Jack Fields: “thanks to an amendment offered last year by the gentleman from Colorado [Mr. Schaefer], and adopted by the committee…”

“thanks to an amendment offered last year by the gentleman from Colorado [Mr. Schaefer], and adopted by the committee, the bill today requires local governments that choose to impose franchise fees to do so in a fair and equal way to tell all communication providers. We did this in response to mayors and other local officials. The so-called Schaefer amendment, which the Stupak amendment seeks to change, does not affect the authority of local governments to manage public rights-of-way or collect fees for such usage. The Schaefer amendment is necessary to overcome historically based discrimination against new providers. In many cities, the incumbent telephone company pays nothing, only because they hold a century-old charter, one which may even predate the incorporation of the city itself. In many cases, cities have made no effort to correct this unfairness. If local governments continue to discriminate in the imposition of franchise fees, they threaten to Balkanize the development of our national telecommunication infrastructure. For example, in one city, new competitors are assessed up to 11 percent of gross revenues as a condition for doing business there. When a percentage of revenue fee is imposed by a city on a telecommunication provider for use of rights-of-way, that fee becomes a cost of doing business for that provider, and, if you will, the cost of a ticket to enter the market. That is anticompetitive.…”