On May 7, voters will determine how ride-hailing companies, such as Uber and Lyft, are regulated within the city.

The election was called in February after area residents filed what City Clerk Jannette Goodall called “one of the biggest petitions [the city] had received in quite a while” in response to City Council’s December passage of new regulations for ride-hailing companies. The regulations included requirements for ride-hailing company drivers to undergo fingerprint-based background checks and follow protocols similar to those of taxicab drivers; passage of Proposition 1 would remove some of those restrictions.

Because Austin City Council did not adopt the citizens’ petition, the city charter required the matter be put to voters in a citywide election. The adoption of the petition failed on a 2-8 vote, with District 8 Council Member Ellen Troxclair and District 10 Council Member Sheri Gallo voting for it.

“I am not comfortable with voting to hold an election and handing the taxpayers a bill of probably close to $800,000,” Gallo said.

She and five other council members  as well as the mayor voted to incentivize a voluntary, fingerprint-based background check program in January.

In recent months some community members raised concerns that the citizens’ petition and the opposition to council’s December regulations reflected ride-hailing companies’ corporate agendas and not the will of individual drivers or Austin residents. On April 12 and 19, community leaders and council members assembled outside City Hall to urge voters to reject the ride-hailing company ballot proposition.

“This election is about who will run Austin—our citizens or corporate special interests,” former council member Laura Morrison said April 12. “Uber accepts fingerprint background checks in New York and Houston but is trying to bully Austin and prohibit them here.”

Ride-hailing company drivers said in testimony before City Council that they were personally opposed to the new regulations. Representatives from these companies—such as Lyft—said they do not operate in any city that requires fingerprinting, but Texas-based startup Get Me said it will work with local regulators regardless of the election outcome.

“[Ride sharing] in Austin is not going away,” said a Get Met company statement released in February.