The Tennessee Senate may hear a small-cells bill “as early as Thursday morning or Monday evening,” a spokeswoman for Senate Republicans emailed Tuesday after the Finance, Ways and Means Committee voted 11-0 Tuesday to clear SB-2504. Amendments included a “concession” to local governments to exclude “regulatory poles such as stop signs and no-parking signs,” sponsor state Sen. Bill Ketron said at the livestreamed hearing. The Republican said 5G service enabled by the bill “is going to transform the world.” Ketron worried at first that small cells would be ugly, but pictures convinced him otherwise, he said. The House passed its own small-cells HB-2279 last week (see 1803270032).
A final Maryland House vote is expected Wednesday on net neutrality and ISP privacy bills designed to counter recent actions by national Republicans, an aide to HB-1654 sponsor Del. Bill Frick (D) told us Tuesday. The House passed the bill on second reading Tuesday with a GOP amendment to additionally apply net neutrality restrictions to state or municipal broadband providers. House lawmakers rejected three other Republican amendments, including one to extend net neutrality restrictions to edge providers, another to extend privacy restrictions to membership-based websites and a third to keep the bill from becoming effective unless New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Virginia and North Carolina passed similar rules. Bill co-sponsor Del. Kirill Reznik (D) called Republican amendments “nonsensical” in a tweet from the House floor. “The proposed Maryland laws are likely to be pre-empted by the FCC, are unsound, and should be rejected,” said Free State Foundation President Randolph May: “Were they to be adopted, the ‘neutrality’ and nondiscrimination requirements, and privacy mandates, should also apply to the websites like Facebook,” particularly given the Cambridge Analytica controversy (see 1804020043 and 1804030048).
The California Senate Public Safety Committee voted 5-1 for a transparency bill that would require local law enforcement to have public notice and comment before using new surveillance technologies. It needs two more committee hearings in the Senate before it can get a floor vote. Law enforcement officials opposed SB-1186 by Sen. Jerry Hill (D) during the livestreamed hearing. Localities can choose to make surveillance transparency rules, said California Police Chiefs Association Legislative Advocate Jonathan Feldman. “We don’t need to do this at the state.” Local law enforcement doesn’t have time to participate in public hearings on new surveillance technology, he said. The bill would draw a road map for criminals, said California State Sheriffs' Association Legislative Director Cory Salzillo. Hill countered, “The mere knowledge of a police tactic does not render it useless.” Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Hannah-Beth Jackson (D), whose committee is to hear SB-1186 next, asked public safety witnesses how to protect against abuses if not through a transparency measure like this. Salzillo replied that courts can protect the public against inappropriate privacy intrusions. But Jackson questioned having to involve a lawyer every time the public wants to know what technologies are used by law enforcement. The American Civil Liberties Union is neutral because it supports transparency but doesn’t like exemptions in the bill for elected sheriffs and district attorneys, said Kevin Baker, ACLU California legislative director. Several California localities passed or are close to passing surveillance transparency proposals, and local politicians in other states also are promising measures (see 1804020026).
Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper (D) signed legislation Monday updating the state broadband support program. SB-2 would speed transition to broadband from voice support, while HB-1099 would condition an incumbent’s right of first refusal under the program upon matching the speed and price proposed by a new entrant. The Colorado Broadband Office supports SB-2, emailed Chief Operating Officer Brian Shepherd. Starting 2019, it “dramatically accelerates” how much money is transitioned to the rural broadband program, completing that migration in 2023, he said. While supporting rural broadband deployment, CenturyLink raised concerns that SB-2 will rush the transition. “We advocated for a plan to transfer funding from the High-Cost Support Mechanism at a reasonable 20 percent per year while the broadband board begins the process of granting funds for broadband applicants over the next five years,” a CenturyLink spokeswoman said. “We are disappointed with SB-2’s accelerated step-down amendment, as it drastically increases the initial transfer percentage to 60 percent. This will have an impact on the high-cost rural consumers who depend on receiving voice services at comparable rates to those in larger metropolitan areas.” Ken Fellman, a Colorado telecom attorney for local governments, supported SB-2 and HB-1099. The first bill “puts a lot more money into the broadband fund a lot quicker than some of the carriers would have wanted, and that’s a good thing,” he said. Localities next year will seek more changes to the fund, including getting more local officials on the fund’s board and opening the fund up to municipal broadband projects, Fellman said.
Momentum could be growing for transparency bills that would require public notice and comment before using new surveillance technologies, privacy advocates said in interviews. Several California localities passed or are close to passing measures, and local politicians in other states also are promising measures. A California Senate panel plans to take up a bill Tuesday. Advocates said the state bill could be stronger, but law enforcement remains opposed to what it says could guide criminals.
The National Capital Region is “blanketing social media” and doing a flurry of local media interviews before Thursday’s regional test of the Wireless Emergency Alert (WEA) system, District of Columbia Homeland Security and Emergency Management Agency Director Chris Rodriguez, said in a Friday interview. The District will join 19 other nearby jurisdictions in a test from 10 to 11 a.m. (see 1803280055). “Our job as homeland security professionals is to provide lifesaving information to the public in an actual emergency,” he said. “We take that responsibility and that duty very seriously, and we need to practice that capability, because the last thing we want to do is in a real emergency be using this capability for the first time.” Users in the District will get an alert saying it’s a WEA test and no further action is required, he said. “We’re not going to do the Hawaii thing,” said Rodriguez, referring to the false alarm about a missile headed for the Pacific island state (see 1803160042). The District has about six or seven layers of review before a message is sent, he said. “No one person can send out a wireless emergency alert,” but the process still takes under a minute, he said. “We want to make sure that when the public hears from us, the public knows that it’s an emergency.” While HSEMA tests WEA every month internally, Thursday will be “the first coordinated regional test” of WEA to the general public, Rodriguez said. Success will be to “very quickly disseminate wireless emergency alerts to the public,” he said. Alerts will go out in phases over a half-hour period, with each jurisdiction taking turns hitting "send" about every 15 seconds, Rodriguez said. Alerts will go to anyone with a phone in the area, including out-of-town visitors, because WEA is based on proximity rather than area code, he said. HSEMA is coordinating with Destination D.C. to help get word out about the upcoming test through hotels and tourism organizations, a HSEMA spokeswoman added. Some users may get multiple alerts because the 20 jurisdictions overlap in some places, the director said. After the test, the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments will gauge public reaction with an online survey, he said.
New Jersey should stop diverting 911 fee revenue to unrelated purposes, said a New Jersey state lawmaker with a bill that addresses fees but is criticized by FCC Commissioner Mike O’Rielly and others for not stopping diversion altogether (see 1803210050). In an interview, Assemblywoman Valerie Huttle (D) said lawmakers can’t fully shut off the leak unless there’s a change to the New Jersey Constitution. The New Jersey Assembly Homeland Security and State Preparedness Committee has a hearing Thursday at 10 a.m. on Huttle’s 911 diversion bill (AB-2371) and three other 911 bills.
Bills asking state utility commissions to oversee net neutrality are raising disagreement among state officials. Some say state commissions can and should handle the responsibility, but others said such oversight is impractical or better handled at the federal level. At a Wednesday hearing in Massachusetts, a state senator driving net neutrality legislation asked if industry opponents would at least consider signing a memorandum of understanding.
USTelecom will “aggressively challenge” state and municipal net neutrality efforts that are inconsistent with the FCC’s December order, USTelecom CEO Jonathan Spalter said Monday. Many expect industry lawsuits challenging state actions including a Washington state law and five gubernatorial executive orders (see 1803230041). Acknowledging litigation is likely, a Massachusetts Senate special committee said Monday “there are strong arguments to support state action in this area and the uncertainty of the Federal legal landscape should not prevent states from acting.” Democratic lawmakers in Colorado and Baltimore also unveiled proposals.
An Arizona VoIP deregulation bill changed bill numbers as state lawmakers shuffled legislation. Lawmakers last week struck the text of the House-passed HB-2106 so they could use it as a vehicle for another bill. They moved the VoIP language into HB-2209, formerly a parking bill pending in the Senate. It means the House will have to vote again on the VoIP bill if it’s passed by the Senate, said its author, state Rep. Jeff Weninger (R), in a Friday interview. The bill would prohibit the Arizona Corporation Commission from regulating rates, terms or service quality standards of IP and VoIP services (see 1802210005). It notes changing technology and supports the federal government overseeing the internet, Weninger said. Arizona never intended for VoIP or other IP services to be regulated, and while the state commission hasn’t tried to regulate them, it’s important to “get it codified,” he said.