Give Philly Kids a Real Lyft

As one of tens of thousands of Philadelphians who use rideshare daily, I have been following the news about Mayor Cherelle Parker's proposed $1 per ride tax to benefit the School District. My job requires me to go to different parts of the city, and, as a non-car owner and Center City resident, I use Lyft to get there. To be clear, I understand and am supportive of residents like me contributing to our children's education. But I do think we ought to take a different approach to how we levy this tax — and take a hard look at why we are in this position in the first place.

It often feels our city leaders are playing defense — trying to patch holes instead of being proactive and discussing policy that could have long term repercussions for the better or for the worse.

It helps to start with what the evidence says about the tax as a tool, because that shapes what we can reasonably ask of it. When economists studied Chicago's $1.13 per rideshare ride fee, they found that riders themselves absorb almost the entire tax — roughly 89 percent of it. So, while Mayor Parker is right that Uber and Lyft could choose to absorb the dollar, the experience elsewhere is that these large companies mostly pass it along to the consumer. What's more, the study found that rideshare taxes disproportionately affect the lower income earners more than anyone else.

A flat dollar is the same for a $7 ride across Hunting Park as for a $40 ride to the airport, which makes it heaviest on exactly the short, frequent trips that lower income and carless riders take most. In fairness, the same Chicago research found that across the city as a whole, these fees are about as progressive as the federal income tax, because higher income people simply take more rides.

That research also found this tax burden fell hardest on Black neighborhoods with the weakest access to transit alternatives. If we are going to tax these trips, a fee that scales with the fare is fairer than a flat one. Most of my rides cost $8 to $12. I spend $300 to $500 a month on Lyft alone. As a higher income earner, I can absorb an increased rate, even on shorter rides. To me, it's worth it to support the School District. But I'm not willing to impose the same strain on lower income families. A percentage-based fee wouldn't just be fairer. It would also scale up with inflation. One dollar in 2037 is not going to have the same impact as $1 in 2027.

But it's not just the city's problem. Harrisburg, which has long pointed to financial management as a reason to withhold funding from the School District of Philadelphia, should bear much more responsibility. Otherwise, Philadelphians should expect more School Board votes to close more schools, like the vote they took recently to close 17 schools. The District should not have to make such choices about its own footprint.

I still do not understand why Philadelphia is the only school district in Pennsylvania without the authority to raise its own revenue through taxes. Every other district has an elected board that can levy an earned income or property tax directly. Ours cannot, and the reason behind it reaches back into the 19th century without a clear reason. It just is this way.

Because Philly schools must persuade the City Council and Harrisburg to act on their behalf, Philly residents should call on City Council and Mayor Parker to push for the creation of an elected school board that has the ability to raise its own revenue for the School District — a board that is not tied to a yearly budget cycle that inevitably causes city officials to scramble to figure out how to fund our kids' schools.

Another proposal: Change how we approach local institutions that sit on enormous untaxed property. Our largest universities and hospitals make payments in lieu of taxes that amount to almost nothing for our public schools.

While I do not expect Penn, Drexel, etc. to cover the gap from the School District, I do think that they could be more transparent about their contribution to District funding to, if nothing else, show what part they play in the great equalizer that education is for all of us.

In my work with entrepreneurs, I have come to realize that access to capital is a civic question, that it decides who gets to build a future in this city. The first and most basic form of that access is a decent education. We cannot fund it on the back of a single dollar charged to a worker on her way to a night shift and think that dollar will solve the long-term funding gaps that exist, especially since the District currently has no control over its ability to raise money. I call the Mayor and City Council to create an elected school board and call on Harrisburg to let the City of Philadelphia control the education of our children.