Mayor Zohran Mamdani stood with the city’s yellow cab and Uber drivers at LaGuardia Airport on Tuesday night to announce Midori Valdivia as his choice to oversee the Taxi and Limousine Commission (TLC). Valdivia, 42, previously served as deputy commissioner at the TLC and currently sits on the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) board. Her nomination will need to be confirmed by the City Council.

As TLC commissioner, Valdivia will oversee the agency that regulates more than 200,000 drivers across yellow taxis, Uber, Lyft, and other for-hire vehicles. The commission sets fare rates, enforces driver and vehicle standards, and issues fines for violations.

“It is an incredible honor to be nominated to join the Mamdani administration as they work to deliver safer streets and a more equitable economy,” Valdivia said. “I’m committed to delivering for drivers, passengers, and New Yorkers across the city.”

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Mamdani framed the appointment as part of his broader commitment to workers in the city. ​​”From City Hall, we will deliver meaningful change in the lives of the working people too often forgotten by our politics, and in the day-to-day existence of the taxi drivers who deserve a forceful champion at the TLC,” Mamdani said to reporters.

The announcement at LaGuardia Airport drew dozens of yellow cab and app-based taxi drivers who helped power Mamdani’s election campaign—many of them immigrants from South Asia who see his election as a historic shift after decades of being overlooked by the city government.

Mamdani’s history with taxi drivers goes back to 2021, when he joined them on a 15-day hunger strike outside City Hall to demand relief from predatory medallion loans that had driven some drivers to suicide. The strike ended after city officials agreed to a debt relief program that has brought $475 million in relief to more than 2,000 taxi drivers.

But the work remains unfinished. Over 200 drivers are still stuck with debts because their lenders refused to join the program.

Wain Chin, 58, who has driven a yellow taxi in the city for 33 years since immigrating from Myanmar in 1992, attended Tuesday’s announcement at LaGuardia Airport. He is among those still waiting for debt relief. His lender offered him a cash settlement to buy out his loan—but he can’t afford it. “We believe that Mamdani can help get us across the finishing line and bring debt relief for drivers like me,” Chin told The Nation.

The TLC has no direct power over private lenders holding medallion debt. Helping the remaining drivers will require the Mamdani administration to pressure holdout lenders or broker alternative buyout deals.

For Bhairavi Desai, executive director of the New York Taxi Workers Alliance (NYTWA), which represents 28,000 drivers, finishing the debt relief work is just the beginning of what they hope to achieve this year.

With Mamdani in office and Julie Su—a labor rights champion who previously served as acting US labor secretary—now serving as deputy mayor for economic justice, she sees an opening to push for more ambitious changes. Su will oversee the Department of Consumer and Worker Protection, which enforces labor standards for gig economy workers and has taken on delivery app giants like Uber and DoorDash over their tipping practices.

“What we’re looking forward to is to secure a much better tomorrow, where we have a livable wage and retirement benefits for drivers that honor their unique expenses, long hours and dangers of this job,” Desai said.

Desai outlined a plan to organize drivers into an insurance cooperative they would own themselves. Auto insurance costs have been rising for drivers, with some paying $6,000 or more per year.

“We believe the solution is to organize the drivers into a cooperative,” Desai said. “If we bring all the drivers together to own their own company, most insurance companies lower their premiums for their members, and if there are profits, it goes back to the members and not private corporations. It puts the drivers in the front seat to shape policy that affects them.”

The city’s 200,000 for-hire vehicle drivers—90 percent of them immigrants—complete roughly 1 million trips daily across the five boroughs.

Erhan Tuncel, 65, a Turkish immigrant who has been driving a yellow cab for 27 years, said he is hopeful drivers’ concerns will be finally heard in Mamdani’s term as mayor. “We know we have a brother we can talk to and, more importantly, a mayor who listens.”