[T]he Vermont House passed a bill to expand broadband service in Vermont and defeated an amendment that would have largely defunded the bill.
Lawmakers gave their final approval Wednesday to H.870 in a 96-31 vote. It would raise the universal service fee on phone bills by a half percentage point, raising about $1.6 million per year, and allocate $750,000 in bonded money to help bring Internet connections to hard-to-reach areas and public schools.
The state would allocate the money to companies and require them to bring speeds that are at least 10 megabits per second for downloading and 1 Mbps for uploading. (The federal government’s definition for “broadband” is 25/3.)
Lawmakers shot down an amendment from House Minority Leader Don Turner, R-Milton, by a 79-48 roll call vote, largely along party lines. The amendment would have kept the fee level at 2 percent and eliminated the bonded money from the bill.
Turner said the bill would increase the cumulative taxes on Vermonters’ cellphone and landline bills, which are already taxed around 15 percent total. Customers’ bills include state sales tax, the local option tax, the federal universal service fee and Vermont’s universal service fee, among others.
“I understand and agree that Vermont’s broadband is integral in building a 21st century economy,” Turner said. “This amendment is not anti-broadband. This is a tax amendment.”
“A $1.5 billion budget passed this body a few weeks ago without one dollar to support this priority,” he said. “This is just another tax on hardworking Vermonters.”
The House committees on Ways and Means, and Commerce and Economic Development had both voted down the amendment. Opponents of the amendment cited their support for building out broadband.
Rep. Sam Young, D-Glover, said the legislation would increase his phone bill by $2.64 a year. He called that “a sacrifice I’m willing to make to make sure the most remote parts of the state get service.”
“I know people say people shouldn’t live in those areas,” Young said. “That just strikes me as a very un-Vermont thing to say. Some of us were there before there was Internet service.”
“Are we going to be the state that says we’re not going to build broadband service?” he asked. “I can tell you that theoretical broadband does not work. That’s what we have now.”
Rep. Kitty Toll, D-Danville, said her adult children won’t stay in a hotel room for a single night if it does not have broadband access, “and if they’re not going to stay in a hotel for one night without broadband, how are we going to attract them back to a state in an area with little to no broadband service?”
The bill now moves over to the Senate, where the Rules Committee will decide whether the legislation can proceed this late in the session.
