You
hear about states getting really testy over issues where the federal
government seems to want to pre-empt the states' rights. For them,
it's an issue of sovereignty, "the
full right and power of a governing body to govern itself without any
interference from outside sources or bodies". States get pretty upset about outsiders 'interfering' in their business.
And
yet, the states seem to think that counties should not have such
rights -- and that thinking is proving harmful not only to their
counties, it's harmful to the states themselves.
Consider the impact
that preventing local leadership from deciding issues regarding
whether or not to move ahead with fiber optic broadband and high
speed internet has on their counties' long-term prosperity and
sustainability.
Mayors'
comments, January 2016
“There's
a compelling need for fiberoptic broadband in the county.” the
Mayor said softly. “It's become a real issue for our citizens and
for our local businesses. Two of our local businesses moved to a
nearby town because it was the only way they could remain
competitive. At an economic development meeting last week, we heard
that a company was inquiring about land to site a new facility but
they moved on to look at other sites because we don't have broadband.
We didn't get so much as a phone call.
“And
our schools, it's a big issue there, too. If we don't prepare our
kids, they won't be able to compete in life. If we don't change with
the times, there's no telling what this place will look like in ten
years”
That
in a nutshell is a composite of my conversations with county mayors
and county executives across Tennessee, especially those whose
counties border the seven cities in Tennessee that have the broadband
and high
speed
internet they lack.
Almost
to a man, county mayors recounted the impact of business
opportunities lost to the county next door. To be more specific, the
city next door because the counties in which the cities exist don't
have broadband either. Morristown and Chattanooga are examples:
cities with broadband in a counties (Hamblen and Hamilton,
respectively) that doesn't.
And,
again almost to a man, it seems that the Mayors look to their state
senators and representatives for a solution but hold out little hope
that they'll get the help they need.
There's
a story here that needs telling and I begin it from the perspective
of understanding the perception of power. The details of the quandary
all county mayors and county commissions face come later.
There
is a misconception about local politicians' power relative to the
power of their state counterparts. County Mayors look to their
representatives actually represent them, to do their bidding for them
and to use their perceived power and influence in that distant state
house to help them with projects that will, in turn, help the Mayors'
constituencies (which are also theirs, though many forget that).
I
listened to a Mayor tell me that the legislation I am promoting, and
that they want --to bring broadband and high speed internet to
Tennessee's rural communities -- would fail. When he went on to tell
me why, it was clear that he was describing a scenario in which the
senator or representative was openly working against the will of his
county and framing it as 'the way it's going to be'.
There's
something wrong with this picture – and there's a way to change it.
First,
the 'way it is'. It's the perception
projected and reinforced by the the state legislators that drives the
framing of the discussion. They will say, “Business should be left
to the private sector. After all, they're the job creators, they're
the investors. They're putting up the money. They call the tunes.”
When that fallacy* (BS) goes unchallenged, it becomes accepted fact.
Sadly,
county mayors and county commissioners believe it, and genuflect
accordingly. In truth, it is (or can be) the local bodies that (can)
call the tune – if only they recognized that they have the power –
and how it works, or can.
County
mayors and county commissioners working together have (or can have)
the power because they are the ones closest to the people, and they
are the ones who can rally the people to bring out the votes. They
rarely see this is the case. This accounts for the genuflection, the
collaboration with state legislators in which they assume the
subordinate role.
A
case in point is found in the way the expansion (or lack of) of
broadband throughout the state has evolved. Here, some cities took
charge of their own destinies, while others did not. The outcomes of
these differing choices speak volumes.
Over
the last twenty or so years, it became clear that fiber optic
broadband and high speed internet are as necessary for community
development and economic growth as electricity was found to be
essential in the 1920s.
Deciding
who gets this awesome, disruptive power has changed over the last
twenty years. Prior to 1999, the deciders were the giant internet
service providers, the AT&Ts, Comcasts and Charters, who used
their significant power and influence in Washington as well as the
states to craft a 'sharing' arrangement which led to geographic
'turfs', much like the mobs did historically. Each one gets a
geographic region to exploit, free of competition from the others.
They agree on pricing, service and the like in a general sense but
they're quite clear on one thing: customers get little or no say.
In
this model, many parts of each territory will receive short shrift
because there's no economic justification to be there. Consumers can
clamor all they want but the reality is all consumers the in an area
have only have one provider – take it or leave it – and many of
them don't get it at all.
Now,
companies can't just do
that
– or can they? They can if the state
legalizes it. And, they did. Corporate lobbyists greased the palms of
legislators and told them, often explicitly, “We want to go where
the business is and we don't want to go where it's too little to be
profitable. And, we don't want anyone else to go there either. Make
it so.”
In
Tennessee in 1999, that approach was wearing thin. City folk, mainly,
were tired of getting little or no service, having their prices
increased at will and, more often than not, being ignored by their
service providers and helpless to do anything about it. Finally, they
got so mad that their combined complaints forced their legislators to
let another competitor in – the public electric utility.
To
be clear, fiber optics came in to use, not for internet, but to
improve the performance of the electric systems themselves. Broadband
and High speed internet were an 'overlay' on the electric grid –
and a potentially profitable one. Potentially, because it was very
expensive and there was no guarantee it would be accepted.
Accepting
that they would have to concede some business, the large ISPs
negotiated an agreement to wit the public electric utilities would
offer competing services but
limit those offerings to only
their
electric customers, or their 'footprint'. Electric co-operatives were
excluded from participating.
This
limitation was significant because it prevented many utilities from
serving their own counties, many parts of which were served by
electric co-ops. That's why Morristown can't offer its services to
Hamblen County, Chattanooga can't serve Hamilton, etc.
Fast
forward five years or so. Seven public utilities had taken on the
challenges. They used bond issues, grants and lines of credit to get
started and had business plans that predicted five or more years to
achieve break even. Happily, many were in the black in three years or
less.
And,
their success made two things clear: open competition leads to better
outcomes for consumers; and, broadband technology really is
every bit as necessary as electricity, water, roads and bridges. In
short, it is a public utility and should be considered as such. The
major ISPs disagreed, and they held on to the 1999 agreement with
iron fists.
Something
else became clear as well. The cities that had broadband and high
speed internet grew and prospered well beyond the fortunes of the
rest of the state's communities – precisely due to the importance
of the technology to so many aspect of society. Businesses needed it
for the speed and the capacity to handle huge quantities of data and
video in record time. Schools needed it because it revolutionized the
ways education is delivered to students of all ages, including
working adults pursuing degrees part time. The medical field suddenly
found value in changing the ways care is delivered – long distance,
and at far lower costs. Insurance companies salivated at how the
amazing decrease in the costs of delivering care impacted their
bottom lines.
Sadly,
counties adjacent to the cities found themselves unattractive to new
businesses and industry, all of which demanded broadband as a
condition for locating new facilities. Now it was clear that the law
protecting the large ISPs was harming counties, education, care
delivery and more. A change was needed.
The
change is still needed in some twenty states, and it is strongly
resisted by the ISPs who insist that business should be left to the
private sector, and that governments should not compete with private
interests – the so-called 'job creators'. Not surprisingly, they
won't acknowledge that by protecting their
interests,
they have inhibited economic growth and the jobs that come with it,
hobbled the state's public school systems, prevented the expansion of
tele-medicine into rural communities, and more. Worse still, they've
done this for over seventeen years – in at least twenty states.
Just
as fiber optic technology has transformed so many areas of society,
it is now becoming clear that local communities should themselves
become the engines of transformative, disruptive change.
Looking
at the old, and in many cases still 'current' political structure,
power is derived from money, at the expense of voters. Counties see
themselves as less the drivers than as pawns in power games.
Local
communities recognize that laws passed at the state level are harmful
and, that often times (some would say 'more often than not),
legislators are influenced by campaign donors at their expense. But,
they feel somewhat powerless to change the 'system'. They know that
when legislation is introduced to free their communities to pursue
their own destinies (and return sovereign rights of self
determination to local leadership), it will be met with an onslaught
of money and lobbyists directed at state legislators. It's a given,
it's understood, and it's accepted.
Enter
another advantage of the internet. The power of information. If
people are elected by voters to serve the people for the common good,
it follows that legislators who are serving the corporate good should
be identified and called out. If they insist on doing their donor's
bidding, they should be tossed out.
How
does a body know for sure what their representative's motives are? By
searching the internet to see who the donors to the representative
are and just how much a legislator gets from them. In the case of
broadband, one only has to look into each politician's pubic records,
as aggregated on sites like www.followthemoney.org
and compare the legislator's votes to the amount of money received.
Then,
it is incumbent upon the local
legislators
to inform their constituents. If,
say, not having broadband and high speed internet is increasingly
threatening to a community's current economic viability; and
if the
county's future prospects are at risk for lack of an essential public
utility; and
if
the quality of education a county's youth receive puts theirs and
the county's future prospects in jeopardy, it
is incumbent on
the county to act to regain its sovereign rights to secure its
current and future prosperity.
Further,
if the threat goes beyond one county, to envelop other counties and,
indeed, the state itself, it is incumbent upon the local legislators
of all counties and communities to unite to undertake a class action
against the state itself.
It
is also incumbent upon well-informed and educated citizens to share
the knowledge with their fellow citizens and to unite them, beyond
county lines if necessary, to call out their legislators and to
demand they do what's right.
I
believe there is ample proof on the internet and elsewhere to make
the case that counties from one end of Tennessee to the other are
experiencing serious and grievous harm at the hands of their state
legislators and that they are further threatened by the actions of
their legislators in the new session of the 2016 legislature. And,
should that prove to be the case, local legislators are in their
rights to inform their constituents and ask them to unite to unseat
their representatives statewide – and sue the state for
compensatory damages.
There
is ample evidence that by allowing public electric utilities to
expand, those utilities that did so have prospered above and beyond
expectations – and that, had the entire state done so, the state
would have attracted more investment, created thousands more jobs and
had the wherewithal to lift the fortunes of the majority of its
citizens, which is indeed its implied mandate. Of the people, by the
people, for the people.
One
final thought. Tennessee is not the only state that threatens its own
counties' current and future prosperity. If it takes aggressive steps
to change, the result can be that the state will be viewed as more
attractive than the nineteen other states that will remain entrenched
and willingly put themselves behind the curve. On second thought, I
believe the number should be eighteen states because Alabama is
starting to take the steps necessary to expand broadband.
Citizens
of Tennessee, Don't take too long to make a decision.
Joe
Malgeri
* Consider: Since implementing broadband and high speed internet in their
cities,
- Chattanooga has added some 2800 new jobs
- attracted bright, young creatives, many of whom are starting new ventures of their own
- attracted venture capital to fund the better ideas
- introduced new ways of educating their students via interactive lessons with universities in California
- Morristown has attracted new businesses with hundreds of new jobs
- Pulaksi has added over a thousand new jobs innate-related fields
- Clarksville attracted a $600 million investment from Google
Consider which of these awesome advances would have come about had the city mayors, county commissioners and local businesses not taken on the giants.
Consider, too, that the reasons that ISPs still fight the bills necessary to bring much needed changes to Tennessee are the same old hackneyed claims that were proven false.
Finally, consider that the only way that ISPs can thwart the state's advance into the 21st century is if our own state's elected officials sell us out.
They can, and they will, unless Tennesseans step us to tell them to do the right thing -- and dump them if they don't.
CITIZENS, tell your County Commissions and County executives to pass Resolutions spelling out your desires (A link to Jefferson County's Resolution, passed November 16, 2015, is included below
CITIZENS, sign petitions demanding broadband and high speed internet throughout your counties
CITIZENS, write, call, email your representatives, and the Governor, and your local newspapers, and your local talk shows, and your local TV media
Finally, CITIZENS, make sure to share this post with your friends, families, local businesses, educators and anyone who has a vested interest in making Tennessee a prospering state.
Jefferson County Resolution
https://www.dropbox.com/s/bv61t6n5prt748c/JC%20Resolution.pdf?dl=0
A Roadmap you can use to find your own legislators and advice on how to proceed
www.4adnamictn.blogspot.com
Look for the article: Marching Orders
