Portland, Oregon, Wants to Change the Way It Charges Fees to Telecom, Electric and Gas Utilities

One of the city of Portland (OR)’s smallest bureaus is beefing with some of the nation’s largest companies. It’s a fight that might sound abstract but could touch the wallet of every household in town. At issue are the franchise and utility fees that the Portland Office for Community Technology levies on corporate behemoths—AT&T, Verizon, Comcast, PacifiCorp, Portland General Electric, NW Natural, and many others—for access to the city’s right of way. Like other cities, Portland has long charged companies for the opportunity to put up poles and wires, string fiber-optic cable, and run pipelines under city property. It’s a complex, lucrative undertaking that yielded the city $87.8 million in 2021, its third-largest source of revenue after property taxes and business license taxes. Late in 2021, the Office for Community Technology, whose director calls her 13-employee bureau “small but mighty,” informed the more than 300 companies that pay fees that it was time to “streamline” those agreements. That made sense: Over decades, the bureau had struck different deals with different companies at different times. Robert McCullough, a former PGE executive who now consults for utilities nationally, says he’s urged City Hall for more than a decade to tweak the franchise fee to raise more revenue. But McCullough fears city staff will be overwhelmed by the army of utility lawyers. That swamping has begun. The public comment period for the second draft of new rules closed June 2. The tenor of the 159 pages of comments submitted was decidedly hostile.

[June 8, 2022]