Re: Muni Fiber and Politics

[Miles Fidelman <mfidelman () meetinghouse net>]

William Herrin wrote:
> On Mon, Jul 21, 2014 at 3:57 PM, Scott Helms <khelms () zcorum com> wrote:
> > I'd say your experience is anomalous.  I don't know which township you're
> > in, but I'd suggest you focus on getting a set of more effective local
> > officials.
> Sure, 'cause fixing local utility problems at the voting booth has a
> long and studied history of success.  Who do I vote for? The officials
> that allow rate increases and, when the utilities fail to fix the
> problems, allow more rate increases? Or the officials who refuse rate
> increases so that the utilities can't afford to fix the problems?
So where is it that you live Bill?  I sure want to avoid moving there.

As an aside, I used to do policy and consulting work for communities 
that were looking at telecom. builds - mostly for muni electrics. In 
general, I found the folks I worked for to be very competent, and 
focused on public service.  Yes, there are incompetent, and corrupt, 
municipal utilities - but by and large they don't seem to be the ones 
trying to go into the telecom arena.  It's more the folks in communities 
that have muni electric utilities because, 100 years ago, the big boys 
weren't interested in their market - so, god damn it, they went out and 
built themselves their own electric plant (also why there are lots of 
coops out there, and lots of independent telcos in Iowa).  Today, those 
same folks are saying - if Verizon doesn't want to build it, screw it, 
we'll do it ourselves.  Also, the incompetent and the corrupt, generally 
aren't interested in the political and legal battles they'd have to go 
through to get a project off the ground.

Cheers,

Miles Fidelman

--
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
In practice, there is.   .... Yogi Berra