WASHINGTON-In a stunning setback and reversal of fortune for the wireless industry, Sens. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and James Jeffords (R-Vt.) last week introduced legislation to gut antenna siting pre-emption provisions from the 1996 telecom act.
“I do not want Vermont turned into a giant pincushion with 200-foot towers indiscriminately sprouting on every mountain and in every valley,” said Leahy, ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee.
The bill, which would shift the burden of proof from local and state regulators to carriers in civil siting litigation, repeals federal pre-emption of state and local regulation regarding the placement of antenna towers; overturns federal pre-emption of local and state antenna regulation based on environmental effects of facilities; and prohibits the Federal Communications Commission from adopting rules that would pre-empt state and local regulation of antenna siting.
Aides to Rep. Bernard Saunders (I-Vt.) said the congressman is considering offering companion legislation in the House. Vermont Gov. Howard Dean also has weighed in on the issue at the FCC.
The FCC has various proposals in play to override the authority of local and state officials to determine whether and under what circumstances antenna towers can be erected.
The Leahy-Jeffords bill drew an angry response from the wireless telecom industry.
Jay Kitchen, president of the Personal Communications Industry Association, called the bill “the most anti-consumer plan to come out of Washington in years.”
“It is disappointing that they would feel such a draconian measure is necessary,” said Thomas Wheeler, president of the Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association. Wheeler said that “it is important that policy makers recognize that there cannot be competition without antenna sites and there cannot be the promise that wireless brings to security without antenna sites and that every effort to block antenna sites should be viewed as anticompetitive and anti-safety.”
Indeed, hundreds of thousands of 911 emergency calls are made each year from mobile phones. Wireless technology also has the potential to become a formidable competitor to the Baby Bells and GTE Corp. for monopoly-controlled basic local phone service.
Two years ago, the inclusion of the antenna siting provision, penned by Reps. Scott Klug (R-Wis.) and Thomas Manton (D-N.Y.), in the ’96 telecom act represented the biggest victory for wireless industry since the 1993 deregulation of the wireless industry.
To lose that legislative victory after only two years would be one of worst defeats for the wireless industry in years. But losing has never been an option for the wireless industry, a powerful lobbying force in the nation’s capital that is well endowed with sharp-shooting hired guns from AT&T Corp., Sprint Corp., the Baby Bells, AirTouch Communications Inc. and GTE.
Earlier this year, there were expectations that McCain and House telecommunications subcommittee Chairman Billy Tauzin (R-La.) would sponsor bills to expand and toughen federal pre-emption of antenna siting moratoria. But both lawmakers pulled back, following opposition from citizen’s groups, and left it to the FCC to address the issue.
Today, scores of antenna moratoria are thwarting the buildout of new personal communications services systems and the expansion of existing cellular telephone networks.
Knowing this and the fact that Senate Commerce Committee Chairman John McCain (D-Ariz.) favors industry over NIMBYs (not in my back yarders), Leahy and Jeffords are expected to try to avoid McCain’s panel and attach the bill-as an amendment-to another piece of legislation.
A grassroots effort in Vermont to oppose federal regulation of antenna siting was spearhead by Dale and Janet Newton. The couple, among other things, pulled out full-page ads in the Barre-Mont Pelier newspaper of central Vermont to protest the construction of antennas.
“The largest part of our economy is tourism and people don’t want to come to Vermont to see towers all over Vermont,” said Janet Newton.
She said the health-related restrictions in the antenna siting provision were interpreted so strictly at local zoning meetings that it amounted “to a gag order.”
Cathy Bergman-Venezia, head of The EMR Alliance (a New York City-based watchdog group concerned with possible health effects from power lines and communications transmitters), said Leahy “has demonstrated the Vermont public has no intention of becoming a victim of the wireless industry’s race to unplug America.”
