• This Session’s $1.5 Million in Telecom PAC Spending Up 27% Over Last Session
• SW Bell Spends Half This PAC Money; Lawmaker Denies Working in a “Ho” House

Austin — In the waning hours of the 76th Texas Legislature, the most powerful corporation in Texas is tying up numerous lawmakers.

For years, an overgrown “Baby Bell” has demanded permission to sell long-distance service. Regulators told Southwestern Bell that it can do so once it re-leases its anti-competitive grip on local phone networks.

For Whom Bell Tolls
The Senate has passed a bill (SB 560) to deregulate the local phone industry. A more consumer-hostile bill is pending before the House State Affairs Committee (HB 1701).

The House bill would eliminate price controls on a wide range of such Bell charges as “caller ID” long before the behemoth faces any effective competition.

The bill is so indulgent of SW Bell that its author felt compelled to clarify that the company was not a political pimp.

“I have not enjoyed at all just the slightest inference that I’m carrying water for Bell,” Rep. Leticia Van De Putte, D-San Antonio, said at a May 3 committee hearing. “And in some cases, people have said that I’m their ‘ho.’”

Legislators who do carry water for Bell need a bucket brigade. Telecommunications Political Action Committees (PACs) spent more than $1.5 million to influence Texas politicians in 1998—a 27 percent increase over the 1996 election cycle. A Bell-affiliated PAC accounts for half ($730,438) of all 1998 tele-com PAC money.

No other corporation in Texas approaches SW Bell’s political clout. Besides having Texas’ largest PAC, SW Bell also pays the largest lobby bills in Texas. SW Bell will spend up to $5 million on lobbyists in 1999, almost twice what No. 2-ranked EDS reported.

“All politics is local”
Thanks in large part to SW Bell, local telephone service PAC in-terests accounted for 73 percent ($1.1 million) of all 1998 tele-com PAC spending, far outstripping spending by long-distance phone interests.

GTE’s two PACs make Texas’ No. 2 local phone company the next largest 1998 telecom PAC interest, with a total of $312,400 in spending.

Long distance sold short
Long-distance company PACs spent $383,862 in 1998, ac-counting for 25 percent of that year’s telecom PAC money.

AT&T led long-distance spend-ing with $156,350. MCI World-Com came next ($74,175), fol-lowed by Sprint ($24,020). Their trade group, the Texas Association of Long Distance Telephone Companies (TEXALTEL), spent another $18,410. While the long-distance industry is clearly outspent by the local phone companies, their PAC spending is up 82 percent from 1996. Local phone interests increased their PAC spending 15 percent over these two election cycles.

Send a cable
A big beef of long-distance companies is the steep fee (nearly 12 cents a minute) that SW Bell charges them to complete in-state long distance calls. This gouging helps explain why in-state calls are often more expensive than calls out of Texas.

In an attempt to bypass costly local Bell networks, long dis-tance companies such as AT&T have been merging with cable television companies like Tele-Communications, Inc. (TCI). Not to be outdone, SW Bell is angling to sell video entertainment services, too.

Because cable television networks represent an alternative to telephone line networks, the cable industry also has an interest in telephone deregulation. The Texas Cable and Telecommunications Association PAC spent $25,200 in 1998; the TCI PAC spent $3,105.

Imaginary competition
Amid all the talk of deregulation and competition, consumer ad-vocates predict that it will be years before SW Bell faces effective competition in servicing local phone networks—or state politicians. •

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