Anti-5G Advocates Organizing Against American Broadband Deployment Act, Other Bills
Anti-5G group Americans for Responsible Technology is trying to organize formal opposition to the House Commerce Committee-cleared American Broadband Deployment Act (HR-3557) and other bills promoted as streamlining regulatory reviews of connectivity projects, ahead of what the group believes will be an attempt to fast-track the measures after Congress returns from the August recess after Labor Day. House Commerce advanced HR-3557, a package of GOP-led connectivity permitting revamp measures, on a party-line 27-23 vote in May, with all Democrats opposed (see 2305240069). Wired Broadband President Odette Wilkens and three lawyers rallied ART supporters against HR-3557 and other measures during a Wednesday webcast.
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House Communications Subcommittee Chairman Bob Latta, R-Ohio, told us before the recess his goal is still to reach a bipartisan compromise on HR-3557’s language that could speed its passage but acknowledged there’s still strong Democratic opposition to the measure. “We always want to have bipartisan agreement” on House Commerce-led measures before they reach the floor, “but all of the mandates that the Democrats have put on local governments have been weighing down on them,” he said: “We want to preserve the things that local governments can do” with permitting, “but we’ve got to keep them moving” through their regulatory processes “because if we don’t, it’s going to shut down” work to increase connectivity across the U.S.
Wilkens and others focused mostly on HR-3557 Wednesday but also cited the House Commerce-approved Satellite and Telecommunications Streamlining Act (HR-1338), the Natural Resources Committee-approved Broadband for Americans through Responsible Streamlining Act (HR-4141) and dozens of other measures as potentially hurting local governments’ ability to have a say in telecom projects. The House delivered a rare blow against Commerce’s legislative agenda last month when it failed to pass HR-1338, which would set a 180-day shot clock on FCC reviews of satellite license applications, under suspension of the rules (see 2307260037). HR-4141 would exempt a telecom project on already disturbed federal lands from National Environmental Policy Act and National Historic Preservation Act reviews if an environmental review process at the location has already occurred.
HR-3557 is just part of an “avalanche” of bills “resembling what I would imagine is the telecom industry’s Christmas wish list,” Wilkens said: They're “chiseling away” at local governments’ ability to regulate telecom projects within their jurisdictions. She’s not sure the measure would pass through the Senate given the strength of Democratic opposition but urged ART supporters to contact their members of Congress to whip against it due to its potential future implications. Big Heart Technologies President Julian Gresser called HR-3557 a “decoy” that could “suck up all the creative energy and thereby divert” opposition to other similar measures.”
HR-3557 “is the most deceptive, insidious, and … evil piece of proposed legislation I’ve ever seen having anything to do with” the 1996 Telecom Act and wireless tower siting, said New York lawyer Andrew Campanelli, who represented property owners last year in Muttontown, New York, seeking to block AT&T’s construction of a 165-foot-tall cell tower in the village (see 2211030048). It’s “designed to strip all powers from state and local governments … from having any power over the placement of these facilities” because a carrier would be exempted from local regulatory review of a project if it can simply state a tower would enhance its service in the area, which is “impossible” to disprove.
“My hope is that we can convince Congress not to adopt” HR-3557 “and I hope that local jurisdictions will lead the way,” said former Texas Assistant Attorney General Scott McCollough. “Local authorities must tell Congress this bill is simply unacceptable” and “the public needs to weigh in too” given “it “eliminates all public input” in the review process. The National Association of Counties, National Association of Telecommunications Officers and Advisors, National League of Cities and U.S. Conference of Mayors (see 2306050076) are among the other groups opposing the measure.
“The real purpose” of HR-3557 “is to require the local jurisdiction [to] yield to the telcos’ demands” by either ceasing its own reviews or creating “a rubber-stamp ministerial process where you just push the paper through” without meaningful participation, McCollough said. He cited language in the measure that would institute strict shot clocks for local governments’ review of some projects and would automatically approve some proposals if the government failed to meet those deadlines. Those requirements are “onerous and even impossible to meet,” McCollough said.