Month: July 2005

The Advertiser weighs in on the election in an editorial:

The approval last Saturday of the proposal allowing LUS to sell $125 million in bonds to finance the fiber-to-the-home project was gratifying. It laid the groundwork for Lafayette to move forward with giant steps toward accelerated economic growth and technological leadership. We applaud the decision of the electorate.

The editorial goes on to state that the supporters still need to work to make the project a success.

You ever been in a situation where you agree with the sentitment but just can’t buy the partictular argument that gets your friend there? That’s the way I’m feeling now. It’s all true: this decision of the electorate is worth applauding, and those of us who supported the measure can’t slack off now. But the thrust of the argument seems to be that we should worry about a high turnout election and a landslide victory and hurry out to do marketing for LUS–because the turnout wasn’t higher and victory wasn’t bigger. There’s gotta be a little suspicion that this was substantially written before the turnout turned out to be almost twice what the registrar predicted.

The Advertiser today posts a story on the cost of the fiber battle. This is one of those stories that seems pretty clear the first time you look at it but which, on further examination, gets pretty murky. Some of it is real murk, due to confusion, and some of it is simple incompleteness. The incompleteness clouds the issue, and frankly, makes the story a touch misleading. Fiber 411, which has not filed the legally required PAC paperwork, put into the mail two very expensive, deceptive fliers [Link] which, while they have oddly not been reported on in the media, were the talk of the town in the last days of the campaign. Fiber 411 spent a lot more money with a lot more uncertain sources than has been reported to date. This report should really have noted that.

The gist of the story:

Pro-fiber forces spent more than $300,000 on television advertisements, yard signs and flyers promoting passage of the Lafayette Utilities System fiber-to-the-home project. That includes $200,000 spent by LUS, a municipal utility system owned by its customers, the citizens of Lafayette.

“I think it’s very reasonable when you consider the cost of political campaigns nowadays and the necessity of the media,” said City-Parish President Joey Durel. “My concern was the cost to this community of losing the election. That would be a cost that would be immeasurable

The first thing a mathematically inclined reader is likely to notice is that the cost numbers in the headline ($300,000) and the numbers in the sidebar (which add up to $369,849, about $370,000) don’t match. The likely explanation is that the cost of the election ($65,000), which really should not be assigned to LUS, appears as its cost in the sidebar. A reasonable person might assign those costs to Cox, BellSouth, and Fiber 411. This is the second vote on this project; the first, by the council, was also an overwhelming approval and this additional vote was a creature of those folks’ obstructionism.

The first thing a politcally astute reader is likely to notice is that this is by no means a final accounting. It should be pretty accurate for LUS, but for the PACs a final accounting has yet to be done and much of the money is always saved for planned buys in the final days. I’d expect the totals to be higher and for most of the money to have been spent.

The first thing a cynical reader is likely to notice is the absence of any cost assigned to the campaigns run by BellSouth and Cox or any realistic questioning of Fiber 411’s informal “accounting” to the Advertiser. About BellSouth and Cox–who knows what they will actually report? The laws allow a lot of real costs to be hidden if you own the media. All those good neighbor ads (with faux Cajun and Creole accents cut in) that ran incessantly on Cox are likely to be written off as self-promotional. You know and I know that we never saw such ads before the battle heated up. They were part of the campaign and if you had to buy that time (which Cox, of course, does not) it is expensive. Certainly the Advertiser knows that BellSouth, at least, paid real money for those full page reprints of an editorial from its sister publication, The Times. It would have been nice to have seen some acknowledgement of the incumbents’ largely unmeasurable costs in this campaign.

The murk around Fiber 411, though, is really thick. They say they’ve filed PAC paper work but I can’t find it on the ethics board site. The idea that they didn’t spend real, reportable money on yard signs and fliers is just not possible–the flyer had a “paid for” line on it. Where did all that money come from and how much was it really? Who did the automated phone calls? The spam emails?

Just because all this went unreported by our media and was ignored in this article, does not mean these things did not happen. We all know they did. It is OUTRAGEOUS that no article about the intense disinformation campaign in the final days has appeared.

For the record, this site will be posting a series on the deceptive campaign waged by the incumbents and their allies – not only so it won’t be forgotten but so the rest of the nation and those that come after us in this fight will not be misled as to how this campaign, and especially the last days, were fought and finally won by the people of Lafayette.

I posted briefly last night on the shift to a new date for the PSC rule-making session with the note that there would be more in the morning. There was. The Advertiser published “PSC will hear fiber case on Sept. 1” and the Advocate published “PSC to take comments on municipal telecom system rules.”

This is one of those relatively rare cases where the Advertiser story is more informative than the Advocate’s. The Advertiser’s story has two virtues. First, it more fully reviews the issues at hand–and does the stronger job of trying to give the reader some basis for understanding which of the two contentious sides has the stronger case. Secondly it contains some real news, and reassuring news it is, about commissioner Field’s stance.

One issue is whether LUS will be able to issue bonds using the full strength of the utility system; after giving to-the-point history of how the law the law being interpreted came to be we got the usual he said/she said but with the addition of a helpful if careful paragraph that gives the reader some basis to make a judgment between competing claims:

Huval said the PSC staff overstepped the limits of the Fair Competition Act with some of its recommendations, such as restricting LUS from using its electrical division to guarantee the fiber bonds.

BellSouth Louisiana President William Oliver said the law clearly prohibits LUS from cross-subsidizing or using money from its electrical system to cover costs of the fiber system.

The Local Government Fair Competition Act appears to allow the loan guarantee. However, the proposed PSC rules seem to prohibit the practice in one paragraph and allow it in another.

On Fields:
After meeting with LUS officials Monday, Field said he will support the utility before the PSC in fighting four points of contention: The bond pledge, in lieu of taxes, allowing other companies to insert advertising with LUS bills and an accounting issue.

“I said I would talk to the other commissioners about those if staff does not remedy them,” Field said. He informed BellSouth of his decision Monday.

This is very good news. Fields is solidly in our corner. Since he represents us you’d think that would be a given…apparently not. And it makes me worry a bit about the mindset of the commisioners that they feel it necessary to immediately notify BellSouth about a position you have taken.

It also sounds as if Fields expects the staff to “remedy” the proposed regulations before resubmitting them to the commissioners. The loyal reader will recall that I suggested in an earlier post on this topic that sending the messy report back to the staff for retooling was exactly what I predicted.

We can anticipate one clear message from the PSC commissioners and I predict it right now: “Take this mess back to your cubicles and come up with something that is at least consistent to show us.”

It’s nice to occasionally be confirmed by events.

What’s Being Said (WBS) Dept.

It’s not only “Silicon Valley” where Lafayette is the talk of the town. The fever has apparently spread to Washington which is said to be a-buzz. Hey, we’re bicoastal!

This in from the Benton Foundation’s email telecom news digest:

LA REFERENDUM GIVES IMPETUS TO MCCAIN BROADBAND BILL
With Lafayette (LA) voters approving a referendum to let the city authorize up to $125 million in bonds to build a fiber network, Washington was a-buzz over municipal broadband networks and a bill introduced in June that would prevent states from barring public providers from supplying advanced telecom capability or services using it. The McCain-Lautenberg bill is designed to help municipalities achieve their goal of deploying high-speed Internet services to their citizens as quickly as possible. In Lafayette’s case, the network represents a service as much as an economic development tool to attract more business development, said Jim Baller, an attorney for municipal interests. While the La. city’s effort may be a successful first start, there are 14 states that have passed laws that put restrictions on cities investing in their own advanced communications services — one reason Sen McCain introduced his bill.
[SOURCE: Communications Daily, AUTHOR: Anne Veigle]
(Not available online)

If our win can be used to demonstrate that it is possible to win against the big Teleco’s and so teach our faltering representatives in Washington how to stand up for us all we should be proud. We’ll have not only helped advance Lafayete, but our country as a whole.

McCain-Lautenberg’s passage would mean a blossoming of home-owned telecom utilities. (And the passage of a bill sponsored by Sessions of Texas would be another step in path to returning unregulated monopoly power to the the regional teleco monopolies.) McCain-Lautenberg blew up during the final weeks of our campaign and didn’t get enough attention here. Expect that to change…it’s a very good bill.

What’s Being Said (WBS) Dept.

The Ars Technica crowd weighs in with a pretty amazing string on Lafayette’s victory.

Ars Technica is one of the most brilliant places on the net. As both a community (which works hard not to take itself too seriously) and as a repository of hard to beat technical information it is invaluable. It’s the place to go when you want to read a 20 page dissertation on the fine points of the latest Macintosh operating system. Or if you want to understand how (and why you should care whether) multi-threading interacts with mulitple cores…

So its fun to see what this crowd thinks about Lafayette’s venture and the idea of municipal broadband in general. This isn’t like most online discussions: the ratio of wheat to chaff is high.

I’d recommend reading the thread entire; — it is real a discussion and an education in how good this sort of online forum can be. Here are some appetizers and one piece of steak:

The appetizers:

The People are doin’ it for themselves.

The only reason that the standardized Internet does exist is because it was not set up as a business. Had the internet been set up as a business there would have been a plethora of standards with no interoperability until a monopoly was formed to standardize things e.g. AT&T before the break-up.

To hell with this mish-mash of regional monopolies; if the government is willing to step forward and provide a service on which these clowns want to keep dragging their feet, so be it. If that gives the private companies the kick in the ass needed to come in and try to do it better, so much the better.

The meat-actual, intelligent analysis (I wanna meet this guy):

First, let me say that it does the heart good to see your hometown on the Ars front page.

Second let me say that BellSouth and Cox Cable were absolute pigs during this entire affair. The proposal was for our public utility, which is truly public in that it is a unit of the city, to take out bonds to finance this. BS and Cox astroturfed a good part of the opposition, and even went so far as to get a bill introduced in our state legislature to stop this when it became clear that most of the folks rallying to their cause were the usual cranks and folks who believe that only the private sector can do anything.

(We did, in the mean time, see a whole lot of television ads featuring local employees smiling and telling us how much it meant to them to help out the rest of us, their neighbors. Uh huh.)

BS and Cox did, however, manage to cause enough of a ruckus that our mayor, a business-oriented Republican, and the city council decided it was simply the best case to have a special election — and how I wish, having lost, it was now BS and Cox who had to pay for that election.

I should point out that there are a lot of factors that aren’t going to appear in most stories that helped get this FTTP proposal off the ground:

One, the head of our utilities division has a spotless reputation as does the division itself — their line repair happens faster than ANY private utility I’ve ever known. (He’s also a great musician by the way, a member of the Cajun band Jambalaya.)

Two, the city has enjoyed a remarkable level of urban planning, something especially unusual in the south. And planning that occurred twenty years ago recently has paid off in terms of a revived downtown, which means a lot of folks have seen what having vision can mean.

Lafayette in general does pursue the so-called American median: fiscally conservative and socially liberal. This FTTP plan played to both sides of that spirit.

Hear, Hear, Well Said!

What’s Being Said (WBS) Dept.

Ars Technica, like Slashdot, is one of the geekier places on the net. (And I mean that in the nicest way.) So to get attention from both is one sign that Joey Durel’s tech strategy is working. Though in ways he might not fully anticipate. While the symbolism of going after the CEOs of Silicon Valley and saying that you are the “talk” there is understandable–these guys have real power–what needs to be understood is that “silicon valley,” is not really a real place. It’s not about what is being said at the coffee houses and wine bars in a hot, dry place in California. It’s the chatter on places like ars technica that makes Austin hot and Toledo not.

Go take a look at the story. Unlike even national reporters this guy bothers to look back into the archives…or he’s been following the story mighty closely. It refreshingly intelligent…here’ a taste:

The vote passed much to the chagrin of BellSouth and Cox Communications, who would rather handle FTTP themselves, but on their own schedule. Both companies had sued in court to stop plans, but their efforts so far only forced the issue to a vote, and the voters clearly chose sides.

“This opens the door for every municipality in the nation to look at how they can do what we did,” said Don Bertrand of Fibre911. “We deserve connectivity and as we did in 1896 with the electricity, if you won’t bring it to us, we’ll do it ourselves.”

The plan is to start serving customers within two years. Nothing in the plan prevents BellSouth and Cox from competing in the rollout, although everyone has agreed that the success of LUS depends on a large customer uptake.

Lafayette rates a mention in an article focusing on rural communities; the implication is a little off target about Lafayette’s size but the tidbit they share is interesting:

The telecommunications companies say they have little incentive to deliver costly broadband connections to sparsely populated areas, and from a business perspective, they’re right. What’s less understandable is why those companies fight to prevent people in rural areas from wiring themselves.

In Lafayette, La., Atlanta-based BellSouth has fought the city’s plan to sell bonds to finance its own broadband system. The legal battle has cost the city $500,000. On Saturday the voters spoke, approving the bond sale 62%-38%.

BellSouth and Cox have used some pretty transparent excuses to prevent Lafayette from doing what she clearly wanted to do. Don’t forget: this is the second vote: our council did what we elected them do months ago. The incumbents want to teach us Civics lessons and their version of Economics lessons. We don’t need such lessons from companies whose actual interests in the matter are plain: keeping home-grown competition out of their backyard.

Especially when the lesson is so expensive.

According to my secret sources LUS won’t go before the PSC until September 1st. (Ok, not so secret, but it might as well be–it was on the the final, unannounced AOC show today. I bet I’m the only one who saw it.) The incumbents asked for a chance to quarrel with LUS’ submission–and LUS will have the same right. Huval says that this won’t slow down the progress of the project.

We’ll no doubt see more in the morning

An update posted to the online version of the Advertiser noted that Denise Richter has been named to the post of executive editor effective August 1. Denise fills the post vacated when Juli Metzger left.

This is a very good thing—a paper without a real editor is pretty rudderless. Part of what is going on at the Times is that it has been without an editor for far too long.

Today’s Advertiser fiber story (which I blogged earlier) has an almost unique event: two members of far and away the largest citizen’s grassroots organization (I am a member) are quoted and their affiliation acknowledged.

LUS will be the largest city in the nation with this type of system and it will be successful, said Mike Stagg of Lafayette Coming Together.

Saturday was an historic moment in the city, a moment when residents said they are ready for a change, said Layne St. Julien of Lafayette Coming Together.

“Lafayette is ready to see itself in a new light,” she said. “We all want the same thing, a good place for ourselves and our children.”

Good stuff right? Pretty presentable?

I find it astonishing that this is exactly the third time this organizaton has been mentioned in the local daily.–According to a search of the Advertiser’s archive.

This is the same organization that was responsible for most of the visible campaign outside of press conferences up until the last few days. It is truly a grassroots organization. Begun as a group dedicated to the most basic people to people campaigning it took over more and more fuctions as the campaign matured and its ability to get the job done—cheaply and quickly—became apparent. Every yard sign, billboard, flyer, all the radio spots save one and even one of the TV spots were products of this group. People donated their time, energy and talent to the cause. Every penny raised was spent on materials or media. Not one dime went to design or managment—those talents were donated. In the end what they did was little short of amazing: No doubt thousands of hours of time went into regular meetings, subcommittee meetings, project managment, website design, video work, ad design, viral email, logo design, audio work, leafleting, phone banking, a film festival, yard sign delivery, an endorsement project, campaign strategy, database managment, a newsletter and more. And it was all done locally by local folks for concerned for our community. With nearly 500 names in the actives database and supporters far beyond that number LCT’s For Fiber campaign was easily the most visible and influential citizen’s group in the campaign.

Everywhere except in the media.

In stark contrast was Fiber 411 whose only visible membership was 3 guys and whose activites, aside from press conferences, consisted of a trash-talking chat room, two last minute disinformation mailers with their name on it, and a lot of still-visible yellow signs planted in the right of way. Oh, and maybe some automated phone calling.

If you search for Fiber 411 on the Advertiser site you’ll find 49 hits. Versus 2 for the other (actual?) grassroots orgainization.

The disparity is supposed to be due to fairness issues. Balance. I don’t see the balance in this. I doubt if many can.

Sure, I’m biased. As a member of LCT I know the folks I worked with got a real full-blown campaign before the the public. I think it would be appropriate if their voice was recognized occasionally–as Mike’s and Layne’s was today. Heck, I think, all things considered, that 49 times would have been balanced.

Ok, got that off my chest. Thanks.