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Louisiana Town's Broadband Battle Continues
by Chloe Albanesius
The legal battle over a Louisiana town's efforts to offer telecommunications services to its residents continued last week with a new round of lawsuits filed by a private-sector competitor and two of the city utility's customers.
Lafayette has faced numerous legal challenges to its planned build-out of an existing fiber-optic system that offers high-speed Internet service. After BellSouth and Cox Communications, the dominant communications providers in the region, demanded a referendum on the issue earlier this year, voters in July backed city expenditures of $125 million to extend the network from city agencies to small businesses and homes.
Nonetheless, the lawsuits keep coming. In a filing on Friday with a Lafayette District Court, BellSouth requested that the $125 million bond be revoked because it allegedly violates Louisiana's Fair Competition Act.
State law allows cities to "pledge the resources" of their utilities in order to secure bonds. Lafayette Utilities System maintains that such authority lets them dip into the funds from other utilities should the revenue from its telecom venture not cover costs. BellSouth, however, points to a section of the competition law that says bonds "shall be secured and paid for solely from the revenues generated by the local government from providing the covered service."
The bond should be paid off "exclusively" with revenue from the telecom business, BellSouth said. Any other interpretation would "totally eviscerate the act's prohibition against cross-subsidization."
BellSouth's complaint came a day after two citizens of Lafayette, Matthew Eastin and Elizabeth Naquin, sued the utility for, among other things, overcharging electricity customers and having discrepancies in public filings.
City officials on Sept. 9 published details of the project in a local newspaper, opening a 30-day period for public objections to any provisions. The plaintiffs argue that because Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco on Sept. 6 temporarily suspended all legal deadlines after Hurricane Katrina until at least Sept. 25, the 30-day comment deadline should be extended until Oct. 26.
Eastin and Naquin also claim that the ordinance published in the local newspaper is worded differently than what people voted for in July. Voters approved a "secondary or subordinate pledge of the revenues of the utilities systems," while the ordinance provides for a pledge of the "residual revenues" from the utilities service.
"This discrepancy alone is cause for the court to rule the ordinance invalid," according to the plaintiffs. Both also accuse the utility of overcharging its electricity customers in order to fund its broadband business.
City-Parish President Joey Durel told The Advocate that he is not surprised by the lawsuit. "They refuse to let the people get what they voted for," he said.
In Michigan, meanwhile, The Grand Rapids Press reports that the Grand Haven Township Board this week approved a plan that would test a wireless Internet system that could be expanded to all of Ottawa County by 2007. Grand Haven already has a privately funded, citywide wireless network, and the new plan would expand that access to the dozen or so other cities in the county.
Governor Slams Security Aid To Connecticut
Connecticut's governor slammed federal lawmakers for proposing only $7.13 million in homeland security aid to the state in fiscal 2006. The funds are "woefully inadequate" Gov. M. Jodi Rell, a Republican, said in a letter to the Connecticut congressional delegation.
The state received $21 million in fiscal 2005, primarily through Homeland Security Department grants and the Urban Area Security Initiative, both of which would sustain cuts under the fiscal 2006 bill cleared by Congress last week. Federal lawmakers have been battling over the standard by which security funds are distributed to the states.
Rell slammed the current approach of providing 0.75 percent of the federal kitty in guaranteed funding per state, plus any additional risk-based money Connecticut might receive, as "a lobbying contest. States that are most successful in making their case before the Department of Homeland Security will get the bulk of the funding," she wrote.
The governor pointed to Connecticut's major highways, nuclear power facility and ports as targets for terrorism. Proposed funding is "utterly insufficient to support the actions needed to protect the people of our state."
This is not the first time a governor in the tri-state New York area has lodged a complaint about security funding mechanisms. Former New Jersey Gov. James McGreevey last year was vocal in his opposition to funding levels for the state, noting that Wyoming received $26.34 in per-capita funding for emergency responders, while New Jersey received $4.67 per capita. McGreevey, a Democrat, also was irked that millions in federal dollars were used to secure the site of the 2004 Republican National Convention in New York City.
Report: States Are Adopting Tech Frameworks
States are making significant progress toward adopting technology frameworks known as enterprise architecture systems that are intended to improve communications and data sharing, according to a Wednesday report from the National Association of Chief Information Officers.
Thirty-seven states and the District of Columbia responded to NASCIO's survey, and most reported that their efforts are focused on technology architecture. A small number of respondents said they are branching into other areas like business architecture, performance management and process architecture. "More states need to follow their lead," the report concluded.
The report comes after the Justice Department last week gave NASCIO a $500,000 grant to promote the adoption of a common framework for information sharing among governments. The money will go toward eight specific initiatives over the next two years, including an XML Internet programming standard and marketing NASCIO's enterprise architecture program.
Three E-Government Bills Is A Charm
California continues to churn out the technology-related bills, with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger this week signing measures touching on e-health, e-voting and the monitoring of sex offenders.
Under S.B. 367, the state will create a Web site with information on processing complaints and inquiries about insurance and healthcare providers.
Another bill, S.B. 370, requires a paper trail for all e-voting machines.
The third measure, A.B. 437, requires sex-offender Web sites to include dates of conviction and release from prison on profiles of convicted offenders.
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