Vitter comes out in support of municipal fiber

Sunday’s Advocate carries the article “Senate hopefuls vow to help La. get its fair share” in which the four major senatorial candidates participated in the Louisiana Municipal Association’s forum held during the association’s annual meeting. For fiber afficanados the interesting—and surprising—move of the event was Vitter’s coming out in favor of giving local government more freedom to provide telecom services:

Vitter also noted he supports giving local government a freer hand in providing telecommunications services — cable television, Internet and telephone — if they can offer those services more affordably than private companies.

Competition serves consumers better, he said.

Frankly, I was surprised. But maybe I shouldn’t be; after all it really is conservative to be for competition and to favor local government with its closer-to-the-people connection in cases where the state seeks to restrict what local governments are allowed to do on behalf of its citizens. I can only think that he wants to bolster his support in Lafayette–and it’s interesting that a conservative thinks that endorsing telecom utilities will help him in Lafayette Parish. He must think the people are pretty much overwhelmingly in favor. And in that he shows (IMHO) good political judgment. Of course, the endorsement is a cheap gimme since our federal representatives have nothing to do with the law recently put in place to limit local government’s ability to provide telecom cheaply. At any rate, GOOD. The more the merrier. Maybe we can get this on the radar screens of other candidates.

37 thoughts on “Vitter comes out in support of municipal fiber”

  1. I posted an article on this story over at Timshel (where ricky has kindly invited me to guest blog on fiber issues) and he had an insightful comment on Vitter’s endorsement of municipal telecom utilities and John’s silence:

    “I will note that according to OpenSecrets.org that Vitter took in not even half of what Chris John did from Electronic/communications interests in campaign donations (about $120,000 to almost $50,000) so he’s not in as deep to the industry as one of his major Democratic opponents.

    “With that in mind, I guess it’s not surprising that John didn’t seem to address the issue at the forum.”

    Good going Ricky!

    For the rest of you out there, take a look a Timshel. It’s an irreverent, intelligent, and more than a little quirky take focusing on Louisiana and Lafayette politics. It’ll do your heart good to visit. (And forgive him his allegiance to the Saints and all things saintish. Some things just can’t be rationally explained and our religous affiliations are one of those things.) 🙂

  2. I’ll bet VItter was excited about the project so he could surf the web for prostitutes and read the suckup Advocate’s fawning articles about him.

    Remember – family values are a Republican tradition!

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