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House Takes the Teeth Out of SB66
The Utah House passed an amended version of SB66, the UTOPIA killer, yesterday without the teeth. According to a story in the Deseret News:
The House Tuesday passed SB66, which would require cities investing in cable, Internet, or telephone services to get any bonding approved by a general vote. But amendments would exempt any cities that have signed an agreement for such projects and approve bonding by April 15. Essentially, the amendments mean that a bill intended to throw up roadblocks for the Utah Telecommunications Open Infrastructure Agency (UTOPIA) now has no meaningful impact on the project.From deseretnews.com | UTOPIA measure wins House nod
Referenced Wed Mar 03 2004 08:41:47 GMT-0700
The last sentence isn’t entirely true. The amendment also makes the network completely open (no closed network in AT&T’s favor for the first 9 months). I’m all for making the network open. I wonder, however, if the Legislature can nullify a contract entered into by a public entity after the fact.
Today is the last day and it will be interesting to see how this plays out. The bill will either have to be accepted as is by the Senate or go to conference committee. The latter is tough to do on the last day of the session.
Posted by windley on March 3, 2004 08:47 AM
