Open Letter to Senator John Kerry

March 11, 2009

Senator John Kerry
United States Senate
304 Russell Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510

Dear Senator Kerry:

On behalf of many thousands of taxicab, limousine and airport shuttle companies and industry partners who are dependent on a healthy and vibrant meetings industry, I must respectfully ask you to consider the cooling effect your proposed legislation of Feb. 24 - S. 463 TARP Taxpayer Protection and Corporate Responsibility Act - would have on an essential cog in the U.S. economy.

The Taxicab, Limousine & Paratransit Association (TLP A), formed in 1917, serves as the national organization that represents the owners of taxicab, limousine, sedan, airport shuttle, paratransit, and non-emergency medical fleets. TLPA has over 1,000 member companies that operate 100,000 passenger vehicles. TLP A member companies transport over 2 million passengers each day - more than 900 million passengers annually. Our full industry transports 2 billion passengers each year in America, accounting for over 10 percent of all public transportation in the U.S.

While our industry serves the residents of the local communities in which we are based, the business traveler is an essential component of our clientele and helps to keep our drivers productive and our prices down. Without the business traveler, several thousand locally based transportation companies in our industry will be forced out of business and those that remain will have to raise their prices. This happened when business travel abruptly halted after 9/11 and it can happen again.

The meetings these business travelers attend are a multi-billion dollar business and an integral piece of the related hospitality and travel industries. Communities across America fund the building of convention centers to help provide for the community's economic stability. This is true for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and all other states.

While we understand and share your regret that some firms receiving TARP funds have used those resources in ways that have breached the public trust, we urge you to consider the unintended fallout from your proposed legislation to prohibit any recipient of TARP funds from hosting, sponsoring or paying for conferences and events.

We agree that companies receiving TARP funds must end extravagant spending practices and be accountable to taxpayers. To this end, the Treasury Department has already instituted new guidelines last month to ensure that public funds issued to struggling institutions are directed only toward the public interest in strengthening our economy, and not toward inappropriate, frivolous gain.

The Treasury guidelines require the boards of directors of companies receiving TARP funds to adopt company-wide policies on any expenditure related to travel and conferences and events. These rules clamp down on excessive or urmecessary spending, while permitting reasonable expenditures for educational conferences, trade shows, and other legitimate events.

While warranted, the public furor over the reported abuses of T ARP funds comes at a time when economic pressures are already forcing many companies to reduce business travel in their budgets. The hospitality and travel industry has confirmed that the portrayal of meetings and events as lavish, urmecessary expenditures has led to cancelled bookings from organizations - including those not receiving emergency lending from the government.

The U.S. Travel Association, which represents all components of the $740 billion travel industry, notes that the Department of Labor reported a loss of nearly 200,000 travel related jobs in 2008 and the Commerce Department predicts a loss of an additional 247,000 travel-related jobs in 2009.

Now is not the time to exacerbate the decline of a vital industry in the United States. Meetings and events are crucial to small business transportation companies, and we must have policies in place that allow these legitimate meetings to take place. Given the dollars at stake, meetings and events should be a key contributor to America's economic recovery, rather than evidence of its precipitous decline.

Thank you for your consideration of this important issue. Please do not hesitate to contact us for more information on issues impacting the travel industry.

Sincerely,

Richard C. Hewatt
President
TAXICAB, LIMOUSINE & PARATRANSIT ASSOCIATION