Michael Copps, FCC commissioner, speaks out in favor of municipal self-determination: Copps is one of two Democrats out of five FCC commissioners, and he is favor of allowing municipalities to determine whether or not building broadband networks makes sense for their citizens.
He says, "I think we do a grave injustice in trying to hobble municipalities. That's an entrepreneurial approach, that's an innovative approach. Why don't we encourage that instead of having bills introduced--'Oh, you can't do this because it's interfering with somebody's idea of the functioning of the marketplace.' And then the marketplace is not functioning in those places."
He also notes, "...a municipality is a democratically run institution. They can make their own decisions."
What this issue keeps coming down to is: why are state legislatures making decisions that reduce the ability for self-determination of their municipalities in consultation with the taxpayers who write the checks and elect officials.
Taxpayers are already, without their consultation, feeding billions of dollars in subsidies, tax abatement, and other money from public coffers or their own pockets in the form of surcharges and telecom taxes directly to private companies. This use of taxpayer dollars isn't on the table, for some reason. Only the issue of how municipalities might fund--through risk-limited public/private ventures, bonds, or other mechanisms--broadband networks in towns and cities where they're hungry for competitive Internet access or have no high-speed service at all.