SB 182: Transportation network company: participating drivers: single business license.

The Passenger Charter-party Carriers Act authorizes the Public Utilities Commission to regulate charter-party carriers in California, including transportation network companies that provide prearranged transportation services for compensation using an online-enabled application or platform to connect passengers with drivers.

Existing law authorizes the legislative body of an incorporated city and a county board of supervisors to license businesses carried on within their respective jurisdictions and to set licensing fees for those businesses.

This bill would prohibit any local jurisdiction, as defined, that requires a driver, as defined, to obtain a business license, as defined, to operate as a driver for a transportation network company, from requiring that driver to obtain more than a single business license, as specified, regardless of the number of local jurisdictions in which the driver operates. The bill would require the driver to obtain a business license in the local jurisdiction in which the driver is domiciled, except as specified. The bill would require each transportation network company to notify its drivers of the obligations set forth in these provisions. The bill would require that personally identifiable information, as defined, submitted to a local jurisdiction for purposes of complying with or enforcing these licensing provisions not be disclosed on a publicly accessible Internet Web site. The bill would declare that its provisions do not preclude the sharing of business license data among local jurisdictions and would make a finding that allowing the free operation of drivers for transportation network companies across local jurisdictions is a matter of statewide concern.