Act Now to Stop Verizon’s Attack on Virginia Consumers

[Omaha Steve]

http://blog.aflcio.org/2007/02/14/act-now-to-stop-verizon%e2%80%99s-attack-on-virginia-consumers/

Act Now to Stop Verizon’s Attack on Virginia Consumers

by James Parks, Feb 14, 2007

If you live in Virginia, Verizon workers and consumers need your help today. Tomorrow, both houses of the state legislature will vote on a bill being pushed by Verizon that would keep state regulators from having any say on rates, quality of service, high-speed network rollout or jobs if the company sells or merges its operations.

The Communications Workers of America has been running radio ads in Richmond, where lawmakers are slated to vote on the legislation Feb. 15, alerting the public to the legislation’s dangers. Verizon plans to sell off operations in Vermont, Maine and New Hampshire.

The legislation (H.B. 1755 and S.B. 1143) would exempt telephone company mergers and sales from review by the state’s Corporation Commission. Under existing law, the commission reviews telephone company mergers and sales for the possibility of rate increases, changes in customer service and other consumer issues. The commission can set conditions for mergers or block them entirely if it believes consumers will not be protected.

If that oversight is taken away, service providers will have freedom to expand and contract at will and pass on major costs to consumers with no guarantee of good service, the union says.

This change would hit underserved communities the hardest, according to the CWA. Verizon would be free to dump its less-profitable rural consumers on to smaller companies unable to provide adequate services, including high-speed Internet.

Verizon has been lobbying heavily for this legislation, and consumers have less than 24 hours to stop it. Virginia AFL-CIO President James Leaman urges Virginia voters to contact their state legislators before 11:30 a.m. Thursday to urge them to protect quality of service and access to high-speed Internet by voting against H.B. 1755 and S.B. 1143.