Substituting the word “payoff” for “investments,” Mayor Lori Lightfoot on Thursday pulled back from the political bombshell she dropped this week about a publicly traded company: that Uber offered black ministers a $54 million “pay off” to kill her $40 million congestion fee.
Now, the mayor is using the term “investments” to describe Uber’s offer to African-American ministers.
“My understanding, as I said yesterday, was that they offered up $54 million in — I’ll put in air quotes — ‘investments.’ What they’re trying to do … is divide and conquer and pit one group against another. We’ve seen that happen historically in Chicago. We’re not gonna tolerate that,” Lightfoot said.
“My values and the ministers values are aligned — which is, bringing equity and fairness to communities that have been left behind. … What we need to do is focus on what Uber and Lyft are trying to do and why it’s important to regulate them because of the congestion that’s caused.”
In shooting down what Uber called the mayor’s “categorically false” charge, Uber’s director of public policy Josh Gold accused the mayor of “confusing the $54 million in revenue that one of our proposals would have raised for her own budget.”
For the first time, Lightfoot seemed to acknowledge as much.
No proposal by Uber, Lightfoot said, “whether it’s the $54 million or a more recent counter-proposal,” allows the ride-hailing giant “to be regulated and deal with the congestion. They offer nothing to deal with congestion.”
Without saying how, Lightfoot argued media coverage of her original charge was “not quite accurate.”
She accused Uber, whose investors include former Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s brother, of trying to “divide and conquer and use scare-mongering tactics among black communities” to push an “utterly false … narrative.”
That is, that her $40 million congestion fee would somehow “disproportionately impact in a negative way black and brown communities.”
“In trying to divide and conquer, they offered up potential, quote-unquote ‘investments,’” the mayor said, steering clear of the word “payoff” she had used so liberally the day before.
“One thing I’m not gonna let Uber do is divide me from black ministers, or them from me. I know a lot of these ministers. I’ve worked with them for a number of years. They are good, honorable people. And they want exactly the same thing that we do.”
Lightfoot said the controversy isn’t about black ministers. It’s about Uber and Lyft “trying to avoid any kind of regulation and putting out a false narrative that they are somehow not responsible for the unbelievable congestion that we see every single day” downtown.
“Those cars are their drivers. And they have not been regulated and they’re going to be. And frankly, what I hear from City Council is not, ‘Is this fair or not?’ What they tell me is, ‘Charge `em more.’ So, I think we’ve struck the right balance,” the mayor said.
“What Uber and Lyft should do is work with us in partnership and avoid these diversions in an effort to try and divide and pit one community against each other. We’ve seen enough of that in Chicago. And it’s not gonna work.”
The mayor’s decision to substitute the word “payoff” for “investments” appeared to be a calculated attempt to extract herself from a political controversy of her own making.
Not only did the remark risk offending black ministers who are a powerful political force.
The payoff charge had the potential to impact the stock of a publicly-owned company. If the former federal prosecutor was truly accusing Uber of attempted bribery and had evidence of such a crime, she had an obligation to report that charge to the Securities and Exchange Commission.
The mayor dropped her political bombshell at a City Hall news conference Wednesday when asked about the tax plan that, Uber claims, would raise $21 million more than Lightfoot’s congestion fee in part because it would apply to taxis as well as ride-hailing.
“Is this the one where they’re paying off black ministers by $54 million? That one? Or is this a new one?” the mayor said.
“They offered up black ministers $54 million — a one-time deal — if they would convince the mayor to do away with any other kind of regulation. And as we walked these ministers through the realities of what’s actually at stake here, I think they realized that, frankly, they’d been hoodwinked.”
Pressed for proof, Lightfoot said, “I’ve had a number of ministers who’ve met with us and said, ‘Uber promised us $54 million if you [convince the mayor to] back off.’ ... We’ll get those names to you.”
Hours later, the mayor’s office refused to release the ministers’ names “out of deference to them.”
