SB 117: Amendments in the wings
The Ohio House Public Utilities Committee will meet tomorrow at 11 for what may be the final hearing on Senate Bill 117. They’re planning to take more testimony and mark up a final bill, so it’s likely to be a long day.
Various Committee members are planning to offer significant amendments. Here are a few I know about:
- Anti-abandonment. An amendment to require a cable company that switches to a state “Video Service Agreement” to continue serving the whole territory it was serving under its municipal franchise.
- Competition “trigger”. Several Reps whose districts are served by phone companies other than AT&T will try to preserve local cable franchising in communities where there’s no actual competition for video/broadband customers.
- I-Nets and public network services. There will be a proposal to preserve communities’ “institutional networks” and free public cable service agreements (schools, libraries, public safety, etc.) for some period of time.
- PEG channels and PEG fees. Local Voice Ohio has a number of proposals to mitigate the bill’s impact on public, educational and government access in situations where cable providers walk away from local franchise agreements. Examples: A local option to charge a dedicated PEG support fee (up to 2%) in addition to the 5% municipal franchise fee allowed by SB 117, and a requirement that VSAs keep all PEG channels in their basic service tiers.
- “Connect Ohio”: An amendment pushed by the Communications Workers, who are strong SB 117 advocates, to create an Ohio version of Connect Kentucky — a “public/private partnership” to promote more broadband deployment through in-depth, public access mapping and county-level broadband planning teams. This is CWA’s answer to the criticism that SB 117 does nothing to promote broadband deployment outside of AT&T’s mostly urban service area. The amendment will not include funding (a mistake, IMHO), but its version of “Connect Ohio” will be reasonably well aligned with the Governor’s Broadband Ohio strategy, so it could be a positive step.
That’s not all… the Committee will be asked to beef up the Commerce Department’s capacity to enforce the bill’s buildout and anti-redlining sections, and a couple of Committee members have their eye on the provision that allows Video Service Providers to appropriate private property.
Like I said, it’s going to be a long day. But some good may come of it. Stay tuned.
Update Tuesday evening: Apparently the Utilities Committee will not mark up the bill or do any voting tomorrow, after all. Word is that Committee members have more than thirty proposed amendments (some duplicative). So the Committee will take testimony tomorrow, and get to amendments and voting next week.