More and more we're seeing state laws that would require a local referendum before any municipality can create their own telecommunications/broadband infrastructure. Unfortunately, the same telecommunications companies that are pushing so hard for these seemingly democratic processes are pouring tens of thousands (and even hundreds of thousands) of dollars into campaigns at the local level to defeat ballot measures supporting municipal ownership.

As a case in point, Comcast claims they spent $3,000 on the recent Tri-Cities referendum. What they fail to mention is the $89,740.22 in "in-kind" campaign donations they made. Here's the report of Comcast's campaign contributions [1]. Think that's insane? SBC made $192,324.89 in cash donations to defeat the Tri-Cities ballot measure. Here's SBC's campaign disclosure statement [2].

When was the last time a community group in your town raised a quarter-of-a-million dollars to support a local referendum measure? Fiber For Our Future, the local community group that was in support of the ballot measure (see their campaign statement here [3]), spent $4,325. It begs the question, "How democratic is it when a ballot measure has $4,325 in support on the one hand and $285,065.11 spent to defeat it?"

UPDATE 1:

Since posting this this afternoon, the amount of money being reported by SBC has gone up from $192,324.89 to $209,212.04 -- meaning that SBC and comcast spent over $300,000 (compared with $4325 for the local community organization) to defeat this ballot measure.

Also, the links from within the article to the spending reports are correct, but may not work from within the article with certain browsers. You may need to copy the URL target and manually paste it into your browser address window.