So I’ve been meaning to post about this for a while; it’s a petty thing, but still something that goes to the heart of my irritation (and I think other people’s) with the way government is run today.
Here’s a blurry snapshot I took at LAX last night as we waited for the parking shuttle:
It’s a ‘LAX Flyaway’ bus, a service of the Los Angeles World Airports “…a unique system of four airports owned and operated by the City of Los Angeles.“
And it’s registered in Wyoming.
Now it makes a lot of sense to register a commercial vehicle in Wyoming…which costs a flat $60/yr. In California the CVRA fee (assuming a 48,000 pound GVWR) would be $1,161 plus license and registration.
Commercial vehicles with appropriate permits are allowed to operate in California. So I’ll wager that we get a few dollars extra; but right now a City-sponsored transit agency is skirting state taxes in a way that would doubtless get a private bus line in trouble.
And the problem is that private citizens look at our political leadership playing the corners and we ask why it is that we don’t as well.
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I wouldn’t be surprised if this isn’t run by one of those shadowy “ authorities” where politicians park their cronies so they can collect rents from the taxpayer. And I suspect they claim to register the vehicles in CA on their books, and pocket the difference between CA VLF and MT VLF.
Question: is there anything stopping L.A. from hiring a contractor in Wyoming, who provides this service in several states and has some scale?
I ask because I’ve seen similar patterns in defense buys.
That wouldn’t remove the point of Marc’s post, but it would shift it a bit. If Wyoming offers cheap CVRA fees, we should expect that it would become an HQ for a number of similar ventures. Just as lower regulatory costs and/or better tort laws can attract industries to one state over another. There’s a reason that solar manufacturing plants are setting up in Tennessee, not California. And the bus would then be another data point along those lines.
We would also retain an interesting debate re: “Should a city or state agency be able to purchase services from out-of-state contractors?”
I lean to “yes” there. It improves competition, and offers the prospect of contracted services from enterprises with better scale and deeper expertise. In practice, saying “no” will not create pressure to reduce any problem regulations – only a pump for higher taxes, and a set of dependent enterprises that will become reliable campaign donors.
Marc may have a set of arguments for “no,” which seems to be his implicit proposition.
Now, if we have a city agency that directly registers the busses in Wyoming itself… then I agree that we have a problem, and it’s the problem Marc described. If they can chisel, why can’t I?