[TriLUG] OT: Bill banning Google Fiber to be heard Tuesday AM!

Len Boyle Len.Boyle at sas.com
Mon Mar 7 21:45:53 EST 2011


Aaron 

What are the details on the Subject "Bill banning Google Fiber"?

-----Original Message-----
From: trilug-bounces at trilug.org [mailto:trilug-bounces at trilug.org] On Behalf Of Aaron Joyner
Sent: Monday, March 07, 2011 9:13 PM
To: Triangle Linux Users Group General Discussion
Subject: Re: [TriLUG] OT: Bill banning Google Fiber to be heard Tuesday AM!

Executive summary: The Financing section explicitly prohibits municipalities from leasing or acquiring ownership of communications networks.  Read on for more.


On Mon, Mar 7, 2011 at 8:38 PM, Steve Pinkham <steve.pinkham at gmail.com> wrote:
> ...
> Specifically, I don't understand the implications of "160A-340.4.
> Financing". Anyone speak enough lawyer to tell me what this means?


-----8< snip 8<-----
§ 160A-340.4.  Financing.
A city or joint agency subject to the provisions of G.S. 160A-340.1 shall not enter into a contract under G.S. 160A-19 or G.S. 160A-20 to purchase or to finance or refinance the purchase of property for use in a communications network or to finance or refinance the construction of fixtures or improvements for use in a communications network. The provisions of this section shall not apply to the repair or improvement of an existing communications network.
-----8< snip 8<-----

The relevant general statues it's quoting:

http://www.ncga.state.nc.us/gascripts/statutes/statutelookup.pl?statute=160A-19
-----8< snip 8<-----
 160A-19.  Leases.
A city is authorized to lease as lessee, with or without option to purchase, any real or personal property for any authorized public purpose. A lease of personal property with an option to purchase is subject to Article 8 of Chapter 143 of the General Statutes. (1973, c.
426, s. 9.)
-----8< snip 8<-----

http://www.ncga.state.nc.us/gascripts/statutes/statutelookup.pl?statute=160A-20

160A-20 turns out to be really long (lots of sub parts).  In short, I read these to be the parts of the NCGS which allows municipalities to directly own things (20) or to lease them (19).

Thus, the Financing section explicitly prohibits municipalities from leasing or acquiring ownership of communications networks.  If you have any doubt about exactly what communications network means, check the definitions section at the top of the bill.  They're clearly targeting only the competition with telco/cable providers, and clearly not including things like inter-office LANs that city/county IT departments might run, etc.  The only case I can think of where this might affect things other than munifiber/muniwifi kind of setups would be NCREN and MCNC.  It very well might prohibit expansion of the NCREN network, depending on if the public universities, schools, libraries, etc are considered to be part of "the public, or any sector of the public".

Aaron S. Joyner
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