After two years of legislative toil and bipartisan effort, the Broome County Legislature has at last unveiled some sweeping legislation ‘ on taxis.

While State Street violence rocks our headlines on a seemingly weekly basis, and Downtown Binghamton has decayed into a dilapidated eyesore, Broome County lawmakers saw fit to rewrite the regulations on cabs.

We think they have bigger fish to fry. The 30-page document, though not without some overdue changes and solid (if obvious) regulation, has some glaring irregularities (see Page 1). Overall, we think the new law unnecessary.

On the good side, cab drivers will now be required to undergo background checks and drug tests to receive a commercial license in Broome County. Also, on the obvious side, the County now has uniform taxi laws across the board ‘ the town of Vestal didn’t even have any cab regulation before the new legislation. But beyond that, the recently passed taxi laws have very little merit.

First of all, the legislation creates new regulations that ostensibly need enforcement. Laws already on the books ‘ such as the law that stipulates that 21 drunk undergrads shouldn’t pile into a normal-sized van ‘ are famously overlooked in Binghamton, and the new legislation just creates more laws that will almost certainly be ignored.

In an attempt to curb the local tradition of looking the other way for taxis, there are now new fees for drivers and cab companies. The fee hike laid out by the legislation, which will undoubtedly be handed down to passengers in the form of a fare hike, will be spent on enforcement of the new regulation, through the county’s Security Division.

So we’ll be seeing new fees to pay for new enforcement of new laws, on top of old laws that rarely seemed to matter. And that’s nowhere near the worst of it.

The new regulations include such legislative gems as a dress code for cab drivers. The deputy county executive thought this necessary because cab drivers ‘are kind of a first impression to people in our community.’ But we have to assume that it would take a very, very well-dressed driver to distract a first-time visitor from what he would see out of his cab window: Binghamton itself.

The taxi reform also marks a serious change with real impact, beyond forcing drivers to put on a collared shirt. As of June 1, cabbies will no longer be allowed to pick up passengers as needed; all fares must be arranged by phone. Think about any city with a cab industry, like New York, for instance. Passengers usually, if not exclusively, flag down cab drivers for rides; they don’t call them. That’s normal.

These new taxi laws just make Binghamton a little more backward, in an industry that affects all students.