Legislative Ltrs re: BroadBand Investment & Choice
September 13, 2005
VIA E-mail and
1 st Class Mail
<<Email>>
<<CompleteOFFICIALName _Add ress>>
Dear <<Title>> <<Last>>:
Thank you for allowing your staff members to come to Dubuque in August and spend a
few days learning more about the initiatives currently underway in our community and
our future concerns. One of the concerns which we identified and discussed with them
is S. 1504, the Broadband Investment and Consumer Choice Act, introduced by
Senators Ensign and McCain. I am writing to you today to respectfully request that you
oppose this pending act.
S. 1504 will be harmful to the city of Dubuque and others like it, depriving us of critical
funds that are currently part of our municipal budget. The estimated loss for the City of
Dubuque next year would be $560,000. It is imperative that you not accept the
assertions of industry stakeholders that the bill does not cause such harms. Although
Senator Ensign indicated in his introductory remarks and in his summary of the
proposed legislation that he believes his bill will encourage investment and competition
and promote "widely affordable and high quality service, video and data services to all
Americans," I do not believe that will be the outcome if this bill were to become law.
While I fully support the introduction of competitive choice, and welcome innovation, the
language of the Senator's bill would not provide for such competitive choice or
innovation to the citizens served by our communities. It would instead give windfall
benefits to entrenched incumbent telephone and cable companies, deprive local
governments and their residents of competitive alternatives, deny consumers effective
means of redress, and remove millions of dollars of revenue per year out of local
government budgets.
I would be pleased to review with you in detail the vast array of problems this proposed
rewrite of our national communications law presents. To provide but a few examples,
allow me to point out that on its face, S. 1504 does the following:
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· The bill would preempt all local authority over the provision of cable and video
services within the community, including the ability of local governments to provide
appropriate oversight of entities conducting business within their jurisdiction and in
their streets.
· Privately, previously negotiated contracts between local governments and cable
operators would be abrogated under the terms of the bill, creating a huge and
unnecessary subsidy to private industry, a subsidy paid for out of local governments'
budgets.
· The bill would eliminate the 5% cable franchise fee and replace it with a new
compensation methodology on video providers' use of local streets that would
deprive local governments of an agreed upon bargain and substitute the federal
government's judgment for that of the contracting parties, further interfering with the
contract rights, obligations and benefits established under existing federal law.
These new requirements and restrictions would result in the creation of a huge
subsidy to the cable and telecommunications industries - again, a subsidy paid for
by local governments and their taxpaying residents.
· The bill would further substantially reduce the revenues that are encompassed within
the contractual and statutory definition of "Gross Revenues" in the current Cable Act,
meaning that the bill would guarantee that local governments' revenues from
franchise fees would be significantly less due to the smaller revenue base.
· The bill would substantially reduce the amount of capacity which may be required by
local governments to meet their communities' needs in the form of public,
educational and government ("PEG") access, while stripping local government of the
ability to obtain support for the use of the capacity - part of the bargain contained
within currently negotiated franchise agreements. The result is that local
government will be unable to ensure that the community's needs and interests are
addressed.
· The bill would deprive consumers of the ability to address local issues locally, by
removing to the state all customer service issues, and further by denying consumers
any form of recourse for any actions of a communications provider.
· The bill would eliminate any build-out requirements for any video service provider
and thus permit video providers to discriminate in favor of upper income
neighborhoods in making their services available.
· The bill would preempt the applicability of any state or local law to the
communications industry that is not generally applicable to all businesses, therefore
potentially preempting any state or local law applicable only to certain classes of
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businesses such as utilities or rights of way users (such as requiring utilities to
underground their facilities or ensuring electric code compliance).
· The bill would prohibit local governments from imposing any fee for issuance of
rights-of-way construction permits, yet would require local governments to act on
requests for permits in a federally prescribed "timely manner," thereby insinuating
inappropriate federal government involvement in the basic management of local
rights of way.
· The bill would prohibit municipalities and their utilities from providing communications
services without giving a right of first refusal to private industry, and then would grant
private industry unfettered access to all municipal facilities and financing
arrangements in the event private industry chooses to provide services.
· The bill would deprive local government of the ability to establish and maintain
government owned and operated networks, known as institutional networks, that
may be utilized by first responders and other government officials in the day-to-day
management of the local government's business.
· The bill would eliminate current federal law protections against preemption of local
zoning decisions relating to the placement of cell towers, depriving local government
of the ability to ensure that such towers are safely and appropriately located in areas
to provide the greatest degree of services without unnecessarily posing a hazard to
the public health, safety and welfare.
· The bill would expose local governments to scores of new types of legal claims and
lawsuits by the communications industry, while eliminating the damages immunity
that local governments are granted under currentfederallaw.
While some degree of reform to our existing telecommunications laws may be in order
to better address the changes and convergence of technology, such modifications
should not be made in the absence of reasoned and considered thought, which includes
the consultation with state and local elected officials who also represent the concerns of
the citizens of this great nation. To craft laws only for the protection and benefit of
private industry, to the exclusion of the public interest, would be a disservice to both our
constituents and our county. I trust that I may rely upon your good judgment to ensure
that your local and state partners are fully consulted, and the needs of their constituents
fully considered, before you take action on any pending rewrite of the
telecommunications laws.
Local governments support competition and are excited to see the introduction of new
services within our communities. We have a long and very successful history of
supporting the introduction of such services, and are proud of the extensive successful
deployment of broadband infrastructure by the cable industry, a successful deployment
made possible in large part by the current system of local cable franchising.
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Unfortunately, S. 1504 fails to learn the lessons of that successful deployment, and we
believe the bill would result in less competition and less choice overall for consumers.
For these reasons, I ask that you oppose this legislation.
Thank you for your time and attention.
Sincerely,
Michael C. Van Milligen
City Manager
MCVM:rg
cc: Randy Gehl, Public Information Officer
David Heiar, Economic Development Director