The California Advanced Services Fund (CASF), which is California’s primary tool for subsidising new broadband infrastructure in under and unserved areas is once again in play in Sacramento. Friday was the deadline for lawmakers to introduce new legislation for the 2017 session, and four CASF-related bills are now in the hopper.
However, none of the bills are substantive at this point. All four are simply placeholders, awaiting agreement, action or obstruction from the players involved. Friday was the deadline for new bills, but once a bill has been introduced, it can be amended without limit, including replacing the text completely and substituting what amounts to a completely new bill – also known as gut and amend – almost right up to the end of the legislature’s session in August.
Assembly bill 854 was introduced by assemblywoman Cecilia Aguiar-Curry (D – Yolo County). Aguiar-Curry is new to the legislature, having formerly been mayor of Winters, where she was a strong advocate for broadband development. As written it makes a couple of meaningless edits to the law that authorises CASF. That might not be its final form, though – now that it’s drafted, it can be edited as the year goes on.
The same is true of AB 928 by assemblyman Bill Quirk (D – Hayward) and senate bill 460 by senator Ben Hueso (D – San Diego County). Both make the same small edit – changing a notional deadline from 2015 to 2020.
Last year, Hueso, who is the chair of the senate’s energy, utilities and communications committee, used a CASF-related bill to allow more time to use the money to install broadband facilities in public housing properties. Quirk also rocked up with a CASF-related bill last year, but it was an AT&T-written counter move to a bill that would have added more money to CASF and increased the opportunities for building new infrastructure. It’s likely that Quirk, who has shown no real interest in broadband development beyond what AT&T and other incumbents prefer to do, intends once again to use his bill as a bargaining chip if and when a fully fleshed out CASF bill is under serious consideration.
The final bill, AB 1665 by Eduardo Garcia (D – Riverside County), has more new text in it, and even goes so far as to create a new pot of money to fund broadband marketing efforts – adoption programs is the term used – and generally restructure the program, but it is simply a framework for discussion at this point. As written it contains no new money for CASF, which is dwindling down, and doesn’t have specifics about how the program would be run.
None of the bills are ready to be considered, but the placeholders are on the table and the backstage wrangling can begin.