By Ron Thaniel
October 9, 2006

With the Senate recessing September 29 for the five-week election recess, odds are increasing that the greatest threat to local government authority to franchise the use of their rights-of-way is that key sections of The Advanced Telecommunications and Opportunity Reform Act of 2006 (H.R. 5252), including the preemptive video (cable) franchising language, will be attached to the expected year-end omnibus package of appropriation bills.

As a result, The U.S. Conference of Mayors is urging mayors to contact their Senators over the recess and express opposition to attaching the preemptive franchising language to the omnibus bill. In addition, while it is becoming increasingly unlikely that the massive bill, H.R. 5252, as a whole, will be passed before the end of the 109th Congress, the Conference of Mayors continues to urge mayors to express strong opposition to its sweeping state and local tax and franchising preemptions. In addition to the preemptive franchising language, H.R. 5252 would:

• Allow the providers of the video service to discriminate by picking and choosing which neighborhoods they wish to serve while bypassing all others completely.

• Make permanent the current moratorium on taxation of Internet access while ending the “grandfather” clause that currently allows communities to continue to impose taxes on Internet access. The moratorium is slated to expire in November of 2007.

• Place a new three-year moratorium on the imposition of new discriminatory taxes on mobile services such as cell phones. Discriminatory taxes are defined as any tax that is not generally applicable to all businesses in the jurisdiction.

Local and state government groups are united in their opposition to H.R. 5252. Those groups, in addition to the Conference of Mayors, are National League of Cities, National Association of Counties, National Governors Association, National Conference of State Legislatures, The Council of State Governments, and International City/County Management Association.