Showing posts tagged “Ty Harrell”
Fiona Morgan ·
14 Apr 2009, 11:25 AM ·
11 Comments
Update 4/16: A vote on the bill was postponed to next Wednesday, April 22.
N.C. Rep. Ty Harrell, who represents western Wake County in the General Assembly, last week introduced a House companion to a Senate bill that would effectively stop local governments from building their own broadband Internet and other telecommunications services if they compete with private industry.
Harrell is an otherwise progressive legislator. He’s a co-sponsor of the comprehensive sex education bill, the Healthy Youth Act and the anti-bullying bill, the School Violence Prevention Act. He has twice received our endorsement. But by sponsoring HB 1252, Harrell has angered a wide grassroots base. Since introducing the bill, he says he’s heard from many progressives who oppose it.
“I did not know there would be this type of response, to be honest with you,” Harrell said in an interview.
He’s likely to hear more of that response this Wednesday, April 15, when the same coalition that fought the anti-muni broadband bill in 2007 plans to attend the House Science and Technology Committee meeting at 11 a.m. in Legislative Office Building room 425.
Harrell is chairman of that committee (though under House rules he won’t chair discussion of a bill he sponsors.) He says Time Warner Cable is based in his district and approached him about sponsoring the bill, which would require local governments to tack on to the fees they charge consumers the difference in the amount it would cost a private company to provide the service. Also under the bill, a city could not use government funds to “cross-subsidize” the launch or operation of a system, a practice common in private industry.
“You’ve got the municipalities who are more of less being subsidized by private industry in the sense that they don’t pay property tax, they don’t pay income tax, they receive rebates on their sales tax for these services and they have access to tax-free financing,” Harrell said, summarizing the industry’s argument. “I wanted to make sure that I look out for the businesses that are in my district. It was not an intent to rub out or punish municipalities that try to provide this service.”
But the bill’s opponents say that’s precisely the industry’s goal. They say these prohibitions artificially increase the cost of the municipal service and impose obligations that private industry does not have to meet. The cities of Wilson and Salisbury have already beaten a path to Harrell’s door, seeking to explain that building their own telecommunications infrastructure allows them to offer faster speeds and greater capacity than private industry is willing to build for their citizens.
The League of Municipalities, which lobbies for the interests of towns and cities across the state, is circulating a resolution to their members laying out the arguments against the bill (PDF).
Among the League’s concerns is the fact that North Carolina would be ineligible for $4.7 billion in federal stimulus grants set aside for local and state governments to provide broadband Internet service to unserved and underserved areas.
The timing of the bill is made worse by Time Warner Cable’s recent announcement that it would institute bandwidth caps for its customers in Greensboro and other cities nationwide. Customers who use more than their capped allotment (40 GB being the highest tier) will have to pay $1 per extra GB. Those customers are not happy and they’re fighting back with help from national groups like Free Press.
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politics broadband, Internet, NC General Assembly, Ty Harrell
Bob Geary ·
25 Oct 2008, 2:10 PM ·
Comment
Good story, across the top of page 1, in the Old Reliable: The N.C. Association of Realtors is going all-out to trash Wake County Commissioners candidate Stan Norwalk, and it’s not letting the facts get in its way.
The Indy, as you know, endorsed Norwalk — he’s running against incumbent Commissioner Kenn Gardner — in no small part because of Stan’s willingness to take on the Realtors and other powerful development interests. (2)
[The Realtors also fired a volley at state Rep. Ty Harrell, another Indy endorsee, as the N&O article reports.]
Now, for some footnotes to our entry:
1. In reality, the N&O’s headline doesn’t use the word “slime.” (It says “rips” instead.) We thought you should know that, so we’re noting it here.
We offer this in contrast to the faux quote and bogus footnote used by the N.C. Realtors PAC in one of the anti-Norwalk mailers. The mailer cites the N&O for its assertion that Norwalk has a “shady” past concerning campaign contributions (the word “shady” is highlighted in red). And to further convey the idea that the mailer is actually quoting the N&O, the assertion is accompanied by a red footnote (1), with this tagline immediately beneath it: “The News and Observer (sic), (Raleigh, NC), May 8, 2002 Wednesday, FINAL EDITION.”
Note that the tagline isn’t offered as an official (1) explanatory footnote, however. Because that could be considered fibbing.
The truth, according to the N&O itself in a sidebar to the main story:
“The N&O never called Norwalk’s actions shady.
2. From the Indy’s Norwalk endorsement:
“He has a record of advocating for alternatives to property tax—he lobbied the legislature hard to get the highly unpopular land transfer tax referendum option passed, showing he has no interest in ingratiating himself to the developers’ lobby. But on other forms of spending, Norwalk is tight-fisted. He questions the necessity of a $30 million administrative headquarters and believes the county could save money by consolidating duplicate services.”
Wake County, news, politics Kenn Gardner, N.C. Association of Realtors, Stan Norwalk, Ty Harrell
Fiona Morgan ·
28 Aug 2008, 3:08 PM ·
Comment
Among the speakers who’ll address the stadium crowd at the Democratic National Convention in Denver tonight is Jonathan Kuniholm, an Iraq War veteran who lost his arm in combat and went on to found the Open Prosthetics Project with his colleagues at the Durham firm Tackle Design.
Jonathan Kuniholm in 2006. Photo by Derek Anderson for the Independent.
According to tonight’s posted schedule, he speaks during prime time–at 10 p.m. Eastern, right after Al Gore. If the cable news talking heads talk over him, try watching C-SPAN’s broadcast.
The Indy profiled Tackle and Open Prosthetics back in 2006.
(Incidentally, another Tackle Design partner, Chuck Messer, is now co-host of a Discover Channel TV show called Smash Lab.)
Meanwhile, the fearless LGBT blogger Pam Spaulding and two of her co-bloggers at Pam’s House Blend continue to blog the DNC. Spaulding was featured in last week’s New York Times story about the historic inclusion of bloggers among convention media.
Several local Democratic delegates are also blogging their experience at the DNC. Blue NC has ongoing updates from a few of them. N.C. Rep. Ty Harrell, an official delegate, is not only blogging at his re-election campaign site, he’s Twittering, too.
Update 8/29: Here’s video of Kuniholm’s speech before the DNC.
national, news, politics bloggers, Blue NC, Democratic National Convention, Democratic Party, Iraq war, Jonathan Kuniholm, Open Prosthetics Project, Pam Spaulding, politics, Tackle Design, Ty Harrell
