Reedsburg Mayor Carl Stolte said he has been campaigning for broadband Internet service for his 8,300-strong town for six years, but nobody listened. After two telecommunications companies never returned his calls asking for broadband installation, Stolte decided to take matters into his own hands. Now, Reedsburg's own Utilities Commission wires homes, businesses and industries with fiber optics free for those who opt for the service.
But a battle is brewing between several Wisconsin municipalities with public broadband and the state Legislature, which has already voted in part to make it more difficult for cities to establish their own broadband service.
Sixty-five miles away in Madison, the Senate is set to begin negotiations next week on a bill that would give private broadband providers tax incentives to extend to remote areas. That proposal is part of a three-bill package including a yet-to-be-drafted bill that would impose broadband regulations, and Senate Bill 272, which requires cities attempting to establish broadband to conduct feasibility studies and a referendum. SB 272 passed the Senate in October.
\Municipalities should be the last resort. It's a widely held view-it's held by the governor, it's held by the legislature-that the private sector should be driving broadband deployment,"" said Sen. Ted Kanavas, R-Brookfield, who sponsored SB 272. Kanavas pointed to statistics that public sector broadband services generally failed fiscally.
""You don't want the government to be on the hook for a losing business model and the taxpayers to dig deeper into their pockets at a time when we're trying to balance,"" Kanavas said.
Stolte insisted Reedsburg had done a number of feasibility studies showing its deployment of broadband would be fiscally sound. The mayor expected tax revenues from the service to pay for itself. In fact, Stolte said passage of the legislation would be economically unadvisable.
""What this does,"" Stolte said, ""is if this bill goes through, it's going to create a bigger digital divide between the more rural cities in Wisconsin versus the Madisons and Milwaukees, the more urban.""
Stolte said two of the bill's major sponsors in the Senate and Assembly-Kanavas and Rep. Scott Jensen, R-Town of Brookfield, represent one of the richest areas in the state, a large urban market for broadband providers. The 2000 U.S. Census sets the per capita income of Waukesha County (which includes Brookfield) at $29,164, while Reedsburg's Sauk County reports a per capita income of $19,695.
Rep. Phil Montgomery, R-Ashwaubenon, who authored the Assembly version of the bill, was unavailable for comment, but told the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, ""That's the furthest thing from my intent. If there were needs not being met by the private sector, it is completely within the rights of local governments to fill those needs.""
The mayor said limiting the ability of towns such as Reedsburg to create public broadband would limit Gov. Jim Doyle's vision of state growth.
""Gov. Doyle is talking about high-tech jobs, better paying jobs ... for a healthy, growing Wisconsin. ... If he lets these pieces of legislation go through you're not going to grow Wisconsin,"" Stolte said.
Stolte had particularly harsh words for the bill's supporters.
""Everybody that's involved with this legislation ... is either being very, very shortsighted in their vision, or they're being driven by special interest groups that are ... probably helping their campaign coffers. They're not representing the entire good of the state,"" he said.
