Will Minnesota Senate Kill Duluth's Chances of Getting Google Gigabit Project?

[Commentary] Qwest has scored quite the little victory in its efforts to keep itself (and the good people it serves in Minnesota) from the evil socialist menace known as "local government providing broadband when the incumbent does a lousy job."

Apparently, MN State Senator Bakk and MN State Rep Dill introduced a bill that would have made it easier to for local governments to build municipal networks. Right now, it takes a local referendum vote with 65% to authorize a locality to build a network that offers commercial telephone service (and therefore any "triple play" broadband access service — or so they read it in MN). A State Senator and State Rep offered a bill to reduce the threshold on the referendum to a simply majority. By the time the relevant jurisdictional committee was finished, the revised bill included one of the favorite incumbent roadblocks to localities: a mandatory "feasibility study" designed to be so onerous and expensive to conduct that few local governments will want to even try.