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

[Matt Flyer]

There is also the part where the muni has to pay taxes at the rate a private corp would.  There is the part about not being about not subsidizing any costs, not sharing other govt resources , etc. In other words: you must have all the muni disadvantages and none of the advantages.

Why the hell shouldn't a damned corporation have to compete against the public sector.  Maybe the public CAN do something better?
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-----Original Message-----
From: Aaron Joyner <aaron at joyner.ws>
Sender: trilug-bounces at trilug.org
Date: Mon, 7 Mar 2011 21:12:38 
To: Triangle Linux Users Group General Discussion<trilug at trilug.org>
Reply-To: Triangle Linux Users Group General Discussion <trilug at trilug.org>
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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