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from: Capital Times

State Senate OKs cable bill
Nine Democrats vote with GOP

Judith Davidoff — 11/09/2007 12:31 pm

A split Democratic caucus failed to muster enough votes to pass major protections sought by consumer advocates in a controversial AT&T-backed cable deregulation bill.

The bill easily passed the state Senate 23-9 after five hours of debate Thursday.

Nine Democrats and all 14 Republicans present in the Senate voted in favor of the bill. Sen. Dale Schultz, R-Richland Center, left before the vote was taken. Nine Democrats, including Madison-area Senators Jon Erpenbach, Mark Miller and Fred Risser, voted against the bill.

Erpenbach, who made an unsuccessful last-ditch effort to refer the bill back to committee, said after the vote that he wasn't concerned that fellow Democrats provided key votes to kill amendments that would have retained call centers in Wisconsin, continued funding for public access channels and beefed up consumer protections.

"This is the way government is supposed to work," he said. "This is the way democracy works. The Republicans were all over the place. The Democrats were all over the place."

Although Republicans voted in a bloc for the final version of the bill, individual Republicans supported some of the 21 amendments offered over the course of the evening.

Lawmakers did vote to replace the proposed one-time franchise fee for video providers with an annual $2,000 license fee for companies serving more than 10,000 customers, and to give municipalities more control over the aesthetics of refrigerator-size utility boxes expected to be used by AT&T to provide service to local customers.

They also approved an amendment that requires new video providers entering a market to broadcast University of Wisconsin events, including sporting events, if the existing cable network has an agreement with the UW to broadcast them.

But several amendments seen as boosting consumer protections -- including one that would move oversight of video franchising from the Department of Financial Institutions to the Public Service Commission, which oversees utilities, and a requirement for video providers to charge a 1 percent fee to fund public access channels in communities that have existing surcharges -- did not pass.

The bill, authored by Sen. Jeff Plale, D-South Milwaukee, and Rep. Phil Montgomery, R-Green Bay, would end municipal control over cable franchises and establish statewide licenses for all video providers. The state Assembly, which approved its version of the bill in the spring, now needs to approve the Senate amendments before the bill goes to Gov. Jim Doyle for signing. If the Assembly fails to pass the Senate version of the bill, it would need to first go back to the Senate and, perhaps, to a conference committee.

Doyle spokesman Matt Canter said Thursday night that the governor has been generally supportive of the bill but would need to see the final version before deciding on whether he would sign it.

"It's a bill that will provide consumers with choice and that's good," Canter said.

Ed Huck, executive director of the Wisconsin Alliance of Cities, said Doyle sent subtle messages to legislators Thursday that he would use his line-item veto powers if the bill did not sufficiently protect consumers. But Huck said today he doubts the governor would veto the bill as now amended.

"If you look at how things shook out, it was a very bipartisan vote," Huck said. "It will make the governor's veto unlikely."

Competition was the main selling point for the bill, which was lobbied heavily by AT&T. The company hired 15 lobbyists for the job, while the cable industry remained officially neutral.

"We want competition in this state," Plale said. "It benefits the business climate in this state, and it benefits the consumers in this state."

Supporters of the bill had also pushed the legislation for its potential to create jobs, citing the support of the statewide Communications of America Union. Some critics thought lawmakers might back away from the bill after two large CWA locals dropped their support and the AFL-CIO on Tuesday changed its position to neutral, but the movement did little to sway the majority of senators.

"We lost and we lost big and that's the way it goes," Huck said. "Will the consumer be better off in the long run? Probably not."

Risser, D-Madison, argued this morning that corporate interests trumped the public good.

"When you have 15 high-priced lobbyists supporting a bill of this nature you know they're not getting paid just for the sake of being around," Risser said. "They are expected to produce for their employer and they did."