Taxes
     While most of the meeting's sessions amounted to lectures by experts, a discussion of how to deal with tax collection on electronic sales was met with the most clamor. Legislators and lobbyists jockeyed for a seat at the standing-room-only discussion that dissected four of the Advisory Commission on Electronic Commerce's proposals for taxing electronic transactions.
     NCSL officially has backed a proposal touted by the other Big Seven local organizations on the matter. Spearheaded by commissioner Michael Leavitt, the Republican governor of Utah, the plan calls for voluntary participation in a system that has remote sellers using a "trusted third party" to determine, collect and remit the appropriate sales tax for each transaction, based on the purchaser's jurisdiction. Frank Shafroth, director of the office of state federal relations for the National Governors' Association, detailed the widely-supported plan, and acknowledged that it has been sharply criticized.
     "It's not quite perfect," he said of the proposal. "We've learned about its shortcomings, and we haven't learned from a lot of people how great it is."
     Some have said the voluntary nature of the plan does not guarantee its success. But others, such as Adam Thierer of the Heritage Foundation and eFreedom Coalition, an anti-tax group, argued that it is unconstitutional because it requires vendors to collect taxes for states in which they are not represented.
     As the only panelist advocating the elimination of online sales taxes, Thierer received the most criticism from audience members. Sen. Joanne Emmonds, R-MI, even admonished him for not paying use taxes on a purchase of a shirt he said he bought online.
     But all the panelists reached consensus on what they thought would happen with the Internet tax commission, predicting "bloodshed" at the meeting next week in San Francisco and adding that it is unlikely that the group will reach its own consensus.
     "They'll issue a mushy set of recommendations that will tell us everything exactly but what we want to know," Thierer said.

Broadband
     If Internet taxation was the easy issue, then open access to broadband cable networks was the sticky one. Legislators gathered for a four-hour presentation that pitted those pushing for competitive access to the networks against representatives from AT&T, who argued against forced access.
     Although many states, such as Pennsylvania and New Mexico, have seen the introduction of open access legislation, the issue appeared to remain foreign to a handful lawmakers. After the pros and cons were addressed, Bell Atlantic Assistant Vice President Link Hoewing was brought in for a primer that covered remedial definitions of the Internet and other technology.
     The presentations by AT&T and the OpenNet Coalition invoked politically charged rhetoric that invigorated the early-morning session. AT&T's vice president of law and government affairs, Maria Arias- Chapleau, appealed to the business interests in the room by repeatedly referring to the company's exclusive contract with ExciteAtHome until 2002, and noting that the company does not possess the technology to open its network to competitors.
     "The market will drive us to open it," she said, "but until 2002 we will honor our contract."
     Greg Simon, co-director of the OpenNet Coalition, a group lobbying for open access, relegated the room into virtual silence by taking the podium and gallantly declaring that "this discussion is not about technology, it is about values." Spoken like a true politician, Simon stumped for the competitive Internet service providers with a slew of sound bites and dramatizations.
     "Ask (AT&T) one question," he said. "Why won't you take our money?"
     But Simon's speech was quickly cut down by Rick Cimerman, the director of state telecommunications policy for the National Cable Television Association. "If it wasn't such a serious topic, it would almost be funny," he said, referring to Simon's theatrics.
     But perhaps because the legislators recognized the seriousness of the topic, the Commerce and Communications committee deferred discussion on an open access resolution, a move that the Open Net Coalition lauded because a draft resolution presented to the group opposed open access. Neal Osten, the committee's director, said he wrote the resolution only as a means of fostering the debate. He added that he expected the issue to be further postponed until federal action is taken, noting that many legislators may not want to deal with such a prickly issue during an election year.

Committee Action
     The committee ultimately approved three resolutions that were passed unanimously during NCSL's business meeting. One endorsed the Millennium Digital Commerce Act, S. 761, as a means to facilitate digital signatures while still maintaining states' authority to deal with the issue and pass the Uniform Electronic Transactions Act, developed by The National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws. The group also approved a resolution calling for a committee to provide a preliminary report on state and local taxation of telecommunications by May 2000, when the group holds its annual meeting. It endorsed a third resolution that supports the Mobile Telecommunications Sourcing Act, S. 1755, which establishes that mobile phone calls be taxed to either a user's home or workplace.
—by Stephanie Lash