Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Get email alerts on the SB66 Telecom UTOPIA topic
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
House approves telecom finance bill after compromise that grandfathered early municipal participants
Summary
A lengthy floor debate over municipal telecommunications financing (first substitute Senate Bill 66) ended with a compromise substitute amendment that grandfathered roughly 18 municipalities that had already invested, required notice and public hearings for later entrants, and recorded final passage by the House (52–23).
First substitute Senate Bill 66 — the large municipal telecommunications and financing measure often discussed in the context of the UTOPIA municipal broadband effort — dominated the time-certain portion of the March 1 floor session.
Representative Urquhart framed the issue around four concerns: exclusivity (municipalities should not lock in a single private provider), intermixing of project revenues with general sales-tax receipts, the need to set aside pledged sales tax revenue if those revenues are used to secure bonds, and whether voters should be allowed to approve long-term pledges of tax revenue. Several members urged that the public have a vote before cities pledge long-term tax revenues; others argued that municipalities had already invested significant sums and should be grandfathered.
Representative Adams offered a substitute amendment that the sponsor described as a compromise: it grandfathered municipalities that had already acted (roughly 18 entities that had expended roughly $1.2 million in planning/early investments), required notice (14-day) and a public hearing for municipalities using revenue bonds, and applied a three-year sunset on the vote-of-the-people requirement for later entrants. Supporters characterized the amendment as a pragmatic middle ground; opponents said requiring votes in some cases was necessary to protect taxpayers.
The House adopted the substitute amendment and later passed the first substitute Senate Bill 66 by recorded vote, 52 yes to 23 no. Floor debate mixed economic-development arguments urging public investment in broadband infrastructure and procedural concerns about local accountability and oversight.
