and sometimes vague descriptions of assaults, threats and harassment, which jumble together a range of acts from physical and sexual assault, to homophobic, racist and sexist comments, to generally making a passenger “uncomfortable.”

Since the commission became the first agency in the nation to legalize ride-hailing in 2013, Uber and Lyft have boomed. The two rivals dominate ride-hailing in California, accepting a combined total of 277,250,720 rides in the one year covered by the reports. Lyft accepted 110,786,422 of those rides, or 40 percent, while Uber accepted 166,464,298, or 60 percent.

From the start, the agency has required the firms to file annual safety reports. But until now it has withheld them under an extraordinary grant of secrecy that frustrated local officials who said they needed the data for traffic planning and safety.

The 2020 reports were released to the Public Press after an eight-month effort under the California Public Records Act. The agency redacted them to protect privacy and proprietary company information.

Uber’s report

The two companies say they report the data differently. While Uber says it reports the number of individual drivers, Lyft says it reports all the records it has that in any way concern a case.

According to the newly released data, Uber said it suspended or deactivated a total of 1,573 drivers for allegations of assaults, threats or harassment.

Of these, the firm said it “waitlisted,” or temporarily suspended, 1,200 drivers, and permanently deactivated 373. Uber said it also suspended 58 passengers. The firm noted that a temporary suspension does not mean an allegation was substantiated.

Uber spokesman Hasbun said in emails that the company’s submissions to the commission were “based on reporting requirements and ongoing discussions with the CPUC.”

He added that “we included, as outlined by the CPUC, the number of TNC drivers suspended or deactivated for assaulting, threatening, or harassing a passenger or any member of the public while providing TNC services.”

However, Hasbun noted that the company’s policy is to not automatically suspend all drivers accused of a safety problem. He pointed to an Uber report that says the firm may temporarily suspend a driver from its platform pending an investigation for a serious complaint, but “the vast majority of safety incidents reported to Uber involve less severe or infrequent behaviors that may not warrant immediate removal.”

Hasbun added in an email, “Overall, any safety issue is exceptionally rare.”

Lyft’s report 

By contrast, Lyft told the commission that in the 18,178 entries concerning alleged incidents it listed in its annual report, the company provided a “warning and/or education” in 17,299, suspensions in 582 and permanent deactivations in 297.

Adams said in the interview that the firm had a lower number of alleged incidents than it might seem based on the number of entries in its report to the commission, but she declined to say how many individual incidents, suspensions and deactivations the company actually had. 

Adams acknowledged that Lyft — like Uber — does not suspend every driver who is the subject of a safety allegation. She said in an email that “depending on the severity of the incident reported, that investigation can include temporarily suspending the accounts of users involved.”

But Adams asserted that Lyft’s policies on reporting alleged incidents to the commission were very different from Uber’s.

“The definition of incidents requested by the CPUC are incredibly broad and imprecise, and they leave a lot of room for interpretation,” Adams said in the interview.

“We’ve chosen to interpret these definitions as broadly as we possibly can, and to err on the side of transparency,” she said. “In being as comprehensive as possible, it seems like we included a number of less severe incidents that Uber likely did not include. And obviously, these less severe incidents make up a larger portion of our numbers.”

“It’s clear to us that Uber makes a very different choice when it comes to reporting,” she said.

In addition, Adams said Lyft includes redundant entries for some incidents. For example, if a complaint came into the company by email and through the app, Lyft reported both to the commission.

And if an allegation was initially classified as physical assault and was later found to be harassment, Lyft reported it as one of each, Adams added, adding that the company wound up “reporting the same incident multiple times.”

“We are trying to give a comprehensive view of the type of incidents that occur on the platform and think it is helpful to understand this broader data set when understanding the nature of these issues,” she said in an email, adding that in this way Lyft believes it submitted an accurate report “in good faith.”

But as a result, Lyft’s report on assaults, threats and harassment appears to include many records that the agency did not request.

In a lengthy narrative explanation that Lyft submitted to the commission along with the data a year ago, the company did not mention its redundant entries and broad interpretations of the reporting requirement, or that it was concerned that agency definitions were imprecise.

Rather, Lyft’s narrative said that it was submitting the assault and harassment information “consistent with” the spreadsheet template provided by the commission.

Long list of offenses

That template is titled, “Assaults & Harassments — TNC drivers suspended or deactivated for assaulting, threatening, or harassing a passenger or any member of the public while providing TNC services.”

The template’s categories for the 2019-2020 reporting year required the companies to include trip ID number, driver’s identification, date of the incident, date of the complaint, whether it was investigated, how it was resolved and consequence to the driver. In defining what the firms must include, the agency provided a list of 48 examples of the kinds of conduct that must be reported within that field.

For the 2020 safety report, the California Public Utilities Commission told ride-hailing companies to report on these 48 examples of driver misconduct in a single spreadsheet field:

Argument, Assault, Attempted robbery, Attempted to physically remove passenger, Discrimination, Discrimination harassment, Entered passenger’s home, Fight, General harassment, Homophobic comments, Inappropriate comments, Injured by driver, Interaction with law enforcement, Made passenger uncomfortable, Physical assault, Racist comments, Refused to end ride, Road rage, Spit at passenger, Threats, Threw item at passenger, Urinated in front of passenger, Verbal harassment, Attempted kissing — non-sexual body part, Attempted kissing — sexual body part, Attempted non-consensual sexual penetration, Attempted sexual assault, Attempted touching — non-sexual body part, Attempted touching — sexual body part, Indecent photography/videography without consent, Masturbation/indecent exposure, Non-consensual kissing — non-sexual body part, Non-consensual kissing — sexual body part, Non-consensual sexual penetration, Non-consensual touching — non-sexual body part, Non-consensual touching — sexual body part, Physical sexual assault, Physical stalking, Sexist comments, Sexual assault, Sexual harassment, Solicited sexual act, Unwanted advances, Unwanted touching, Verbal sexual harassment, Verbal threat of sexual assault.

But the template does not provide a separate field for each kind of misconduct, and allows the firms to enter their own descriptions. In addition, it has no field for the total number of complaints received, an omission that prevents the commission from using the report to determine, for example, what share of them Uber investigates.

“We believe that it’s very important to have a standard and precise and consistent way to report safety incidents to the CPUC. And that doesn’t really seem like what they have at the moment,” she added.

“We’re eager to work with the CPUC on a reporting process that allows for a true understanding of the experiences on our platform and ultimately makes the industry safer,” she added in an email.

Curious timing of letters

The commission is formally investigating the definitions that Lyft and Uber have used for submitting data in their 2020 report, according to both Adams and Hasbun. 

Adams provided the Public Press with a redacted copy of the Sept. 22 letter that the commission sent to Lyft, but she declined to release the entire letter. The Public Press requested copies from the agency, but it declined to release them, saying they were investigative records that were legally exempt from disclosure.

The excerpts show that the commission requested “all definitions of assault, harassment, sexual assault, and sexual harassment” that Lyft used in its annual safety reports filed between September 2017 and the present. 

That letter came two days after the agency released the assault data to the Public Press.

Clark, the former director of consumer protection and safety, said, “the timing of their follow-up queries is curious coming just 48 hours after the data was released.”

The commission’s release of the partly redacted assault and harassment reports marks the first time it has publicly disclosed them. The companies for years fiercely opposed the release of any part of the safety reports, claiming secrecy was necessary to protect privacy and business information. They still claim that parts should remain confidential.

In March 2020, the commission voted to revoke the blanket secrecy for the annual safety reports after an investigative report by the Public Press published that January disclosed that it was based on a one-sentence confidentiality clause inserted into the 2013 regulations as footnote 42, without prior notice to the public and amid intense and sometimes illegal industry lobbying.

In a press release, Commission President Marybel Batjer, who has said she is leaving the agency in December, hailed the vote as bringing “necessary transparency.”

With the blanket confidentiality clause removed, Robert M. Mason III, an administrative judge with the commission, subsequently reviewed the 2020 reports submitted by Uber and Lyft and in December ruled that parts of them were not confidential. 

In processing the records released to the Public Press, the commission withheld personal identifiers and other information that the companies claimed concerned sensitive business information. 

Also redacted from the released data was a separate column that broke out “description of alleged sexual assault/harassment” for which drivers were suspended or deactivated, though those incidents are also included within the general category of assaults, threats and harassment. 

Neither Lyft nor Uber would say how many complaints each had received alleging sexual assault and harassment by its drivers, and how many drivers each had suspended and deactivated following those complaints. 

Lack of transparency

Despite the commission’s public pledges to improve transparency, it has yet to release any prior annual safety reports, though it is considering that. Meanwhile, the years of secrecy that it imposed on them obscured not only the safety information but also whether the agency effectively used it to protect the public.

“California regulatory agencies are only as good as the thoroughness and transparency of their work,” said Lynch, the former commission president, in an email. “Californians are entitled to know both what regulatory agencies are doing but also how they are doing it.”

The newly released data goes beyond the period covered in the “U.S. Safety Report” that Uber released to the public in 2019. Uber’s report said that in 2017 and 2018 there were 5,981 accounts of sexual assault, 19 fatal physical assaults and 107 people killed in vehicular accidents in relation to its service throughout the United States.

Uber hailed its report as a model of corporate transparency, but as the Public Press reported, it was incomplete. In addition, it provided national totals only.

However, in a filing last year Uber said it had received 1,243 reports of alleged sexual assault and harassment in California during 2017 and 2018 that were included in its U.S. safety report total. Uber said these incidents constituted less than 0.00025% of rides in California during the time period.

Uber has said it would release an updated report by the end of this year.

But Clark said the commission must have its own reliable data to effectively monitor ride-hailing firms and protect the public.

“The commission needs to pick up their game on this issue,” he said. Referring to the court cases in which passengers claim they were injured by drivers for the companies, he added, “There clearly are people getting hurt.”

Updated 10/21/2021 to include commission attorney Rebecca Ruff’s statement that it was withholding “investigation records.”

Updated 10/22/2021 to note the publication of Lyft’s new paper on sexual assault.

Frank Bass contributed data analysis, and Jenny Kwon contributed visualizations.

This story was produced in partnership with the McGraw Center for Business Journalism at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at the City University of New York. Support was also provided by the Fund for Investigative Journalism.

The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press provided legal review. Attorneys Shaila Nathu and Michael Risher provided guidance on public records laws. 

For previous coverage visit sfpublicpress.org/ride-hailings-dark-data.

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