Net neutrality fight heats up over state bill
Since being accused of “eviscerating” a bill that sought to reinstate net neutrality in California, Assemblyman Miguel Santiago — a relatively unknown figure outside of Sacramento political circles — has received a firestorm of criticism.
“I have received threats, and my wife has been harassed. My personal family pictures have been stolen from my social media platforms and used to create memes,” Santiago, D- Los Angeles, said in a statement Friday. “This is a new low.”
The online ire directed at Santiago comes a couple of days after a tense and at times bizarre hearing of the Assembly Communications and Conveyance Committee. On Wednesday, Santiago and other committee mem-
bers voted 8- 0 to strip SB822, state Sen. Scott Wiener’s net neutrality bill, of key provisions that supporters argued were needed to give Californians strong protections against discriminatory treatment of internet traffic.
The reaction, at times uncivil, highlights the intensity of the debate over what role California should play in setting a precedent for the rest of the country when it comes to net neutrality, the principle that broadband and wireless internet providers should not be able to use their networks to favor certain websites and apps, especially ones they own or have commercial deals with, over others.
Wiener introduced the bill Jan. 3 after the Federal Communications Commission voted to overturn regulations the agency adopted in 2015 under the Obama administration. Those rules prohibited the blocking or slowing down of internet traffic.
Wednesday’s committee hearing was the first wall Wiener’s bill had hit in the Legislature after flying through the state Senate and garnering support from national figures including House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, who viewed the bill as potentially strengthening efforts to pass federal net neutrality legislation.
Opponents of the bill applauded Santiago’s move, saying legislation on a state level could lead to conflicting regulations for internet service providers.
On Friday, Santiago sought to make his position clear: He fully supports a state net neutrality bill, but he didn’t think Wiener’s bill, in its current form, would survive the Assembly floor and legal challenges from the telecommunications industry. He said passing an amended bill without some of the provisions sought by Wiener was better than no bill at all.
Critics of the move immediately accused Santiago of gutting the bill to please his donors, which include AT& T and Charter Communications, a cable broadband provider which serves parts of California. Santiago told The Chronicle Friday that the internet providers had “zero” influence on his decision.
“We’re trying to figure out how to create the best public policy that would survive on the floor, and I have a responsibility to do that,” Santiago said. That conversation, he added, was getting lost in the “heat of exchange.”
Wiener disagrees with Santiago’s caution.
“Our bill, pre- amendment, would have been a huge fight on the Assembly floor, I have no doubt about it,” he said. “But it would not be a good bill if there wasn’t. To have an easy time on the Assembly floor would mean having an extremely weak and meaningless bill.”
Among the committee’s recommendations Wednesday was to permit a controversial practice called zero rating, in which some websites and apps don’t count against a user’s data allotment. Proponents say the subsidies help lower- income communities access data services. Strict net neutrality supporters view zero rating as a backdoor way of discriminating against online services that don’t strike free- data deals.
The committee voted on the amendments before Wiener was given a chance to speak against them — a move that left him visibly riled. Wiener then asked to withdraw the bill from consideration. The committee ignored his request, and instead voted to move it to the Privacy and Consumer Protection Committee.
On Friday, Santiago called Wiener’s bill an “incredibly progressive measure with many very valid policy suggestions that should ( and now will be) discussed.” But, he said, he simply did not have enough time before the hearing to fully consider the policy implications of the bill.
“He and I had been going back and forth on trying to figure out how to work with his language,” Santiago said. “We were in the office past midnight and started early in the morning,” going over page after page of rules, he said.
Wiener said he and Santiago have had a number of conversations since the hearing, and have committed to each other that they are going to “work in good faith to try and fix this.”
Republican strategist Rob Stutzman said this was one of the most public flareups in the Legislature he has seen this session. While it’s not uncommon for such disagreements to happen, he said, it is uncommon for them to take place so publicly.
“The steam engine that mowed down Sen. Wiener was bipartisan,” Stutzman said. “Wiener doesn’t have any choice. If he wants to try and restore anything that he’s doing, he is going to have to work with the chairman who showed that he is going to be as big of a stakeholder in this bill.”
SB822’ s hearing in the Assembly privacy committee is scheduled for Tuesday.
Wiener said he requested that the chairman of that committee move the bill forward, so he and Santiago could continue working on it before the next hearing.
“We want to restrengthen the bill,” Wiener said. “I don’t support the bill in its current form, but I want to keep it alive so we can make amendments thereafter.”