Weekly Update August 24, 2012

WWEEEEKKLLYY UUPPDDAATTEE WSTA would like to recognize our 2012 GOLD and SILVER Annual Partners: GOLD – Finley Engineering Company, Inc. SILVER - Interstate Telcom Consulting, Inc., Kiesling Associates LLP, and National Inform ation Solutions Cooperative, Inc. (NISC) Thank you National Information Solutions Cooperative and HickoryTech for your sponsorship of WSTA electronic publications! Associate members, click here to join them! Weekly Update August 24, 2012 Legislative and Political Polls show Wisconsin's in play; will Ryan bounce last? President Barack Obama’s modest but consistent edge in Wisconsin has mostly evaporated in the aftermath of Rep. Paul Ryan’s selection for the GOP ticket, making the state a virtual toss-up, a raft of new polling suggests. It’s possible the Ryan home-state “bounce” will be temporary. But if it isn’t and it endures into the fall, Wisconsin could present the Romney campaign with its best opportunity to play offense in this campaign and pick off a state that Democrats have long relied on to build electoral majorities. “It’s very close,” says Peter Brown of the Quinnipiac University Poll, which has Obama leading Romney 49% to 47% in a survey released Thursday. “The question is, does the bump that Romney got in Wisconsin due to Paul Ryan have a lasting effect?” The Ryan bounce is a little bigger in some polls than others. But taken together, the polling paints a similar picture. Four surveys by four different pollsters using different polling methods have two things in common. They all show a somewhat tighter race since Ryan was picked. And they all show a contest well within the polling margin of error. On Politics: Gov. Walker set to speak Tuesday at RNC Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin is scheduled to speak at the Republican National Convention next Tuesday, Republican officials announced Tuesday. Walker will join several other Republican governors, who are all expected to address that day’s convention theme, “We Built It.” Tuesday night’s speaker line-up will also include Govs. John Kasich of Ohio, Mary Fallin of Oklahoma, Bob McDonnell or Virginia, Bobby Jindal of Louisiana and Susana Martinez of New Mexico, and Chris Christie of New Jersey. Two new polls show Thompson leading Baldwin Rolling on from last week's primary victory, Republican Tommy Thompson leads Democrat Tammy Baldwin in the U.S. Senate race, two new polls show. A poll by Marquette University Law School found the former governor and federal Health and Human Services secretary leading the U.S. representative from Madison by 50% to 41%, a lead that has grown from 48% to 43% earlier this month and was larger than the poll's margin of error of plus or minus 4.2 percentage points. Also Wednesday, a new poll by Democratic firm Public Policy Polling gave Thompson a 49% to 44% lead, a bump from a poll by the firm in July that had the pair tied at 45%. Van Hollen asks Supreme Court to take up photo ID law State Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen is asking the Wisconsin Supreme Court to step in and review rulings by two judges striking down the state's voter ID law and to do so in time for the November presidential election. The photo identification law was not in place for the June 5 recall election for Gov. Scott Walker because two judges in Dane County each separately ruled the law was unconstitutional. One judge said it created a "substantial impairment of the right to vote" guaranteed by the state constitution. The state's highest court has already declined once this year to intervene and overturn rulings by the two circuit court judges at an earlier stage in the cases. Now, the GOP attorney general is asking the court to reconsider. The Supreme Court is expected to eventually take these cases, but it is unclear if it will do so before an appeals court has ruled on them or in time for the November election. Democrats challenge Thompson to release tax returns With their Republican opponent set in the U.S. Senate race, Democrats have wasted little time going after Tommy Thompson and his refusal to release his tax records. Tammy Baldwin released 10 years of tax returns in May, and the Democratic candidate has called on Thompson to do the same. But Thompson has emphatically refused, with his campaign saying he would only release them after he's elected. It's not clear how much the issue resonates with voters. Some say they're concerned about more substantive matters, and others say they've already made up their minds about who'll get their vote. That hasn't stopped Baldwin's campaign from using the issue to draw early battle lines. Democrats insinuate that the refusal by Thompson, who has worked as a Washington lobbyist for the past several years, means he has something to hide. Republicans say Democrats must be grasping at straws if they're building a campaign strategy on a non-issue. Walker pushes again for venture capital legislation In a bid to develop venture capital legislation that could lead to more jobs, Gov. Scott Walker has asked the state commerce agency to bring together financiers, trade officials and other industry leaders for a series of discussions. Walker had proposed similar legislation last year, but it died amid disagreement among politicians and special interest groups about how the program would work. Walker hopes to avoid dissension this time by assembling a coalition of groups who can speak with a unified voice, said Walker spokesman Cullen Werwie. The governor has asked the Wisconsin Economic Development Corp. "to bring together individuals to pass a meaningful venture capital bill in the future," Werwie told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. A range of advocacy groups, politicians and others already have begun meeting to discuss the new attempt at venture capital legislation. Tom Thieding, a spokesman for the commerce agency, said it was too early to discuss all the ideas that have been proposed. Regulatory and Industry Police and fire phone fee raises millions; Local official calls fee "a shell game" The fee was created in the 2009 state budget. It requires residents to pay a 75-cent fee every month for home phones and cell phones. In 2010, the fee brought in $46,233,400. In 2011, it brought in even more: $61,033,400. The money goes into the general fund, which is basically the big pot of money used to pay for government services. From that pot of money, the state sends money back to local governments to pay for things like police and fire protection, roads and parks. Kristin Ruesch is with the Public Service Commission, the agency that administers the fee. She says the PSC has received several complaints from residents about the charge. "We've certainly heard from people who want to see the fee taken off of their phone bill and collected the way it used to be through general fund taxes," Ruesch said. Two Rivers City Manager Greg Buckley has also had residents complain about the fee. "There's been a lot of confusion about that," he said. "People assume that's something extra the city's are getting to pay for police and fire protection when it fact, it was a shell game." Here's how it worked: The state created the new fee to supposedly protect police and fire services from cuts. But instead of adding the new money to the shared revenue program, it simply replaced some of the other tax money used to pay for local services. Then, the state cut the entire shared revenue program by 3.5%. "All it really was was a substitution," Buckley said. "We're not getting more money as the result of that fee that appears on the bottom of your phone bill." FCC: Nearly One Quarter of Rural Americans Lack Broadband Access Nearly one quarter of Americans in rural areas lack access to broadband at speeds of 4 Mbps downstream and 1 Mbps upstream, according to a report released today from the FCC. In comparison, only 1.8% of Americans in non- rural areas lack broadband access at the target speed, the report found. The FCC estimates that approximately 19 million Americans in total — about 6% of the U.S. population or seven million U.S. households — do not have access to broadband. The commission also noted, however, that service providers have made progress on the broadband availability front. As of June 2010, 26.4% of Americans lacked access to broadband service at speeds of 3 Mbps downstream and 768 kbps upstream, but as of June 2011, that number had declined to 19%. (The commission likely used the 3 Mbps/ 768 kbps speed rather than the 4 Mbps/ 1 Mbps speed in this case because of previous reporting practices.) FCC temporarily suspends effort to deregulate special access The FCC voted 3-2 to temporarily suspend rules that automatically granted requests to change prices on special access services that incumbent telcos sell to competitive service providers and wireless operators. While the vote went through on Aug. 15, the results and order were not made public until late Wednesday. In its decision, the FCC said that there is "significant evidence that these rules, adopted in 1999, are not working as predicted, and widespread agreement across industry sectors that these rules fail to accurately reflect competition in today's special access markets." Calix Acquires Fiber Assets from Ericsson Calix’s plan to purchase fiber access assets from Ericsson, announced today, should catapult the company into the international telecom market, where Ericsson has made some major wins with tier 1 carriers such as Telefonica and Vodafone.

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