BILL TO RESTRUCTURE COLO. PUC MEETS QUICK DEATH IN 2004 STATE SESSION

A Colo. House committee killed a bill (HB-1031) that would have turned the Colo. PUC from an appointed body into an elected agency and expanded the agency to 7 members, each representing a congressional district. The House Business Affairs & Labor Committee put the bill on indefinite hold, effectively killing the measure for 2004. But the committee advanced a bill (HB-1065) to provide legal immunity from lawsuits to providers of “211” human services referrals. The immunity would be similar to protections afforded 911 agencies and operators.

The Wis. Assembly passed 2 related bills (AB-729 and AB- 374) that would impose procedural deadlines on Wis. PSC decisions. The measures would require the PSC to decide wholesale rate increase requests within 180 days and petitions for retail rate deregulation within 120 days. The bills go to the state Senate. They passed despite opposition from state CLECs and business interests, which argued they would impair the PSC’s ability to reach good decisions by establishing arbitrary deadlines.

An Ind. regulatory bill (HB-1084) would set time limits on proceedings before the Ind. Utility Regulatory Commission (IURC). The agency would have to establish a procedural schedule or dismiss a matter within 30 days of the initial petition; decide matters within 60 days of hearings or final comment round; and decide on petitions for reconsideration within 60 days after hearings. The IURC could extend these deadlines once per proceeding. The bill also would establish strict rules for ex parte communications.

A telecom regulation bill in S.C. (HB-4507) would prohibit imposition of usage-sensitive toll charges on intracounty call. Where multiple carriers provide local service in the same county, the bill would require carriers to negotiate intercarrier compensation arrangements by July 1. Another S.C. bill (HB-4773) would establish a process for carrier complaints that an incumbent is taking improper advantage of its dominant market position to prevent market entry or force a competitor out. On the retail side, the bill would deregulate rates for bundled service options of all local exchange providers.

In N.Y., AB-1458 would give absolute priority to 911 calls on wireless networks. Under this legislation, similar to a bill last year that failed in the Assembly, wireless providers would have to program their networks to bump other traffic offline to handle a 911 call if circuits were full.

An Ind. broadband policy bill (SB-436) would allow broadband providers a state tax credit of 3% of broadband investment, up to $22,500 annually for tax years through 2006. An Ind. telecom tax bill (HB-1114) would impose state sales tax on all services in a telecom service package unless the provider can clearly separate nontaxable portions on its books. An S.D. Internet infrastructure bill (HB-1004) would create a special state fund administered by the state Dept. of Education that would subsidize non-recurring costs of Internet access for rural schools that now have none. The bill would provide that 20% of eligible schools would get assistance each year until 2009. It would appropriate $436,000 yearly.

Mo. Gov. Bob Holden (D) called for state legislation that would make all identity theft offenses felonies and expand the identity-establishing items protected by law. Holden said he wants to see identity thieves get up to 7 years in prison on a first offense, with much more prison time when large amounts of money or goods are stolen. Currently, first offenses are criminal misdemeanors punishable by up to 6 months in jail. His proposal calls for protection for computer passwords, electronic signatures and biometric data such as fingerprints or retinal patterns.

An S.C. telemarketing bill (HB-4434) would make it a condition of state telemarketing contracts that the vendor must perform the job from a U.S. location using only employees who are U.S. citizens or legal aliens. The bill also would prohibit telemarketers from sending financial, credit or personal identification to any non-U.S. location without the customer’s explicit permission. An anti-spam bill in N.Y. (AB-709) would expand the state’s no-call telemarketing list to include e-mail addresses, and would ban sending advertising e-mails to anyone whose address is on the state list. Penalties would be the same as for no-call telemarketing violations. A similar bill last year failed to pass the Assembly.

A Wash. bill (HB-1006) would require public and quasi- public transportation agencies to compensate utilities for all costs of removing or relocating facilities in the path of intercity rail mass transit projects. Disputes over cost would be settled through binding arbitration. The bill’s intent is to prevent recurrence of the kind of relocation cost squabble such as occurred between Qwest and the Sound Transit Authority over relocation costs for a light rail project to link cities in the Puget Sound area, which threatened to delay the project. A similar bill passed last year but was vetoed by Gov. Gary Locke (D).

An Ind. administration bill (SB-468) would create a state Dept. of Information Technology that combines the duties of the current Technology Oversight Commission and Information Technology Div., centralizing all information technology systems oversight in a single agency. The dept. head would be the state’s chief information officer, appointed by the governor.