I'm not sure that Minneapolis is the best place to put this in place. Folks in Minneapolis are wholly liberal and support living wages. If anything, this is just going to look bad for Uber/Lyft.
I don't live in Mpls proper, although I do reside in Hennepin County, and I primarily don't use Uber or Lyft so I don't really have skin in the game either way, but I just don't see this as being a great location for these two fairly shitty companies to attempt this.
Even the most idealistic can change their tune as soon as they begin to be negatively affected. A good example might be Oregon completely walking back their drug legalization or San Francisco drug testing for welfare.
>A good example might be Oregon completely walking back their drug legalization
Links to an article about how Oregon is partially rolling back their drug decriminalization policy.
1. Oregon never decriminalized drugs and
2. The policy was supposed to implement treatment programs that never materialized.
Further as an Oregonian. No one voted for people to be able to openly use drugs wherever they wanted, but most didn’t realize that once possession was decriminalized, smoking fentanyl on public transit was suddenly not in violation of any law on the books. No one voted for that, they just didn’t know it was on the table.
I wasn't aware of this (and neither were local lawmakers), but ironically it is actually illegal in Oregon as of 1971 for any local government body to pass a law targeting the public consumption of alcohol and drugs. This threw a major wrench in plans to control the rampant public use of fentanyl and meth around Oregon cities, and this likely contributed to us to rolling back small time possession to a misdemeanor.
Although there were exceptions for limiting public alcohol use in proximity to schools and such, there were no such exceptions for hard drugs (since they were already illegal).
The issue is really that the initiative system is, quite frankly, a terrible way to govern and pass complex policies.
Had the legislature implemented this they would have been able to spend time investigating potential problems such as these and plan for a smoother rollout.
I voted for and still support measure 110 in principle. I would also be just fine with laws criminalizing public use. The two are perfectly compatible policies.
>the initiative system is, quite frankly, a terrible way to govern and pass complex policies.
On the one hand, I agree, but on the flip side decriminalization is not something I would expect from our elected officials at any point this decade. The voters are able to push the envelope in ways that risk-averse career politicians simply will not.
We may finally see substantive election finance reform in Oregon (we lag dramatically behind most of the rest of the nation) come November due to our initiative system. IIRC, Cannabis legalization was another one that the citizens of Oregon pushed through and only then did the legislature get it's butt in gear and write comprehensive legislation. Same with decriminalized and medicalized psychedelics.
If we didn't have such dysfunction at the state level due to republican state reps continued antics protesting and not showing up to deny a quorum, it's entirely possible that the issues with measure 110 could have been sorted out at the capital before public opinion had time to do the full 180 on decrim.
It's a shame, but as an Oregonian with a drug felony from over a decade ago, I'm happy with the progress of making possession of personal amounts of hard drugs a misdemeanor instead of a felony. Two steps forward and one step back is still progress.
You aren’t wrong in general, but as another MPLS local I will say that driving culture remains strong here, so picking a fight with Uber/Lyft isn’t going to hurt the average person here as much as it might elsewhere. It remains rare to not have a car here.
I'm not sure that Minneapolis is the best place to put this in place. Folks in Minneapolis are wholly liberal and support living wages. If anything, this is just going to look bad for Uber/Lyft.
I don't live in Mpls proper, although I do reside in Hennepin County, and I primarily don't use Uber or Lyft so I don't really have skin in the game either way, but I just don't see this as being a great location for these two fairly shitty companies to attempt this.