But House Speaker Beth Harwell said Tuesday she doesn't see that happening this year. Harwell (R-Nashville) told a group of small-business owners at a National Federation of Independent Business meeting that the legislature will likely wait until after the state Department of Economic and Community Development (ECD) completes a study it launched last month before taking action.
The Tennessee Municipal Electric Power Association and other groups will visit the State Capitol today to press for action before the General Assembly adjourns its 2016 session in late April.
An estimated 422,000 households across Tennessee don't have access to landline internet speeds that meet the Federal Communications Commission minimum standard for high-speed broadband. Another 1.6 million Tennessee households have access to only one provider, according to the association.
An opponent of the bill, a telecommunications business owner, raised the issue with Harwell at the NFIB gathering. "I have many thousands of feet of fiber-optic cable undeployed in my business yard in Dayton, Tennessee, where I desperately want to deploy fiberoptics. But I fear competition from my government more than AT&T. What can be done to settle this issue so I can go ahead and invest?" David Snyder said.
"I would love to settle this issue. We're tired of it," Harwell said "I think you have a very legitimate concern. It's just a tough call because businesses like to provide the service where there's high clientele and they can get quick customers. Where our problem does exist is in some of these remote areas ... that would be financially difficult for a private company to reach out and make a profit providing to those areas. That's what we're trying to balance.
"But we continue to work on it. We're waiting for that study. There are bills put in every year so I can't promise you anything is going to be done this year in the legislature," she said.
Afterward, Harwell told reporters she wants to see the ECD study before deciding. "My preference would be that the private sector take this over. We'll see if they can come to the plate and offer enough services to our rural areas. If they can't, then I do think it becomes necessary for the public to enter."
On other issues, Harwell told the NFIB that she expects legislation imposing a higher registration fee on electric vehicles because their drivers don't pay gas taxes.
And she said there is some legislative discussion of cutting some taxes in exchange for raising the gas tax.
"For example," she said, "you could probably lower the Hall income tax (on income from stocks and bonds) as you raise the gas tax. ... But I don't approach this without reservations because I do see it as more of a tax on the working poor than anyone else."
©2016 The Commercial Appeal (Memphis, Tenn.), Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
