In the American Prospect, Sean Gonsalves reports on a recently filed bill in California that aims to “strip telecommunications oversight authority away from the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) and shift it to a more easily lobbied state legislature and a hypothetical state broadband office that doesn’t yet exist.”
The piece details how the CPUC – described by one senior agency official as “a public defender in the regulatory space” – has become a national model for broadband consumer protection, extracting landmark affordability commitments from the proposed Charter-Cox merger, launching a state-funded broadband subsidy program after the federal Affordable Connectivity Program expired, and administering the only public loan fund in the nation dedicated exclusively to community-owned Internet networks.
“Given what the CPUC has done over the past several years to ensure that every family in California can afford internet access, Boerner’s characterization of her poison pill is enough to make Orwell blush and MAGA operatives smile.”