Feel free to stick out your thumb and hitch a ride if you see Phil Sullivan driving by in his white minivan — it’s legal. The city has dropped criminal charges against the 73-year-old retiree who operates a free taxi service.
Phil Sullivan, the one-time co-owner of the now-defunct Mellow Yellow local cab company, gives rides around town nightly, in the 9 p.m. to 2 a.m. range, in a van with an illuminated green sign on its roof. The sign once read “Free Taxi” but now rotates various messages.
He was set to stand trial today for violating five local ordinances. But the city dropped the case yesterday morning after the septuagenarian chauffeur obtained a license from the city to operate a “miscellaneous” business.
“It’s for small businesses and doesn’t stipulate the type,” Sullivan said of his freshly minted license to drive. “I could be a hairdresser or a billiards player or anything. I just didn’t want to be put in the category of a transportation person.”
Sullivan said the city had offered him the ambiguous license before as a remedy to settle the case against him, but he said he did not understand it until city accounting specialist Larry Thoreson explained it to him yesterday.
The license is valid through the end of 2009.
City Hall initiated the criminal case last year, claiming that because Sullivan accepted tips for his “free” rides, he needed a business license. The cab driver maintains that he never asks for money.
“I’m just a guy who takes people home,” he said after a court appearance in October.
He faced charges for not filing city business and occupation taxes, not displaying his rate for a ride, and operating a taxi without a meter since he began giving rides in 2006.
The city also claimed that by running his free service, Sullivan violated its “general requirements” for businesses, which mandates they abide by all laws, and forbids they do anything that could “affect the public health, safety, morals or welfare.”
He pleaded not guilty to all charges in October.
“The city’s position was that Sullivan was operating a taxi business without a business license; however, Sullivan asserted he provided the service for free,” assistant city attorney Jim True explained yesterday in a prepared statement. “Since Sullivan was accepting money for the service, the city maintained that he was conducting a business, as defined by the city’s municipal code.”
The municipal code gives city judges discretion to fine convicted lawbreakers up to $1,000 and sentence them to up to one year of jail time per violation. So the punitive stakes for Sullivan were potentially quite high, at five years in the clink and $5,000 out of his pocket.
Sullivan enlisted the help of New Orleans-based attorney Rob Couhig for the case. Couhig ran for mayor of the city as a Republican in 2006 and subsequently hosted a radio talk show there. He was preparing to board a plane when Sullivan settled the case and called him off.
“We turned Rob around at the airport,” Sullivan said.
The city may be off his back, but the maverick cabbie may still face sanctions from the Colorado Public Utilities Commission (PUC).
In 2006, Todd Gardner, owner of Aspen’s dominant taxi service, High Mountain Taxi, filed a complaint with the PUC stating that Sullivan did not have proper taxi insurance. Gardner, a vocal detractor of Sullivan in the past, did not return a message for this story.
As a result of Gardner’s complaint, the PUC levied a $12,100 fine against Sullivan in September 2007, which he refused to pay. He also refused to attend his PUC hearings in Denver. The fine was sent to the Colorado Office of Collections.
Investigators from the PUC were in Aspen yesterday, prepared to testify against Sullivan. The organization ran a sting operation in 2006, in which Sullivan allegedly accepted tips from undercover utility agents posing as customers.
An agency spokesman said yesterday that they are weighing their options on how to proceed with curbing the rogue cabbie.
“At this stage it’s too early to determine what our next step will be,” the PUC’s Terry Bote said. “It’ll take a few days to figure out where we go from here.”
For now, you can catch a legal ride with Sullivan nightly — except last night, which he took off because he didn’t want to appear to be gloating after his legal victory.
andrew@aspendailynews.com