Legislative Correspondence
City Manager's Office
City Hall
50 West 13th Street
Dubuque, Iowa 52001-4864
(563) 589-4110 office
(563) 589-4149 fax
(563) 690-6678 TDD
ctymgr@cityofdubuque.org
5IuOs'tJ6bb:
~YN-~
May 25, 2006
Congressman Jim Nussle
303 Cannon House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515-1502
Dear Congressman Nussle,
In the coming days, the House of Representatives will consider Chairman
Barton's Communications Opportunity, Promotion, and Enhancement Act
(COPE) of 2006. I respectfully request that you oppose the COPE Act in its
current form. It is a detriment to communities like Dubuque in a number of areas:
. The legislation abolishes local authority to establish and enforce consumer
protection and customer service requirements. Instead, the resolution of
potentially tens of thousands of consumer complaints concerning billing
disputes, loss of service or service quality, and changes in channel lineups
will rest with the FCC, an agency without the necessary resources and
abilities to handle them. Local communities are best suited to respond to
the concerns of their citizens and customer service and consumer
protection services should remain at the local level.
. The bill, as it now stands, would take away local governments' authority to
franchise the use of public rights-of-way for video/cable services and
hands over that local authority to the federal government. While COPE
ostensibly grants rights-of-way management authority to local
governments, enforcement would rest with the FCC, which has never had
the authority to regulate public rights-of-way and lacks the expertise
concerning local streets, sidewalks, public safety and traffic patterns. The
bill gives the FCC the authority to second-guess all local rights-of-way
management practices. Incidents occurring in the public rights-of-way are
public safety concerns that must be addressed immediately and locally,
not from Washington.
. Of particular concern, COPE allows providers of broadband-video service,
through the national franchise, to use the public rights-of-way in a
community but pick and choose which neighborhoods they wish to serve
and bypass others completely. The bill would even allow broadband-video
providers to avoid maintaining or upgrading facilities in certain
Service
People
Integrity
Responsibility
Innovation
Teamwork
.
· Public, educational and government (PEG) access channels and
institutional networks (I-Nets) are important community resources. These
resources are used by schools for distance education, by our locally
elected officials to improve governmental services and enhance
democratic discourse and by our communities as the last source of free
speech over the medium of television. As currently drafted, the bill would
arbitrarily limit available support for these resources to a maximum of one
percent of an operator's gross revenue. The legislation's "one size fits all"
approach fails to keep communities financially whole.
In Dubuque we worked very hard, and spent hundreds of thousands of dollars, to
come up with a franchise agreement that best meets the needs of our
community. HR 5252 will undo everything we worked for and achieved. Local
governments want competition, but not at this cost. I respectfully request that
you oppose this bill. Communities all across Iowa cannot afford it.
Sincer~ ~
Michael C. Van Milligen
City Manager
MCVM:ksf
Cc: Mayor Roy Buol
Dubuque City Council Member
Susan Judkins, Iowa League of Cities
Barry Lindahl, City Attorney
Cindy Steinhauser, Asst. City Manager
Craig Nowack, Cable TV Coordinator