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from: Boston Globe

Locals fight to keep control of licensing cable TV companies

By Laura M. Colarusso, Globe Correspondent | June 3, 2007

As the Legislature focuses on a bill that would seize from municipalities the authority to approve cable TV licenses, local opposition to the proposed law is growing.

That resistance is expected to be on full display Tuesday when a legislative committee holds a public hearing on the bill, which would allow telecom companies to bypass local governments before entering their cable markets.

The Massachusetts Municipal Association, which advocates for cities and towns, has formed a task force to fight the initiative, known as the Massachusetts Cable Choice and Competition Act. Introduced in January, the proposed law would allow cable operators to bargain directly with the state for access to cities and towns.

"It is a bad law," said Reading Town Manager Peter Hechenbleikner, a member of the task force. "It's a bad law for local government and for local consumers. The better process is for local franchising to get the right agreement for each community."

Local officials fear the proposed arrangement would wrest control from municipalities, which have used the negotiations with cable providers to set the fees that fund local-access programming over the past three decades.

Proponents of the bill argue that the current process of negotiating town by town for a cable franchise takes too long. The legislation would streamline the process and bring competition, which would benefit the consumer, said Phil Santoro, a spokesman for Verizon, which has been pushing hard for a centralized procedure.

Santoro said it currently takes Verizon an average of 15 months to negotiate a license with a municipality in Massachusetts. Some talks have dragged on for two years, he said, despite state regulations that require negotiations to take no more than 12 months.

"What the bill attempts to do is find a way to balance the concerns of the local municipalities" and the local access community "with the desire of Verizon and any other company that wants to provide an alternative to current cable providers," Santoro said.

Verizon began applying for local licenses in 2005 and received its first a year later from Woburn, he said. So far, the company has secured 47 franchises in the state and is negotiating 22 others.

Both sides have been gearing up for the public hearing scheduled for Tuesday before the Joint Committee on Telecommunications, Utilities and Energy, during which supporters and opponents will be able to comment on the bill. The panel has until March of next year to review the initiative and make a recommendation; any input it receives at the hearing could affect its decision.

Santoro said 11 states -- California, Florida, Indiana, Kansas, Michigan, Missouri, New Jersey, North Carolina, South Carolina, Texas, and Virginia -- have statewide franchising agreements, while legislation to create state-level franchising is pending in 12 others, including Massachusetts.

Opposition among Massachusetts cities and towns has been strong from the start, and is growing. To date, at least 13 municipalities have passed resolutions against the bill, said Richard Reed, town manager of Bedford, one such community . At the same time, opponents across the state have initiated an aggressive letter-writing campaign to their legislators in an effort to stop the bill from being approved, he said.

The Massachusetts Municipal Association also has started an extensive campaign telling local leaders that the bill would allow Verizon and other telecom companies to cherry-pick neighborhoods for service.

"They want to target more affluent communities and leave behind a large number of areas where they would not compete," said Geoffrey Beckwith , executive director of the association. "The more education we do about the legislation, the more people are rising up and saying this is not right."

Santoro vigorously denied Verizon would favor customers based on income levels.

"That makes no sense from a business standpoint," he said. "We're a network-based business. The more people that are on the network, the more profitable it is for us, so for us to exclude people is just folly."

The bill was introduced by state Senator Steven Panagiotakos, a Democrat of Lowell, and state Representative James Vallee, a Democrat of Franklin, who say the new arrangement should benefit cable customers.

"I believe this legislation will promote competition, resulting in better prices and better service for consumers," Panagiotakos said. It also would dramatically speed up the licensing process by creating a 15-day window for state officials to review a cable license request. As long as the cable provider shows it would fulfill the requirements of the Massachusetts Cable Choice and Competition Act, the license would be granted.

The legislators say the bill would protect community interests by preserving local control over the content of their public, education, and government, or PEG, access channels. Communities also will continue to receive free TV service at all municipal buildings, they stated in a press release.

Many local officials remain unswayed, and some say they fear a statewide approach would homogenize PEG access.

North Reading's Board of Selectmen recently appealed to the state Department of Telecommunications and Energy asking that municipal authorities retain franchising authority to ensure residents receive benefits from increased competition.

"Those are decisions that need to be made on a case-by-case, community basis," said North Reading Town Manager Greg Balukonis. "We would hate to see a standard established on the state level that's not consistent with local needs."

If the bill is signed into law, town governments still would be able to collect up to 5 percent in fees from the cable companies to run their PEG programming channels. But a provision in the bill allows the money to be used for other municipal needs, such as school textbooks and road repair -- an arrangement critics say could undermine local programming.

"Towns are going to start asking themselves, 'Is it more important that I take care of police, fire, and teacher salaries, or is it more important that I fund the public-access channel?' " said Terry Duenas, executive director of the Cape Cod Community Media Center and chairman of MassAccess, a nonprofit association of public access channels. "Budgets are not easy."