A draft legislative text proposed by the Department of Transportation included several provisions designed to accelerate broadband deployment. Department officials sent a copy of the Generating Renewal, Opportunity, and Work with Accelerated Mobility, Efficiency, and Rebuilding of Infrastructure and Communities throughout America Act -- a six-year funding proposal known as the Grow America Act -- to Congress Monday. “It is in the national interest for the Department of Transportation and State departments of transportation to expand the use of rights-of-way on Federal-aid highways to accommodate broadband infrastructure; to ensure the safe and efficient accommodation of broadband infrastructure in the public right-of-way; to identify areas where additional broadband infrastructure is most needed; to include broadband stakeholders in the transportation planning process; to coordinate highway construction plans with other statewide telecommunications and broadband plans; and to improve broadband connectivity to rural communities and improve broadband services in urban areas,” said the bill text in a section on broadband infrastructure deployment. The bill text calls for broadband coordination and best practices that would compel state departments of transportation to include a broadband utility coordinator and to “provide for online registration of broadband infrastructure entities that seek to be included in such broadband infrastructure coordination efforts within the State.” It also would call for coordination involving the FirstNet public safety network. The department also would offer grants, and applicants would be assessed in part on best practices involving “integration of transportation planning and investment decisions with other land-use and economic development decisions, including water infrastructure and broadband deployment,” it said. Another section of the draft proposal on rail policy would dictate that no later than 120 days after enactment, the Department of Transportation and the FCC would have to “coordinate to assess spectrum needs and availability for implementing positive train control systems,” which “may include conversations with external stakeholders,” the text said. “During these next two months, though, all of us who work in Washington need to be relentless in trying to get to ‘yes’ on a bill that is truly transformative and that brings the country together,” Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx said in a statement.
Republican Sen. Mike Lee of Utah has some questions about the FTC’s decision to not investigate Google. A spokeswoman for Lee told us the senator plans to “discuss these matters with the FTC and the parties,” but has “no plans at this time to hold a hearing,” she said. “In short, we are interested in how the FTC allowed a confidential report to be disclosed and, second, what conversations if any the FTC or Google had with the White House about the pending investigation,” the spokeswoman said. “We are not likely at this time to re-examine the underlying merits of the investigation, which was closed. Our interest is in oversight.” Google and the FTC had no immediate comment.
House Republicans want to know why the FCC is relocating more than 200 servers to West Virginia from Washington, D.C. “Given the committee’s strong interest in the manner in which the commission is managing its own information technologies, we are writing to seek information to better understand the facts and circumstances surrounding the planned relocation of these servers and the impact, if any, such relocation may have on the FCC’s document management practices,” Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton, R-Mich., Communications Subcommittee Chairman Greg Walden, R-Ore., and Commerce Oversight Subcommittee Chairman Tim Murphy, R-Pa., wrote the FCC in a letter Friday. They asked for details about the servers themselves and about the contractor responsible for the server relocation. They want to know how the relocation will provide cost savings, and want the FCC to respond by April 10.
Rep. Alex Mooney, R-W.Va., introduced legislation Thursday that would “exempt providers of broadband Internet access service from Federal universal service contributions,” said the text for HR-1712. The two-page bill is called the Freedom From Internet Tax Act, said a copy provided by Mooney’s spokesman. “Overzealous government bureaucrats should keep their hands off the internet,” Mooney told us in a statement Friday. “The President has proposed the internet be treated like a utility with the potential for fees, the cost of which would be passed on to users. Since its inception the internet has been a free and open tool for all to use and enjoy without interference from Washington. It should stay free and it should not be taxed.” The bill was referred to the Commerce Committee. Mooney isn't on Commerce. The bill has no co-sponsors. A concern at several oversight hearings this month involved broadband service becoming subject to such USF fees, which some connected with the FCC reclassification of broadband as a Communications Act Title II telecom service. Mooney’s legislation text provides a straightforward exemption for broadband providers, citing the FCC Feb. 26 net neutrality order for definitions of what constitutes such service.
House Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., expressed his personal opposition to online gambling but noted the complicated states’ rights issues behind any attempt to reverse the Justice Department’s 2011 ruling on the Wire Act. Goodlatte’s written testimony was for Wednesday’s House Judiciary Crime Subcommittee hearing on Rep. Jason Chaffetz’s, R-Utah, reintroduced Restoration of America’s Wire Act (RAWA) (HR-707). The bill would reverse DOJ’s 2011 decision that said the act didn’t prohibit online lotteries and Internet gambling that doesn’t involve sporting events. “Updating the Wire Act can be a tool to protect states’ rights to prohibit gambling activity,” Goodlatte said. “However, there is also another states’ rights dynamic that we must acknowledge, and that is what to do about states that want to regulate and permit Internet gambling within their own borders.” “RAWA would appear to overrule state authority to permit intrastate legal gaming,” said Andrew Moylan, R Street Institute executive director, in written testimony. But RAWA “could be rewritten in such a way as to protect wholly intrastate activity from federal scrutiny,” he said. “One can only crack a smile at the recent approach of America’s gambling interests who are now claiming internet gambling is ‘a states rights’ issue,” said Les Bernal, Stop Predatory Gambling national director, in written testimony. “For most of the last decade, many of these same gambling interests have been lobbying to get the federal government to sponsor and promote internet gambling.”
Two senators and three House members signed on to the Local Radio Freedom Act, said an NAB news release Thursday. The NAB-backed resolution opposes any new taxes or royalties for terrestrial broadcasters (see 1502250032). Reps. Charles Boustany, R-La., Doug Lamborn, R-Colo., and Scott Tipton, R-Colo., were the most recent of the resolution’s 147 co-sponsors. The additions of Sens. Bill Cassidy, R-La., and Pat Roberts, R-Kan., brought the total to 11 co-sponsors in the Senate.
The Senate unanimously approved an IoT resolution to “promote economic growth and greater consumer empowerment,” said a joint news release Tuesday. The resolution was introduced by Sens. Deb Fischer, R-Neb., Cory Booker, D-N.J., Kelly Ayotte, R-N.H., and Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, earlier this month (see 1503040052) after the Senate Commerce Committee held a hearing on IoT earlier this year (see 1502110035), and “calls for a modern framework around innovation,” recognizes the “importance of consensus-based best practices and the need for innovators to drive the future development” of IoT. The bipartisan resolution “incentives the use of new technologies and seeks to maximize consumer opportunity and economic growth,” Fischer said. “Passing this resolution underscores our strong commitment to fostering innovation, protecting consumers and finding solutions to our toughest problems through technology-driven solutions,” Booker said. “Innovation and free-market principles must drive our hands-off regulatory approach, not overregulation,” Ayotte said. “As we work to advance the Internet of Things, we must remain committed to empowering consumers, developing technological safeguards while enabling innovation, and improving the quality of life for future generations,” Schatz said. Also Tuesday, a House Commerce Subcommittee held an IoT hearing (see 1503240040).
Chairman Tom Wheeler said the FCC has voiced concerns to Congress about the net neutrality draft legislation that GOP leaders circulated in January. The draft -- the product of Senate Commerce Committee Chairman John Thune, R-S.D., House Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton, R-Mich., and House Communications Subcommittee Chairman Greg Walden, R-Ore. -- would codify net neutrality protections while limiting FCC use of Communications Act Title II for broadband and Telecom Act Section 706. The FCC has had conversations “with the sponsors of the bill expressing some concerns about those carve-outs” on specialized services, Wheeler said Wednesday during a House Judiciary Committee hearing (see 1503250059). Another concern was about how the draft bill would affect FCC authority and its implications “on how you have that yardstick going forward,” Wheeler told Rep. Suzan DelBene, D-Wash., who asked whether Wheeler saw the telecom law as outdated.
At least three senators introduced similar telecom amendments to S.Con.Res-11, which is being considered on the Senate floor this week and sets the congressional budget for FY 2016. Senate Budget Committee Chairman Mike Enzi, R-Wyo., wrote the resolution and cleared it from committee last week. Sen. Kelly Ayotte, R-N.H., submitted an amendment on a deficit-neutral reserve fund to expand broadband in rural areas. It would let the Budget Committee chairman revise funding levels for “promoting investments in rural broadband infrastructure, including changes to the Connect America Fund, by the amounts provided in such legislation for those purposes, provided that such legislation would not increase the deficit over either the period of the total of fiscal years 2016 through 2020 or the period of the total of fiscal years 2016 through 2025.” Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., introduced a similar amendment. But it specified it related to “requiring the [FCC] to focus efforts of the [FCC] on expanding high-speed broadband access to rural communities by the amounts provided in such legislation for those purposes, provided that such legislation would not increase the deficit over either the period of the total of fiscal years 2016 through 2020 or the period of the total of fiscal years 2016 through 2025.” Sen. Cory Gardner, R-Colo., introduced an amendment but specified the deficit-neutral focus was on “enhancing and encouraging broadband deployment and adoption in rural America,” with no reference to infrastructure and the Connect America Fund, as Ayotte’s amendment included, or high-speed broadband, as Capito’s did. The resolution had 284 amendments submitted by Wednesday.
Heritage Action for America is lobbying conservatives to “take action to stop the FCC’s new rules” on net neutrality and encouraging them to “join” the Congressional Review Act resolution of disapproval that Rep. Doug Collins, R-Ga., is circulating (see 1503170059), Heritage Action spokesman Dan Holler told us. That resolution would nullify the FCC’s net neutrality order but would require White House approval. A White House veto is widely seen as a tough obstacle to bypass. Heritage Action is “very supportive” of Collins’ resolution, Holler said. He dismissed the draft net neutrality bill from House Communications Subcommittee Chairman Greg Walden, R-Ore., and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton, R-Mich., as “the wrong approach.” That draft bill “would enshrine certain ‘neutrality’ rules into law,” Holler explained. Heritage Action was founded in 2010 and is affiliated with the conservative Heritage Foundation. Several of Collins’ colleagues on the Judiciary Committee, including Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., have indicated desire for a resolution of disapproval. House Judiciary plans a net neutrality hearing Wednesday at 2 p.m. in 2141 Rayburn. Witnesses now include FTC Commissioner Terrell McSweeny, in addition to the previously announced witnesses: FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler, FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai and FTC Commissioner Josh Wright.