Stevens: Joint Board on Franchising

[SOURCE: Multichannel News, AUTHOR: Ted Hearn]
Senate Commerce Committee leaders are developing a plan that would empower a federal-state panel to propose changes to cable-franchising laws in an effort to bring uniformity and predictability to the process. The federal-state joint board would be created by a new law this year, and its recommendations would be codified in another law next year, Senate Commerce Committee chairman Ted Stevens said Monday. “The idea would be that some of the FCC [Federal Communications Commission] and some of the state [public-utility regulatory] people would come up with some recommendations and we next year could enact a solution that would deal with that problem of franchising,” Stevens told reporters after an address to state regulators in which he said demands by local governments on new cable entrants “border on extortion and ought not to be permitted” in the franchising process.
http://www.multichannel.com/article/CA6307434.html?display=Breaking+News
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* Stevens' comments to National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners
http://commerce.senate.gov/newsroom/printable.cfm?id=251507