[B]URLINGTON — A group of Burlington residents is continuing its efforts to stop the sale of Burlington Telecom to Champlain Broadband, a local affiliate of Schurz Communications.
The six residents announced Thursday they plan to appeal the Vermont Public Utilities Commission’s Feb. 19 decision to approve the sale by the city and a holding company.
James Dumont, the attorney for the citizens, said the group was still deciding whether to file a motion to reconsider with the PUC or an appeal with the Vermont Supreme Court.
Mayor Miro Weinberger called the appellants “misguided obstructionists.”
The PUC had allowed the six residents to intervene in the sale. The group had argued that the PUC should not have approved the sale since taxpayers were owed almost $17 million the city, led by then-mayor Bob Kiss, diverted from city funds to keep BT operating.
The PUC agreed with the city’s argument that the deal would recoup the highest possible amount of the $16.9 in taxpayer funds under contention, and issued a certificate of public good approving the sale.
The citizen group is contesting the PUC’s finding that under state law, its jurisdiction is limited to enforcing conditions of certificates of public good through imposing penalties or revocation, not blocking sales.
The commission further found that the regulatory issues surrounding the misuse of the $16.9 million in taxpayer funds had already been resolved in the commission’s November 2014 order allowing the sale of BT from the city to Blue Water, the holding company.
Solveig Overby, one of the citizen intervenors, said that the group believes that the Legislature intended to give the PUC the authority to block the sale.
“The Supreme Court is really the only way to address that kind of confusion,” she said.
The city agreed to sell BT to settle a $33 million lawsuit with Citibank, and sold BT in 2014 to Lake Champlain Transportation Co. owner Trey Pecor’s Blue Water Holdings. Blue Water has leased the assets back to the city.
In November 2017, the City Council voted to sell BT to Indiana-based Schurz Communications in a contentious vote after a lengthy process, choosing Schurz over a local co-op and Toronto-based Ting.
Champlain Broadband, Schurz’s local affiliate, will now own and operate the telecom. Champlain will pay Blue Water $30.8 million for BT. The sale was required as part of a settlement with Citibank, who the city owed money.
The city is set to receive approximately $6.3 million of the sale price and has the option to purchase up to one-third of membership interests in Champlain. The city has up to one year to decide whether or not to invest.
Mayor Miro Weinberger said after the PUC’s decision that the decision “confirms the validity” of the city’s path to resolve the Citibank lawsuit.
He said that the decision allows residents to benefit from the fiber optics installed by BT, avoids returning to a telecom monopoly in the city, resolves the risk of liability while improving the credit rating and recovers as much of the $16.9 million spent by the city as possible.
“The intervenors are not folk heroes, and they are not fighting to get your tax dollars back,” he said. “The announced appellants are misguided obstructionists who, if they got their way, would return us to the community nightmare of the Leopold-BT years.” Jonathan Leopold was city treasurer under Mayor Kiss.
Weinberger said that the current deal is a much better outcome than thought possible seven years ago, and that the city was “on the cusp of converting the initial BT disaster into a lasting success worth tens of millions of dollars for taxpayers,” by keeping the fiber optic resources in the ground and avoiding a monopoly situation.
