Official: Kasich will veto bill that risks landline service

November 26, 2014 at 12:00a.m.

COLUMBUS

A provision to enable phone companies to abandon local landline services will prompt a veto from the governor, the head of one state agency told a lawmaker panel Tuesday.

Jim Zehringer, director of the Ohio Department of Natural Resources, said Gov. John Kasich “strongly” opposes the language added to HB 490, a bill that otherwise focuses on agriculture and water-quality issues.

“The telecommunications language will force the governor to veto this bill, as he has personally said and has also been repeated several times by other members of the administration,” Zehringer told the Ohio Senate’s Agriculture Committee during an informal hearing on the legislation. “We would be sacrificing all the great work done so far on this bill if these provisions are not removed.”

HB 490 “would lift the current prohibition against an incumbent local exchange carrier withdrawing or abandoning basic local exchange service,” according to an analysis by the state’s Legislative Service Commission.

Backers of the language say it would help to bring wireless access to rural areas of the state.

“Our primary goal for the state is breaking down barriers for businesses in Ohio and giving new businesses the infrastructure they need in order to make Ohio their home and find success here,” House Speaker Bill Batchelder, R-Medina, said in a statement released after last week’s passage of the legislation in the chamber. “This component ... will have a tremendous impact on Ohio’s business community, allowing them the chance to have greater access to broadband technology.”

But opponents say the proposal will force Ohioans in rural areas to rely on wireless service.

“They will only have wireless telephone service with no price controls or guarantees for low-income Ohioans in these areas,” AARP Ohio wrote in a released statement about the proposal. “Additionally, there are areas of Ohio where wireless service is minimal, and to provide the speed needed for those receiving tele-health services in those areas will be even more expensive.”

Zehringer’s comment to the Senate committee Tuesday was the strongest public indication to date about the administration’s intentions on the issue.