Last week, 867 days after the taxi drivers who formed Mile High Cab asked state regulators if they could provide service to metro Denver — pretty please — they received the answer to their final appeal: No.

They were told to shelve their dreams and spare existing cab companies the prospect of "destructive competition," whatever that may be. And forget about providing customers with lower rates and such free services as unloading groceries. Customers wouldn't want those benefits anyway, at least if they knew what was good for them.

Actually, the "no" won't be fully explained until a written decision is released in the next week, by which time the 150 owners/drivers of Mile High Cab will have waited up to 880 days. But what's time, inconvenience and mounting expense to the mandarins at the Colorado Public Utilities Commission? These issues require careful deliberation, the public must realize, and if you've got a family to feed in the meantime, well, take it up with social services.

If lawmakers aren't goaded into action by the PUC's treatment of Mile High Cab, then nothing is likely to move them. Fortunately, there is a remedy at hand: Senate Bill 65. It would require the PUC to approve the application of a cab company that meets certain financial criteria, is able to operate 2 4/7, and can put at least 50 vehicles on the street.

The bill is still too restrictive for my taste (why should it be illegal to start a five-cab company?), but it's light years better than current rules. And if the bill's ideologically diverse sponsors — Republican Sen. Ted Harvey and Democrat Rep. Daniel Kagan — can find common ground, there's no reason a majority of their colleagues shouldn't see fit to join them.

Lawmakers who would like a brief lesson in the absurdities of the present regulatory regime could do worse than pick up a copy of an 85-page ruling last July by administrative law judge Paul Gomez denying Mile High's application to operate in the seven-county metro area — one of the numerous milestones leading to last week's blow. Gomez waxes on at great length about the importance of striking "the necessary balance between market forces and regulatory instrumentalities" before concluding that "granting Mile High's application and putting 150 undifferentiated cabs on the street could very well result in impaired services, higher rates, and ultimately the type of destructive competition this Commission is charged with protecting against."

And whose testimony did he rely upon to reach such starkly pessimistic conclusions? Why, two academics, Ray Mundy and Paul Dempsey, who have leveraged highly successful careers opposing competition in transportation.

Mundy, of the University of Missouri at St. Louis, is the same hired gun for the incumbent taxi industry who three years ago produced a "study" that actually presumed to discover the ideal number of taxi permits for this region. "The correct number of taxi permits in Denver," the study concluded with regal precision, "is 942."

Not 943, you understand. That would amount to oversupply.

Back in town again to stamp out competition, Mundy swayed Gomez with dire warnings of what could happen if another upstart were allowed into the game, and never mind if his musings amounted to sophisticated speculation. Imagine if government imposed the same deference to the status quo upon every other commercial activity. We'd probably still be counting on an abacus.

In late November, two of the three PUC commissioners (Matt Baker and James Tarpey) endorsed Gomez's findings, wringing their hands about the prospect of "oversupply and destructive competition" and setting the stage for last week's final act.

As recently as 2008, lawmakers thought they'd pried open the taxi market to further competition. The PUC responded by allowing Union Taxi Cooperative to slip through the door before slamming it shut again. So enough of legislative half measures. This time, lawmakers should pass a bill that leaves no doubt what they have in mind.