Time Warner Cable made its case to legislators at luxury resort
Fed up with slow internet speeds offered by commercial services, some Maine cities and towns are turning to a new way to get high-speed broadband for their residents and businesses: doing it themselves.
Maine ranks near the bottom of all 50 states in internet speeds, which frustrates consumers and also puts a damper on business.
Legislators have submitted multiple bills this session to help municipalities build high-speed broadband networks. One bill’s title gives the flavor of many of them: “An Act To Actually Expand Rural Broadband.”
All that activity poses a threat to the state’s largest internet provider, Time Warner Cable. The more people who use a municipally-sponsored broadband service, the fewer customers available to the company.
Just as the legislative session was starting in January, Time Warner went on the offensive. It invited Maine lawmakers to an overnight “Winter Policy Conference” at a Cape Elizabeth resort, where the company tried to persuade legislators that government owned-broadband was a bad idea. The guests were served steak dinners and some were put up for the night in rooms that retail between $205 to $355 per night.
While lawmakers say they attended the event to become informed, others are not sure that legislators attending such an “educational forum,” as Time Warner called it, is in the public interest. Especially one at a resort described by its owners as designed to “surround you with every creature comfort.”
“If we want good public policy, there’s reason for all of us to be worried,” said utilities expert Gordon Weil, the state’s first Public Advocate, who represented the interests of ratepayers before regulators. Such treatment of legislators is “obviously intended to persuade them by more than the validity of the arguments; it’s intended to persuade by the reception they’re given.”
And the Time Warner event is not the only one of its type. Legislators are often invited to parties, dinners and multi-day tours paid for by interest groups.
“I think this idea of meals and conversations is how Augusta functions on some level, it’s where the lobby gets to function on some level,” said Rep. Mark Dion, D-Portland, who attended the event, did not stay overnight but was provided dinner and breakfast by Time Warner.
The event began the evening of Jan. 22. Representatives from Pets for Vets, a charity supported by Time Warner, gave the evening keynote presentation.
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Copyright 2014 The Center for Public Integrity. This story was published by The Center for Public Integrity, a nonprofit, nonpartisan investigative news organization in Washington, D.C.
