WASHINGTON-The House, over protests from local officials and environmentalists, narrowly passed legislation to enable Bell Atlantic Mobile and wireless carriers to erect towers in Rock Creek Park and on other federal property in the nation’s capital.
By a 208-206 vote last Thursday evening, the House approved the conference report for District of Columbia appropriations in fiscal 2000. The conference report, which includes the siting provision, now goes to the Senate. Clinton has threatened to veto the bill.
The antenna-siting provision was penned by Senate Minority Leader Thomas Daschle (D-S.D.) when that chamber first took up D.C. appropriations.
Daschle’s staff has denied any connection between $50,000 donated by the wireless industry (including $25,000 from Bell Atlantic) to the Senate Senatorial Committee and the South Dakota lawmaker’s push for the siting clause in the D.C. appropriations bill.
The wireless campaign contributions were made a week before Daschle inserted the provision into the bill. The siting measure, according to Daschle’s office, was championed by Daschle after prodding from law enforcement.
BAM, which has been fighting with the National Park Service and D.C. officials for five years to build analog cellular towers in Rock Creek Park, also argues the new antennas will improve public safety.
The BAM-Rock Creek Park fight, occurring in the backyard of official Washington, has helped the wireless industry get the attention of lawmakers and make the case against moratoria and other antenna siting delays throughout the country.
But GOP lawmakers, careful not to offend local constituents a year before next fall’s elections and wedded to a new federalism ideology that helped bring them to power after the 1994 mid-term election, have ignored industry’s call for federal pre-emption of local regulation and other measures to fix siting gridlock.
