WASHINGTON-When Congress returns next week, battle lines will begin forming for a highly charged antenna siting debate that is likely to be shaped as much by election-year politics as by colliding national telecom and land-use policies.
The midterm election this fall could turn into a de facto national referendum on antenna siting. The fiery controversy over siting has snowballed from a parochial industry story into a national issue covered by the major media outlets.
Whether the coming crossfire of political rhetoric over antenna siting will lead to legislation that gives local zoning boards full jurisdiction over tower placement is another question.
While carriers and local and state authorities are cooperating on siting in many areas, there are still scores of antenna siting moratoria throughout the country that stifle the buildout of new personal communications services systems and expansion of existing cellular telephone networks.
Lawmakers in Northeastern states have joined forces with a grassroots coalition of citizen activists, organized labor and environmentalists to roll back limited federal pre-emption of local and state regulation of antenna siting. The group also wants to prevent any future intervention by the U.S. government in land-use matters.
Under the 1996 telecom act, limited federal pre-emption bans local and state authorities from blocking the placement of antennas for health reasons if carriers meet Federal Communications Commission radio-frequency radiation safety guidelines.
The anti-federal pre-emption siting bill in the House is sponsored by Reps. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Christopher Shays (R-Conn.). Support for a companion bill in the Senate comes from Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and James Jeffords (R-Vt.).
For the Vermont lawmakers, whose economies heavily depend on tourism, legislation may not be the end game. It may be enough for them simply to champion the issue through this fall’s campaign.
Sanders, Shays and Leahy are up for re-election later this year. Jeffords’ term is up in two years.
Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, champion of local control on siting issues in his state, toyed with entering national political spotlight but recently decided against challenging Vice President Gore for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2000.
FCC Chairman Bill Kennard has been invited to Vermont by Gov. Dean to discuss the antenna siting issue.
Where federal property is concerned, conservationists and historic preservationists are preparing to go to war with wireless carriers that want to pierce pristine landscapes and quiet Civil War battlefields in old Virginia with 21st century wireless technology.
“Harpers Ferry has the potential for becoming a forum for a great national debate on the siting issue,” said Paul Rosa, a siting consultant in Silver Spring, Md., who specializes in wireless landscape aesthetics.
On Dec. 23, the FCC told United States Cellular Corp. that its plans to build a 260-foot antenna and other communications facilities near Harpers Ferry National Park and other historic sites cannot conflict with the National Environmental Policy Act and the National Historic Preservation Act.
“What they [the industry] don’t understand is that when you go up against Civil War buffs, they have clout; they’re vocal and committed. This time there will be no surrender,” said Rosa.
At the same time, telecommunications laws forbid barriers to entry and state regulation of commercial wireless services. The wireless industry argues some moratoria and siting restrictions are illegal on those grounds and have said so in lawsuits and in filings before federal regulators.
Congress, the industry insists, intended there to be a national wireless policy so seamless wireless service throughout the United States can be achieved.
Thus, policy makers are confronted with a myriad of laws governing telecommunications, historic preservation, the environment, land use and states rights that intersect at a point on the map where a carrier wants to erect a tower.
Is there common ground-room for compromise between industry and local and states authorities on antenna siting?
Unfortunately for the wireless telecom industry, no scenario looks particularly good at the moment. But the industry could escape in 1998 without losing ground as it did last year.
Even if pro-localism siting legislation does not pass during the truncated second legislative session of the 105th Congress this year, the debate itself will likely keep industry from expanding the narrow federal pre-emption of local siting regulation that exists under the 1996 telecom law.
“The real challenge is the very short legislative session,” said Jay Kitchen, president of the Personal Communications Industry Association.
Yet, in the short time industry has to make its case, Kitchen said, “We have … to make sure Congress understands that these bills will severely limit wireless buildout and hurt consumers.”
The momentum, once with industry, has shifted to the anti-federal pre-emption consortium whose elaborate networking outside the Beltway has more than neutralized high-powered wireless lobbyists inside the Beltway of official Washington.
Lawmakers sympathetic to the industry’s plight, like House telecommunications subcommittee Chairman Billy Tauzin (R-La.) and Senate Commerce Committee head John McCain (R-Ariz.), have backpeddled on any plans to give industry legislative relief on antenna siting moratoria.
Tauzin’s boss, Rep. Thomas Bliley (R-Va.), head of the House Commerce Committee and former Richmond, Va., mayor, put the brakes on Tauzin’s oft-stated intention last year of addressing antenna siting delays.
“It seems to me the issue is not a partisan issue. It’s a federal-state issue,” said Steve Crowley, an aide to Sanders.
Maybe and maybe not.
With the House up for grabs this fall, Republican lawmakers that took control of both chambers in 1994 by promising new federalism are not apt to take on city hall and voters angry about wireless towers.
For sure, powerful lobbying organs of cities and counties will remind GOP lawmakers of that fact during the antenna siting debate this year.
On the other hand, even if Republicans cannot deliver with pro-industry siting legislation this year, they can make it more difficult for anti-federal pre-emption bills to proceed.
If the Shays-Sanders and Jeffords-Leahy measures remain stand-alone bills, they would have to go before the House and Senate Commerce Committees.
That means the bills would have to make it by McCain and Tauzin, both pro-industry on the siting issue. Just getting a bill introduced could prove difficult; none of the four lawmakers whose bills favor siting localism sit on commerce committees, which have primary jurisdiction over telecommunications.
For that reason, Shays, Sanders, Jeffords and Leahy have been busy trying to line up co-sponsors and develop legislative strategies to deal with the opposition. The most obvious option for them is to attach anti-federal pre-emption bills to other legislation.
In the meantime, McCain plans to examine siting and E-911 issues in a hearing April 2. Why the two issues together? The industry wants to drive home the point that citizens are denied public-safety benefits of mobile phones if the call doesn’t go through because of unbuilt antennas.
The political retreat on Capitol Hill has, in turn, made it more difficult for the FCC to take bold action on the antenna siting stalemate.
Nevertheless, the wireless industry is appealing to the FCC’s new leadership.
In a letter to FCC Chairman Bill Kennard shortly after he took office last fall, Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association President Thomas Wheeler urged the new FCC chief to “assert your authority and influence to bring about this coming together of the wireless industry and state and local authorities.”
Kennard has told lawmakers that fede
ral pre-emption should be enacted only as a last resort and indicated to Wheeler the FCC will not intervene until the industry and local and state officials have narrowed their differences.
But with mayors and country commissioners steadfast in their determination to preserve their siting oversight and with powerful grassroots support behind them, Kennard may need to step in sooner rather than later.
