Senate endorses McCoy’s bill reforming use of utility poles

Prime sponsor: Measure promotes competition, cooperation to keep rates low

March 6, 2008

OLYMPIA – The state Senate this morning (March 6, 2008) approved a bill that, according to the Snohomish County lawmaker who is prime-sponsoring the measure, will help telecommunications-service providers gain “fair and reasonable access to potential customers by using poles, ducts, conduits, or rights-of-way that someone else actually owns.”

At issue is the use and potential use of utility-pole attachments.

Sponsored by state Rep. John McCoy, the bill (House Bill 2533) provides “a reasonable solution to this issue.

“Yes, pole-owners should certainly be able to recover their costs,” McCoy said. “But we also have a responsibility to ratepayers to keep their rates as low as reasonably possible.”

McCoy chairs the House Technology, Energy & Communications Committee where the measure was first considered earlier this year.

In these pole-attachment cases, providers seek to hook up their utility devices to existing utility poles that are owned either by a competitor, by another type of utility-service provider, or by a government entity.

Representatives from providers seeking pole-attachments have testified in McCoy’s committee that rates sought for the potential attachment are sometimes unfair.

“In examining this contentious issue, we have long sought to find the reasonable solution that is contained in this bill,” McCoy said. “It makes good public-policy sense to extend the pole-attachment formula that already applies in existing state law to the investor-owned utilities.

“Future disputes could be avoided by having a consistent pole-attachment formula for the parties to follow,” he stated.

McCoy’s legislation directs that locally regulated utilities, such as the Snohomish County PUD, “must establish pole-attachment rates that are just and reasonable, and that use a consistent, cost-based formula.”

He said the rates will be set in a two-part formula incorporating existing rate-setting prescribed by the Federal Communications Commission, the Washington Utilities and Transportation Commission, and the American Public Power Association. In the future, says the bill, utilities can use rate-setting methodologies as set by the Federal Communications Commission.

A locally regulated utility can only deny a request to attach to a pole where there is insufficient capacity, or for reasons of safety, reliability, or an engineering concern.          

The measure now returns to the House for review of Senate amendments. McCoy said he’s not unhappy with the relatively minor amendments that don’t make substantial changes in the actual bill the House sent over to the Senate a couple weeks ago.          

The House vote on the bill back in mid-February was 94-1, and the Senate vote on it earlier today was 46-3.