At least three House committees worked on the telecom bill Wednesday, continuing the feverish pace that the bill has moved through the body since it came over from the Senate last week. The bill had been sent to the Commerce and Economic Development Committee, which took testimony Monday — a day the legislature usually takes off — and then met until 10:30 p.m. Tuesday discussing the bill. Discussions and testimony continued Wednesday in the Commerce Committee, while two other committees also considered parts of the bill.
The Natural Resources and Energy Committee examined the first 14 sections of the bill (which contains 24 sections), and committee chair Tony Klein reported that they “wouldn’t change a word of it.” The Fish, Wildlife, and Water Resources Committee looked at stormwater management provisions in the bill. The bill fast-tracks permits for stormwater management at sites for telecom towers and would apply new stormwater rules to telecom facilities at high elevations.
Though Commerce Committee chair Bill Botzow, D-Pownal, had expressed hope early in the day that they could report the bill out Wednesday, they now plan to resume work on it Thursday, after hearing the conclusions from Fish, Wildlife, and Water Resources.
Botzow said that the Judiciary and Appropriations Committees would give input on parts of the bill before it would come to a floor vote, which might happen as early as this week.
For all the attention given the bill, the Commerce Committee has suggested relatively few changes. Legislators balanced their desire to make what they considered improvements in the bill with a hope that they could craft a bill that the Senate would simply concur with. If key senators accept the amendments to the bill in the House, then the Senate can ratify the bill in the form it passes the House. Otherwise, a House-Senate conference committee would be convened, and everything in the bill would be up for renegotiation. While the bill passed the Senate on a final vote of 29-1, some amendments passed by one or two votes. On the losing side of those votes was Sen. Vince Illuzzi, R-Essex-Orleans, chair of the Economic Development Committee. Illuzzi checked in with colleagues about the bill’s progress in the House Wednesday as he walked the corridors of the State House.
The telecom bill sets the goal of statewide cell phone, smart grid, and broadband internet networks in Vermont by the end of 2013. A mixture of state and private money will finance cell phone expansion, while federal stimulus funds are part of the mix for smart grid and broadband expansion. A total of around $400 million in federal funds is available for the project.
Former Governor James Douglas had set a goal of universal cell phone and broadband access in Vermont by 2010, and the legislature created the Vermont Telecom Authority to achieve the goal. Gov. Peter Shumlin has set meeting the new target as one of his key priorities.
The first item of business for the Commerce Committee Wednesday morning illustrated the legislature’s and the administration’s push to pass a telecom bill quickly, even if it is imperfect. State Historic Preservation Officer Giovanna Peebles was given less than an hour’s notice to testify on part of the bill affecting her office. Before Peebles took the witness seat, Warren Kitzmiller, D-Montpelier, grumbled about a delay in her testimony while the committee waited for someone from the administration to arrive. He commented that it was like “a trick from the Douglas administration,” asserting that no one then could testify without their boss being present. He hoped, he said, that the Shumlin administration would be different.
After the arrival of Noelle MacKay, commissioner of Economic, Housing, and Community Affairs, Peebles said that she thought a section of the bill referring to her office was unnecessary, as federal law already mandated everything in the bill. She also said that a portion of the bill mandating a “systematic approach” to her review of pole attachments had caused “a bit of hysteria” with one internet provider, who a legislator identified as Sovernet. They had read it to mean that every pole would be reviewed, but Peebles said that she had neither the desire nor the resources to do that. Committee members pointed out that bill said no such thing — it even said “systemic approach,” not “systematic.”
Since the section was causing problems, Peebles argued, and it amended state statute unnecessarily, the bill would be improved if it were removed.
Botzow commented that he agreed that it’s better not to change statute unnecessarily in an ideal world, but “this is the least ideal world I know.”
A committee member asked what the Shumlin administration’s position on that section of the bill was, and no one in the room knew. Shortly after her testimony, Peebles returned to the room and explained that she had run into Shumlin’s legal counsel, Beth Robinson, and said that the administration would like to get the bill passed as quickly as possible. Since the section in question is not actively harmful, she allowed that they can live with it if it makes everyone’s life easier.
The Commerce Committee softened language from the Senate that would have terminated the contract of any telecom company that leases fiber-optic cables and does not use them within 180 days. The language was intended to block anti-competitive behavior by companies that leased fiber, so their competitors did not have access to it, and then did not use it. With witnesses saying that other companies could just lease new fiber, and questions about the state’s power to regulate contracts with otherwise unregulated internet providers, the committee directed the Public Service Commissioner to investigate whether the non-use actually is anti-competitive and, if so, to ask the Public Service Board to do something about it.
Also, in response to a request by Verizon Wireless, the committee allowed Verizon and other companies not receiving public funds to report on their telecom deployment not directly to the administration but indirectly, through a third party that would aggregate the data. The state would get the information it wanted on which parts of the state were still unserved or underserved by telecom, and the exact network maps of each company would not come into the possession of the state, where they would potentially be subject to a public records request.
Botzow commented on two of the committee’s changes which he saw as most important, regarding the Vermont Telecommunications Authority. In one, the committee gave the governor more power over the board by empowering him to select its chair and vice-chair, a power he shared with the speaker of the House and the president pro-tem of the Senate in the Senate’s version of the bill. In the other, to preserve some continuity in a the Vermont Telecommunications Authority board that appears soon to be reconstituted, the committee ended the terms of existing board members as soon as the bill takes effect, with the proviso that they will serve until new board members are appointed.
While the legislature scrambles to pass the telecom bill, some members question whether the state can achieve universal broadband and cell phone service by the end of 2013 and even how big a victory that would be, the way the goal is described. Satellite broadband is available everywhere in the state with southern exposure, and Sam Young, D-West Glover, commented that the minimum speeds for broadband in the bill are barely faster than satellite. But Robinson said that the administration was working with these goals, and that they would need more money to achieve higher minimum speeds. The committee did not further review the bill’s goals.
