Today's Milwaukee Journal Sentinel cites the pending Wisconsin telephone deregulation bill as the latest example of "a growing number of Wisconsin bills written by lobbyists in recent years."
From education to health care to transportation, state lawmakers are introducing bills crafted by outside interests, often without disclosing lobbyists' involvement.
...The Journal Sentinel and other news media have reported that phone industry lobbyists and lawyers were heavily involved in drafting a bill sponsored by state Sen. Jeff Plale (D-South Milwaukee) and Rep. Josh Zepnick (D-Milwaukee) that would reduce regulation of landlines.
An industry group submitted a list of laws that it wanted phone companies to be exempt from, and an AT&T attorney proposed language for a first draft of the bill, the Legislative Reference Bureau's drafting notes show.
A commenter at the Journal Sentinel story nails the reason small businesses are opposing the bill:
...for Wisconsin small businesses no telephone regulation could mean no recourse for long outages, or chronic trouble, etc...There could also be increased cost issues for once deregulated products once the company is free to charge what they would like. Especially for rural businesses where cable competition may not be a viable alternative.
We've already ranted about this probably too many times. There could be a floor (probably by unrecorded voice) vote tomorrow in the Assembly.
- Barry Orton
I can't remember when the last time deregulating anything was good for society as a whole.
Posted by: Brian (neaguy) | April 21, 2010 at 08:01 PM
Kinda like Decade writing the CEJA?
Posted by: Yortly | April 28, 2010 at 03:04 PM