VI Taxicab Commission: 20 Years, Same Missing Medallions
Summary
A March 2026 audit by the U.S. Virgin Islands Inspector General found the territory's Taxicab Commission lost at least $170,310 in inspection fees it never billed between 2018 and 2022, while its taxi-inspector staff shrank from six workers to zero. Ten taxi licenses went to applicants who failed or never took the required written exam. And of the 13 medallions the audit found missing from Commission inventory, worth at least $286,000, twelve were already reported missing in the Inspector General's last audit of the same agency -- in 2005.
Twelve medallions, still missing after two decades
When auditors physically counted the Commission's medallion inventory in April 2024, 13 were unaccounted for on St. Thomas -- worth at least $286,000 based on the $22,000 average price medallions fetched at auction from 2018 to 2022. Twelve of those 13 were already reported missing in the Inspector General's 2005 audit of the same agency; one more has gone missing since. "Since the V.I. Inspector General's audit report on The Operations of the Taxicab Division was issued in 2005," the new audit concludes, "we found that the Taxicab Commission has not made significant improvements." A separate sample of 70 medallions found 13 with recording exceptions in the registries themselves, and 54% of 57 owner files reviewed were missing required documents -- Social Security cards, proof of citizenship, police and traffic records.
View data as table
| FY2018 | $38,310 |
|---|---|
| FY2019 | $38,220 |
| FY2020 | $35,220 |
| FY2021 | $31,440 |
| FY2022 | $27,120 |
The inspections stopped, and so did the fees
Virgin Islands law requires the Commission to inspect every taxi twice a year and collect a $15 fee each time. Auditors found the Commission has not done the inspections since at least 2008 -- at least 14 years of noncompliance -- and estimated the resulting revenue loss from the taxi business licenses the Commission did renew: 5,677 of them across the five audited years, which should have produced 11,354 billed inspections. None were billed. The $170,310 left uncollected is worth more than 7.7 of the 13 medallions still missing from the Commission's own inventory.
View data as table
| FY2018 | $16,265 |
|---|---|
| FY2019 | $10,060 |
| FY2020 | $5,850 |
| FY2021 | $3,100 |
| FY2022 | $950 |
The inspection lapse tracks a collapse in enforcement staffing. The Commission had at least six taxi inspectors as recently as 2015; by the 2018-2022 audit period it was down to three, split between the St. Thomas/St. John and St. Croix districts. By 2025, auditors found, none remained. Citation revenue fell with them -- from $16,265 in fiscal 2018 to $950 in fiscal 2022, a 94% decline auditors tie directly to the remaining inspectors being pulled off patrol to cover clerical shortages. "This situation endangers public safety," the report states.
Ten licenses, no passing score
The written exam is not discretionary: territory law requires a 75% passing score, with three attempts before a driver must retake the certification course. Of 240 applicants tested from 2018 to 2022, 201 passed. The Commission licensed seven of the 39 who failed anyway -- in one case the approval letter is dated the day after the applicant failed -- plus three more for whom no exam record exists at all; one Commission file contains a handwritten note reading "Did not take test." A former Executive Director told auditors about 20 suspected illegal licenses were referred to the territory's Attorney General for investigation.
A ledger nobody reconciled
Money moved just as loosely as paperwork. Reviewing a sample of collections, auditors found $44,622 deposited late -- up to 35 days past the Department of Finance's 24-hour requirement -- and $258,342 in revenue not posted to the territory's accounting system on the day it was received, with some postings arriving up to seven months late. A separate $54,811 in medallion-sale proceeds was never posted at all, and deposited totals left an unreconciled $18,587 gap against what the system recorded. Auditors also found the Commission accepted $22,101 in medallion-auction payments after deadline, never returned a $200 overpayment, and left one veteran buyer waiting 33 months for a certificate of entitlement after a payment that involved a bounced check.
View data as table
| Deposited late (2-35 days) | $44,622 |
|---|---|
| Not posted to ERP on time | $258,342 |
| Medallion sales never posted | $54,811 |
| Unreconciled deposit/ERP gap | $18,587 |
What the Commission says now
The Commission agreed with all 19 of the audit's recommendations. In its written response, Executive Director Melissa Smith called the agency "currently undergoing a period of significant transition and rebuilding" under new leadership, and named funding as "a critical obstacle" to modernizing the medallion registry. As of the report date, 5 of the 19 recommendations were considered resolved and implemented; the rest remain pending follow-up review -- roughly the same posture the Commission's 2005 response promised to fix.
- The same failures survived two audits, twenty years apart. Twelve of the 13 medallions the Inspector General found missing from the Taxicab Commission's inventory in 2026 were already reported missing in 2005 -- worth at least $286,000 combined, and never written off, replaced, or found.
- The Commission's own enforcement arm disappeared. Taxi inspectors fell from six in 2009-2015 to three in 2018-2022 to zero by 2025, tracking a 94% collapse in citation revenue and at least $170,310 in inspection fees never billed.
- Ten licenses went to drivers who never demonstrated they could pass the taxi exam -- seven who failed outright and three with no exam record at all -- while separate control failures left $258,342 in revenue unposted on time and $44,622 deposited late across the same five years.
All figures in this piece come from the Office of the Virgin Islands Inspector General's March 2026 performance audit, Audit of Administrative Functions of the Virgin Islands Taxicab Commission (Report AR-02-38-22), read in full via direct PDF fetch. A Wayback Save-Page-Now capture was requested at read time but returned a gateway error; the direct PDF URL was independently verified reachable and fully readable at read time. The $170,310-versus-medallion-value comparison, the precise 83.75% exam pass rate, the 94.16% citation-revenue decline, and the 100% inspector-staffing collapse are this outlet's own arithmetic on the audit's own reported figures; the audit does not itself compute these. A blind adversarial verifier, working from the primary document alone with no access to this draft, independently checked every itemized fact; see verification.json.
Sources(3) ▾
- Office of the Virgin Islands Inspector General, Audit of Administrative Functions of the Virgin Islands Taxicab Commission (Report AR-02-38-22) (2026-03-03) — The primary document. Source for the audit's scope (FY2018-2022, Commission re-established 2007 by Act 6968, nine-member Board); the medallion registry findings (13 unsold St. Thomas medallions unaccounted for, 63% of a 70-medallion sample had incomplete/missing/inconsistent registry data, 1,958 medallions issued territory-wide as of Feb. 2024); the medallion auction findings ($22,101 in late payments, $200 unreturned overpayment, up to 33-month delays issuing certificates of entitlement); the taxi license findings (10 licenses issued 2018-2022 to applicants who failed or never took the required written exam, out of 240 total exam-takers; about 20 cases referred to the Department of Justice); the biannual inspection and staffing findings (no inspections since at least 2008, taxi inspector headcount fell from six in 2009-2015 to three in 2018-2022 to zero as of 2025, $170,310 in lost inspection-fee revenue FY2018-2022, a 94% decline in citation fines FY2018-2022); the collections findings ($44,622 in late deposits, $258,342 in revenue not timely posted to the Enterprise Resource Planning system, an $18,587 unreconciled deposit/ERP discrepancy, $54,811 in medallion-sale revenue never posted); the finding that FY2018-2022 expenditures complied with law (Finding 6); the 2005 prior-audit comparison (12 of the 13 currently missing medallions were already reported missing in 2005); and the Commission's written response (submitted Feb. 20, 2026) agreeing with all 19 recommendations, of which 5 were considered resolved and implemented as of the report date. viig.org
- Office of the Virgin Islands Inspector General, Audit of Administrative Functions of the Taxicab Commission (announcement page) (2026-03-03) — Corroborates the report's release date and headline findings independently of the PDF fetch; used only where it matches the PDF's own text. viig.org
- VI Consortium, Inspector General Audit Finds Missing Taxi Medallions, Improper Licenses, and Years Without Inspections at V.I. Taxicab Commission (2026-03-04) — Local news coverage confirming the report's public release and reception; a pointer to the primary document, not a source for any load-bearing figure in this piece (every figure here is cited to the audit report itself). viconsortium.com
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The Office of the Virgin Islands Inspector General audited the territory's Taxicab Commission for the first time since 2005 -- and found the same problems still unresolved two decades later. The nine-member Commission regulates the roughly 1,958 taxi medallions issued across St. Thomas, St. John, and St. Croix. Auditors covering fiscal years 2018 through 2022 found the agency lost at least $170,310 in inspection fees it never billed, granted 10 taxi licenses to drivers who failed or skipped the required written exam, and let its inspector corps shrink from six people to zero.