Five times over the past eight months, Montgomery County officials have awarded temporary licenses to taxi drivers and then snatched them back because of criminal incidents in the drivers’ pasts, officials told The Examiner.

In one instance, the driver had committed assault in another state.

Another had a non-Maryland conviction for possession of drugs with the intent to distribute.

A third taxi driver was arrested in Montgomery between the time he secured the temporary license and waited for his federal background check to come back.

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Another driver had a long list of unpaid traffic tickets from outside Maryland.

But in each instance, the drivers cleared the requirements to get a temporary license — passing the state background check and a county written and oral exam — and were able to cruise county roads and pick up customers before discoveries of their criminal acts were unearthed in a federal check, said James Ryan, manager of the county’s taxicab operations.

It’s a finding that has some community members and even one local cab company owner worried, especially as County Council members consider making temporary licenses a more permanent concept.

“If anything, we need to make it harder, not easier for drivers to be licensed,” said Mehdi Pahlavan, who has owned Montgomery County-based Montgomery Taxi Cab for more than 20 years. “We need to get a handle on who’s driving around the county ... so temporary IDs are really not good.”

Last fall, cab companies had complained that the 30- to 60-day period it was taking to wait on federal background checks was ridding the industry of all its workers. So County Council members last October allowed the use of temporary licenses through the end of August of this year.

Now, a bill is coming forward to extend this time frame by 14 more months.

Unlike Pahlavan, David Mohebbi, president of Regency Cab, said he strongly supports the extension.

“Most drivers need a job right away and simply won’t wait,” he said, explaining that none of his drivers has failed the federal check.

dlevitz@dcexaminer.com