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from: Callahan's Diary

SB 117 passes House 94 to 2; Rep. Miller claims Dems “held the line”

Every single Democrat voted for it.

The two “No” votes were Republicans Tom Brinkman of Cincinnati and Jeff Wagner of Seneca County.

My Representative, Eugene Miller, never bothered to respond to an email I sent him about SB 117 weeks ago. He apparently never responded to messages from my neighbors Tim and Gloria Ferris, either — at least until today, when he sent Gloria an email with this (a straight cut-and-paste, all errors in the original):

As a results Democrats’ efforts and negotiations, this bill now protects both companies that want to compete in the cable TV market, and local fees associated with that business.

Democrats held the line,and fought to improve this bill foe the good of all parties involved.

-Major changes through amendment
-Gives Commerce department authority
-Assurances of voluntary compliance
-Impose civil penalties.
-Revoke a video service agreement for repeated violations.
-Requires providers to offer at least three PEG on basic tier.
-Providers may recover costs from subscribers related to converting PEG channels for broadcast.
-Video service application fee at $2000
-Requires providers to pay underpaid franchise fee amounts,with interest,within 30 days.
-Cap audit contingency fee collections at what auditor would have made on hourly fee.

Representative Miller’s district includes parts of the following Cleveland neighborhoods: South Collinwood, Glenville, Hough, St. Clair-Superior, Goodrich Park, North Broadway, Tremont, Clark-Fulton, Brooklyn Centre and a little slice of Old Brooklyn. He also represents Bratenahl and downtown.

The likelihood that most (or any) residents of Rep. Miller’s district will soon get access to AT&T’s U-Verse broadband video service — which is the point of SB 117, as in “cable competition” — is pretty small. Ditto the likelihood that many District 10 residents are in line for those “thousand good jobs” the bill will supposedly create.

The likelihood that Time Warner will eventually cut back or abandon service to one or more of these neighborhoods, now that Rep. Miller has helped free them from the constraints of their franchise with the City of Cleveland, is somewhat larger.

The likelihood that city facilities, schools, and the half-dozen community technology centers in his district just lost franchise-leveraged resources, as a result of what Rep. Miller calls “holding the line”, is larger still.

But I guess the residents of his district are not among the “parties involved” who deserved Rep. Miller’s protection.

Rep. Miller just became my Representative last year. I’ve never dealt with him and up to now I had no basis for an opinion about him, good or bad.

But now I do.